Image via Pastel Parade Project
Nintendo’s Rhythm Heaven series involves a collection of masterpiece games that perfectly blend Tsunku compositions with tons of memorable minigames that typically only require a single button to play. Pastel Parade Project is very obviously trying to mimic that with its short adventure Pastel Parade, which involves a handful of stages with a few colorful minigames that involve minimal inputs in time with brief tracks. The problem is that the game is so uneven and limited that even if you’re looking for absolutely anything to fill the space between now and Rhythm Heaven Groove in 2026, you’ll be disappointed.
Rather than acting like Rhythm Heaven games and offering a list of minigames to go through, Pastel Parade plops its handful of stages into a loosely told adventure about a high school band. Nagisa is reading a book about a local mystery when a new exchange student named Amane interrupts her. Amane convinces her to go to a cafe with her, which leads to her meeting classmates named Kohaku and Morn when subbing in for volleyball practice. The quartet soon decides to form a band, and that leads to them eventually traveling to different places and exploring various mysteries.
It makes very little sense. But since the goal is to find an excuse to go to a handful of different maps to play through a few types of stages, I get it.
The issue with Pastel Parade is while the art direction, design, and sometimes even controls can feel like a Rhythm Heaven game, the actual execution just does not hold up for some of these minigames. Given how many of them repeat throughout the handful of worlds and the fact it will probably only take someone under two hours to beat it the first time, maybe less, it makes those failings stand out. When it keeps it extremely simple, it is at its best, but even then timing issues can muck things up.
For example, the fishing, fizzy water spraying, and submarine pedaling are all generally solid. This is because each one features clear visuals that work alongside the audio cute patterns for their games, while typically avoiding the trap of involving so many inputs that the background song becomes indiscernible due to sound effects from prompts. There can be a call and return type of pattern or following the leader situations along the lines of Rhythm Heaven games staples like Double Date, Flipper-Flop, or Monkey Watch. Of course, the Pastel Parade minigames aren’t as memorable and don’t sound as good as any of those examples. But the spirit seems similar, which helps.
But then there are Pastel Parade stages where the input timings are so awkward, imprecise, convoluted, or even frantically paced that it all falls apart. While the volleyball one is good when it first appears, the return of it means inputs come so fast that you can’t even hear the music properly for audio triggers. There is one involving playing hopscotch in the rain that is okay for the hopping parts, but falls apart when you need to hold the umbrella to keep a car from spraying water from a puddle on you. The actual band segment is the worst offender. It involves playing certain guitar riffs at a certain pace when various visual cues appear. The tutorial involves going through the multi-input “sun” rift, the multi-input “moon” one, the multi-input bridge, and then a fourth that can appear between the sun and moon segments. But when the song begins, the transition between periods moves so quickly that hearing the actual background track becomes impossible.
Another point is it would help if the actual original songs in Pastel Parade were really good, catchy, and memorable, but they aren’t compared to tracks in Rhythm Heaven games. The music fades into the background, due to it being often overshadowed. Which is a shame! Sometimes it can sound cute and pleasant, and it definitely is designed to fit the identity. I just can’t honestly remember any of them, meanwhile Rhythm Heaven Fever’s Tambourine and Air Rally live rent-free in my head to this day.
Pastel Parade is such a hit-and-miss game. It’s clear Pastel Parade Project wanted to make a game along the lines of Rhythm Heaven and the aesthetics are there, but there are so many moments and minigames that prove it just doesn’t get some of the biggest takeaways. The repetition, execution of some challenges, and way the actual music doesn’t seem to matter means that, while it looks cute, it never compares to Nintendo’s series.
Pastel Parade is available on PCs.
Pastel Parade
Pastel Parade is such a hit-and-miss Rhythm Heaven like game, even though its aesthetics are absolutely adorable.