Tango Gameworks surprised everyone when it surprised launched Hi-Fi Rush earlier this year. This unique action rhythm game quickly became a hit for Xbox, and six months after release, the studio is back with a brand-new update that should take the Hi-Fi Rush concept to new heights. This Arcade Challenge update will be adding multiple modes and collectibles that should challenge even the most veteran of players.
Game ZXC was recently able to sit down with Hi-Fi Rush game director John Johanas to discuss everything that this new update will add. The discussion covered the two new modes, the countless new Hi-Fi Rush collectibles, tips for anyone looking to tackle this new content, and much more. The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Q:For our readers, could you just tell me a little bit about who you are, and what this new Hi-Fi rush update will include?
Johanas: Okay, so my name is John, and I'm director on Hi-Fi Rush, and that's pretty much who I am. I've been working on this project for a while. And that includes working on this additional content, which is out July 5, US time. It's not a story DLC that you normally see, but it's kind of taking the rhythm action game that we created and pushing it to its limit, I'm sure it can go past it, but at least what we're able to do right now.
In terms of like two new kind of challenges with a lot of cool new details and unlockables and stuff that you normally get. Our game is kind of like a throwback feel in general, and it's that extra content that you feel used to be in games as stuff that you would unlock naturally. And so we also wanted to bring that back. It's like just more ways to unlock and fun ways to unlock more stuff to enjoy the original game more. There's a lot of stuff in there, so I'm happy to talk about it.
Q:Could you explain a little bit more about the two new modes? What unique mechanics are they bringing to the game? Can you go into more depth about BPM Rush and Power Up Tower Up?
Johanas: Yeah, so BPM rush takes basically the core gameplay experience and increases the speed of it. That's like the least interesting way I can possibly explain, and I'm sorry. But as you know, by playing this game, because it's music-based and everything's tied to the rhythm, there's actually two things. One, we get to use songs, and we made original songs for it, that are incredibly high speed which just makes you pumped and intense to play these kinds of high tension battles. And two, it kind of forces you to be extra responsive and play with the mechanics more because since everything's tied to the beat enemy attacks, like the rhythm, parry attacks, all of that is sped up. We're not cheating by any means, it's all systems based and things like that. So it is kind of like a test of how well can you play under pressure in terms of speed in this case.
And as far as Chai is concerned, nothing has changed about his actions. But it's more about how fast things come at you, how you're able to input your combos and react, as well. But we also do have new enemies, new attacks, that will kind of take you by surprise, you're going to learn those as well. But playing at the max 200 BPM is like not a joke.
People say, 'Oh, I wish it could go higher,' I was like, 'You should play this first, and then tell me it should go higher.' Because even some people on the team thought it was kind of approaching that impossible level of being able to keep track. But it's a really, really fun experience, you kind of get in the zone, which is great. So that's BPM rush. And the other mode, Power Up Tower Up, kind of stemmed from an early idea of, we had the rhythm tower mode, and we were thinking of making a hard mode of that. And one of the ideas for hard modes was rather than just making enemies do more damage was to kind of have random elements included in that.
So that became this mode, where we said, 'Okay, what if instead of being able to prepare for everything, you have to really kind of just go with whatever we throw at you.' So, you have random encounters. And the biggest thing is Chai is sort of weakened at the beginning of the game. And it's the first thing you see, he's shocked by lightning, and you see all his stats go down. Including his basic attack damage, and his defense. So even the lightest enemies can not one shot you but almost take you out very quickly. And it's up to you after every round to kind of pick your upgrades, which will bring you back to and potentially exceed, depending on how you kind of pick your upgrades to strengthen you as the enemy sets get gradually more intense.
But as an additional random element to that is that all of these upgrades come with sometimes positive and negative modifiers for the next battle. So yeah, I want that upgrade. But the next battle, all ranged enemies will do triple damage, or all fire attacks will do triple damage or something like that. And you can see the enemy sets before you fight, and you say, 'Well, I want that upgrade, but am I confident that I can take on this challenge?' So it's kind of really, again, testing your ability to say 'Oh, I know the mechanics. I know how to fight these enemies. I think I could do this. But it is a challenge.' That's why we called it the arcade challenge.
Q: That makes sense. That sounds very challenging. I already struggle with just the base Hi Fi rush sometimes, so I can only imagine how hard this is going to be for me.
