COMPLETE: Tadpole Treble

[kjorteo]

swordianmaster was the first in clan to cover this, then xyzzysqrl had her turn, and now it's mine.

Tadpole Treble is a rhythm game by Matthew "Brawl in the Family" Taranto, and it really shows. You are Baton, a freshly-hatched tadpole who gets separated from her parents and must swim through various levels to make her way back home. As anyone who's read BitF would expect, the art style is charming, the music is phenomenal, and the writing is typically hilarious but also capable of surprise heartbreak, and even of conveying it with nothing more than somber instrumental music, a pained facial expression, and a stage drawn and colored with a general look and feeling of desolation. It's silly, charming, cute, sad, and triumphant, all at once. There's also more vore per capita than that one corner of Fur Affinity we don't talk about. Just, you know. FYI.

Like any rhythm game, Tadpole Treble is about two hours or two hundred depending on how deeply you want to lose yourself in it. You can get through the end of each stage alive just to experience the story, or you can try for S-ranks, F-ranks (how low a score can you get and still technically pass,) challenge flies (basically stage-specific Achivement-like goals such as smacking every bamboo reed in this one or getting through that one without taking a hit,) collecting every bubble in every level, and so on. I decided I was done after getting every S-rank and challenge fly (and clearing the bonus stuff those unlock,) but this can be as much or as little as you want it to be.

Anyway, any rhythm game that can make me cry must have something to it, and this one definitely does. Highly recommended.

Edit: There's a part two to this review because of course I couldn't actually stop when I said I would.