Tapic Review

By , on November 1, 2010


Tapic
Download on the AppStore
3 out of 5

PROS

  • Auto-generates beats based off your music.
  • Unlockable themes with different play-styles.

CONS

  • Some issues with beat generation and syncing.
  • Rough, simplistic visuals.

VERDICT

Tapic shows that there's room for rhythm games to generate their own content intelligently, but without more of the trappings of the genre it's a fairly bland example.


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Freemium style titles can be a risky investment, either consuming your time utterly or requiring more money than a regular game to be worthwhile. Tapic by Zentertain is an interesting mix of paid and freemium and for fans of rhythm games it's an investment that may just be worth your time.

And the reason for this is a simple one as you can finally play a tap-rhythm game with your own music library. Much like advanced rhythm games like Audiosurf, Tapic doesn't come with a preset or purchasable library of tunes and all the tap patterns are generated by the application itself. Several 'themes' can change how this works, either displaying the patterns in vertical or horizontal orientations and in one theme it switches from three scrolling lines to a dance-dance revolution style of pattern.

Unfortunately you do get what you pay for and the pattern generation isn't always spot on. Some songs can come out the other end of its processing with a random handful of weirdly interspersed taps or more annoyingly slightly out of sync with the song itself. Also earning the ability to unlock the additional themes requires dedicated playing to 'level up', earn coins AND you'll need to purchase tokens with cash if you're not willing to trade the obscene amount of coins required to get the themes.

Tapic has the right idea as far as rhythm games go, giving players an opportunity to use their considerable music library to have some fun. Unfortunately the need to grind your way to anything other than the bland basic theme makes this a chore and having some of your favorite songs play badly can put you off altogether.

Screenshots

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