Johanas: The other thing is It's not impossible. You're not, I don't think you're going to get it the first try. But it's not some crazy, like, only the smallest percent of people can possibly even attempt to achieve to beat these modes. It's definitely done with practice, just like practicing an instrument you can overcome it.
Q: Were these modes always a part of the plan for H- Fi Rush? Or did they just kind of come about because of the popularity when it first launched?
Johanas: So, I kind of mentioned it before. But you know, as we were thinking of these additional modes that we wanted to include in the base game, we thought about a bunch of ideas. And the BPM Rush mode was definitely always something we wanted to do. But we actually had to figure out the technical challenge in order to get it to work. And we didn't want to kind of put that in and have it be half-baked. So early on we said 'okay, it's a good idea, but we don't have the bandwidth to do it.' And then the Power Up Tower Up was like an evolution of an idea that we had. But once we finished development we said, 'okay, we want to add more modes, let's look back on those features that we didn't think we had the bandwidth to make.' But at this point, we had a greater understanding of the systems and what we can do and can't do. And so I think because we kind of waited till after release, we were able to actually make them happen. So it wasn't like oh, we just didn't have time, it was more like, now that we have the full picture it makes more sense to make these modes
Q: The announcement mentioned all the unique rewards you're going to be getting; the new 808 looks, the accessories, the new Chai T-shirts, especially the new Korsica costumes, that's the most important one. But can you share specific ones that you just know the players will want to have? Or are you going to keep it a secret?
Johanas: The ones we know players want, there's a little bit of a mystery surrounding them. So, I don't want to give them away. But obviously, we immediately saw that there was a huge reaction to, for example, having Korsica costumes. And that was also from the team because obviously, if you play the game, you know that she comes in later. So, there's just generally less options for her. She was kind of left out in terms of customization. So, actually the modeling team wanted to put in more costumes for Korsica, but this was actually before we knew that she would be a popular character.
And they kind of went a little bit overboard, I think there are 4 new costumes for her. And so, the balance is now more in her favor compared to the other characters, but they're great costumes. And what I think is actually the funniest things are, I know people overlook them, but the accessories for Chai because if you play the game, you know that all the costumes can be taken back into the main game, and you can take the cutscenes with them. And we basically said okay, all these accessories have to make him look hilariously goofy because we want you to go back and watch these cutscenes with these accessories. And my favorite one is these glasses that make it look like he's like half awake all the time. So, every scene it's like he's kind of staring into the distance like dozing off. And it just makes every scene have a very different context of him being uninterested.
Q: Are you planning on giving any other the Companions new outfits? Or is it just Korsica and the rest are just kind of getting what they have?
Johanas: Well, there are other outfits, we have separate Chai and 808 as mains. And then like I said, the modeling team wanted to add the Korisca costumes. It was unbalanced. But for this update it's those three characters. The other guys already had a lot of options.
Q: Can we expect any new songs in this update? Music is a big part of Hi-Fi rush of course, and more music is always great.
Johanas: Yes, you can expect some songs, there are actually five new tracks. And some are available in both modes, but some are exclusive to BPM rush, which when you play the mode you'll understand. But every time the speed of it increases, it's essentially like a new take on that song. So, even though I say it's five songs, when you play through the BPM rush with one of the songs, it's like eight versions of the same song. But they feel different because of the speed being different and stuff like that. Instrumentations a little bit different. But they're awesome, because we got to go, like I said, faster than anything in the original game. So it kind of makes just gives a different vibe in general to how you fight and the feel of the battles.
Q: What are Smidge and CNMN bringing to the table? I mean, they haven't really been a big part of the fighting. CNMN contributed at the end, but Smidge is more of a hint giver. What are they adding?
Johanas: Yeah, so for CNMN. You know, he's not really a fighter per se. And so he's kind of contributing in his own way. He does do damage to the enemies. But it's this sort of very lightweight feel of a character who's trying to do damage. I don't think we show the whole attack in the trailer. So, I kind of want to see people's reaction to when they see it in game. But, you know, he's very passionate about helping Chai. So there's a nice intro to him coming on screen. And then an almost sort of like retro take on how he takes out enemies. So his is mostly kind of offensive. But what's interesting is it kind of plays to the fact of he didn't have sort of a partner assist attack, and he's one of the rare special attacks where you can call him in, and he's acting individually while you can still attack enemies on your own. So, for a brief moment you're like fighting together, which is kind of fun.
Smidge is obviously a character who has awkward attachment issues. So, he does want to help Chai. And his way of helping is sort of this protection based attack, which is also hard to understand. But, he wants to make sure Chai is safe from harm, but also wants to kind of make sure that he's doing his best to help him. So, they're both defensive attacks, but his is kind of essentially being overly protective of Chai while fighting. It's a nice way to put it. I don't want to say his attack is broken, but, he goes a little bit overboard in damage, because he wants to please Chai, as we know, by playing the game. So the best way to please Chai is by being offensively defensive.
Q: Since you probably know Smidge the best out of all of us here, do you have any hints you could give players?
Johanas: Okay, so the first thing I would suggest, in general is, like I said, they are challenges. So you want to understand the game mechanics before you jump in. That's why we made it so you have to beat the game to unlock it. So you kind of have that first run through, you know the modes. We do recommend you playing through the Rhythm Tower mode, we recommend you kind of finishing and buying all the attacks and upgrading your chips, because at least in BPM rush, that loadout may be critical to you succeeding or failing. But like I said in the beginning, we did do difficulty adjustments so that you are able to get through it. We believe you're able to get through it if you kind of take the time to go through it.
So BPM Rush was structured that we slowly increased the rhythm, which allows you to take your time, you may fail. But when you go back to a slower BPM, it feels kind of like everything's going in slow motion. So you're like 'I got this, I got this,' and we slowly ramp you back up again. So we made sure that it's a nice challenge, but also not impossible. So don't give up.
The other thing is you'll notice by the challenges that you can unlock in these modes, is that there are difficult ones to do, but there are also lots of easy ones that can stack up to help you unlock some of these unlockables. So, you shouldn't get discouraged by saying, 'Oh, this is impossible, these challenges are impossible,' because you can kind of make up for the really difficult ones with lots of easier ones. So, like I said, we've put a lot of stuff to unlock. And there's some extra secret stuff hidden in there that we haven't said yet. But kind of take a look through, take the challenges one by one, and kind of explore these new modes is the best advice I can give.
Q: Will players be able to unlock things in these new modes that can carry over to the main game? Now I know the outfits and special attacks can, but any other attacks or combos, or maybe even new chips?
Johanas: So we didn't add new chips or attacks but like you said the special attacks can be brought back into the main game, and then used throughout any situation. So you can go back, and honestly I didn't try them on like every single situation to see, there may be ways to easily defeat some rounds with these new special attacks. So, they actually might be more helpful for people who want to take on the higher difficulty modes with these new special attacks. And then like I said, you can go back with these new costumes and just have a lot of fun watching the cutscenes again.
But yeah, anything that's gameplay related can be takem back into the main game, there's nothing restricted to these modes. The other thing is like the photo mode stuff and all those things that we added. Obviously you can take photos whenever you want in the main game and all those new poses, and stickers and stuff. You can use them whenever you want. So nothing's restricted to these two new modes.
Q: You mentioned that there's going to be new enemy types, the mega-tough enemies. Could you share any details about the mega-tough enemies or what kind of challenges players will expect?
Johanas: One was actually hinted at in the main game. And it's even available in the model viewer, it's kind of like an expansion of the Komodo-like series of enemies. But what's interesting about this enemy is that it can create sort of projections of itself. So it does, it's not just one enemy, it can kind of like separate into two or three versions of itself and do multiple attacks coming from different directions. So, you do have to kind of be aware of if it's splitting up how many times it's splitting up and then see how many attacks it's going to do. And these enemies have new rhythm parry attacks which have, at least for the variant of the Komodo enemy, a randomization element. So every time it's going to be slightly different. So, you can't just memorize it to get past it, you kind of have to look for it and be on your toes for that one.
The other enemy is a variant on our brutal enemy, which is the kind of the first enemy that we choose to teach you parrying. That was one that we had actually concepted early, but we just didn't have time to fit it into the schedule, but we really liked the design of this kind of over the top enemy that will not stop attacking you. So it is kind of this super rage induced version of the enemy that's in the main game. But its attacks take the original game's idea of like a single attack, and kind of combining it with what the bosses do, which is kind of like putting attacks on top of each other. So, it's not just one attack, and you'll parry it or dodge it, and you're done. It may do two in a row, and you have to kind of always watch for that. And then its rhythm parry attack takes on a feature that was taken from the Korsica battle which has multiple phases to its rhythm parry attack. So you can't just succeed in one, you have to succeed in multiple phases to take it out.
And you're going to have to kind of play it a bunch of times to get used to these new attacks, because again, the rhythms are different from the regular enemies. But yeah, they're what we like to call mini bosses in the sense, we buffed them up to that.
Q: What would you tell someone who maybe played Hi-Fi Rush at launch and left or has not really touched it yet about this update? Like, why should they come back and give the game a second shot or the first shot?
Johanas: Well, if you're coming back, I think the good thing is, we hope that when you finished the game you'd like to play, and you were hoping for more. And this definitely delivers on that aspect. A lot of the stuff we put in, and it's kind of secret, but it's almost like a thank you to people who have played. So, there are a lot of references in this mode, the way it's structured and the way you unlock things. And just the way you can, like I said, go back to the main game and play it again. It helps you out if you wanted to finish up, for example, the wall of fame, there are aspects in there that can help. So, it's a good way that if you kind of got stuck on something, it's a new look at the gameplay that will probably almost train you to take on the harder challenges in the original game.
But it also just kind of it feels fresh, even though it's the same combat system. And as far as people who haven't played, it's hard to convince them because of this update, if you've played you do need to beat the game to play. People who play the game know that we do have a lower entry price to this game. There's by no means a lack of content to this game. There's like an unbelievable amount, or we'd like to think an unbelievable amount of things to do in this game and to get to unlock everything. And this just adds more, so I think it just makes the entire package of the game just even fuller, and makes our price even more, dare I say illegal?
So you're getting such a good deal for the amount of content. I think that if you had any sort of interest in this game whatsoever. While you can't just jump into this content, it just reinforces that this package is just a super fun package of tons of gameplay and additional content for you that's not over when the credits finished.
Q: Is there something in this update that you've not been asked by anybody about that you've just been dying to share?
Johanas: The biggest thing I want to talk about is something I also don't want to, which is the thing that we're being very secretive about, and we hope that people find it. I assume that they will, it's more of a question of how long does it take for someone to find it. If you know the original game, we put a lot of really hidden stuff that we didn't think people would find, there are conversations that if you quit out of the game at certain points and jump back in. And we're like, oh, it will take people ages to find this. And it was like, within the first 36 hours, people already had full compilation YouTube videos. But our way of saying thanks to people to play the game, we kind of went overboard in that. And we're interested to see people find that for themselves. And hopefully they find it, they laugh about it and find it enjoyable. It's light-hearted.
Q:When can I buy a stuffed animal version of 808? I need to add it to my collection.
Johanas: Well, I want one as well. And I am not at liberty to divulge any future merch plans, whether they may or may not exist. So I can only be as vague as possible. But believe us whatever you want, our team wants probably 30 times more than that. And we've thought of everything.
Q: That's good. Because I even loved the final boss when you get to play as 808 for a very little bit. I was like, Oh, this is great. This is fantastic.
Johanas: I'm glad to hear that. I will tell that to our programmers who when I proposed that they were like, we're going to make a whole system just for this? I'm glad to hear that it wasn't in vain.
Q: Lastly, is this the only big content that we can expect from the game? Are you able to give us a little inkling that the Hi-Fi Rush fun is not going to end here?
Johanas: I'm not allowed to answer that, but we want people to never forget this game. That was the original idea of this game. It's like one of those games you look back many years into the future and be like, That was one of the good ones and stuff like that. So we're always looking for what fans respond to and then that kind of maybe or maybe not influences what we do in the future. But I can't obviously announce anything.
The thing I will bring up in every single interview about this content is that we've been big proponents of checking your latency. Because it's a rhythm game, we obviously want you to have the lowest latency possible. But I will say, when you play the BPM Rush mode, the timing gets even stricter with how fast the game is, make sure that your latency is as low as possible. So, check your setup, check your TV mode, make sure it's not on some weird motion smoothing mode or something like that. The game is running rock solid at that 60 fps, so there is no need to worry about it there. But yeah, make sure you're prepped.
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Hi-Fi Rush is available now on PC and Xbox Series X/S.