vivid/stasis (commonly known as "Viviste"), which had its official release on July 6, 2025, is a work that fuses visual novel, music game, and puzzle elements. It's Windows-only, distributed on Steam, and available for free.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2093940/vividstasis/

I started playing when someone told me "there's an interesting game" during the previous ver.4, and I ended up playing for nearly 100 hours. Even after achieving all achievements, I still have various things to do.

Originally, there were some specifications and bugs that made it difficult to play, but these have been significantly improved in the official version. Now is the time to start.
However, the most critical bug - the price - has not been fixed, and it remains free. The developer might not have noticed.

Multiple genre integration synergy, depth of craftsmanship, massive amount of 170 songs (apparently more to come), and the development team's deep understanding of rhythm games.
I'll share these charms with as few spoilers as possible.

If you're interested and don't want to see any spoilers, please close this page now and start playing. I'm sure an experience that won't disappoint you awaits.

Fusion of Story and Rhythm Game

This work is a combination of visual novel and rhythm game. It might be more accurate to say that music and rhythm game elements exist to enhance the story.

The story is a suspense mystery about searching for a missing sister, starting from Tanegashima. It's nice for Japan as it makes pilgrimage easy. The backgrounds are blurred real photos, so you could probably identify the locations if you tried hard enough.

Story flowchart. You can unlock songs through branching paths

Conversation screen. Classic novel game feel

What's impressive about the fusion with rhythm games is the boss songs that appear at story climaxes. They come with dedicated movies.
Many people who play arcade rhythm games have attachments to boss songs, but I think this work strengthens that impression by incorporating story elements. Of course, the difficulty is generally set high.

Especially in the later boss songs, combined with the variety of chart gimmicks, I realized "rhythm games can create this much presentation." Also, through the developer's deep understanding of rhythm games and excellent song curation, boss songs that perfectly match the story appear.

Currently, the story is only available in English. With quite a bit of slang and a large volume, it takes considerable time to read even if you're somewhat capable in English.
Let's utilize word lookup, Google Lens, translation apps like PCOT, and the unofficial Japanese script (Chapter 1 only).
It's also important to give up to some extent and settle for a general understanding.
There's currently no mod system, so support is desired.

Ever-Expanding Genres, Endless Content

The scary thing about this game is its packed specifications where genres keep being added. While the main focus is the fusion of story and rhythm game, puzzles are added as a major element. Recommended for those who like escape games.

You need to solve puzzles to progress the story, and they appear everywhere. Regarding the quality of puzzles, honestly there are scenes that feel unreasonable, so when you get stuck, I recommend cutting it short appropriately and referring to walkthrough information.

Sudden puzzle. If you can't figure it out after thinking for a day, you should look at hints

I'll refrain from details due to spoilers, but the content is extremely rich, with more elements being added that require rethinking the genre, very time-consuming modes being added, and so on.

As a result, the game's volume has become quite large. In my case, even after exceeding 100 hours, I still haven't consumed all the "finishable" content (though I think most of the time was spent stuck on puzzles). Depending on your story reading speed and how much unlocking you do, it's a work you can enjoy for a considerable time.

Completeness as a Rhythm Game

This work is a standard 4-lane rhythm game. It adopts a format where there are 4 lanes on the screen, and notes (button press instructions) fall down in time with the music. The window for perfect judgment seems to be about ±30ms from what I can tell, so it's standard. However, there are several distinctive features.

Song selection screen feels like a standard rhythm game

The first is bumper notes.
Bumpers are notes that span two lanes (left and right), can be pressed on either lane, and give perfect judgment when pressed at any timing since there's no judgment - they're weak notes. While they're easy when they come alone, they often get mixed into dense vertical placements. There's a clever trap where hitting them too much can cause you to hit subsequent notes too early and break your combo. They're too fast for rapid hitting, so you eventually have to think about whether to take them with left or right fingers - they're troublesome notes that obstruct recognition.

Blue and red ones are bumper notes

The second is gimmick charts (with special presentation effects).
Like many rhythm games, most are normal charts, but there are various charts with crazy gimmicks.
In vivid/stasis, such a variety of gimmicks is prepared that I wonder if all conceivable gimmicks are covered. Seagulls don't fly, but there are many equally vicious ones, so please check them out with your own eyes. Your PC is working normally.

The third is the system aspect. Particularly, the multi-layered mechanism that naturally motivates players to improve their skills is excellent.

First, you need skill to unlock charts. In several modes, high-difficulty charts have unlock conditions that require appropriate results. Also, many unlocked charts don't become permanent unless you complete them under specified conditions.
Story progression is prepared step by step from low difficulty so that rhythm game beginners can clear it.

In addition to the so-called dan certification (skill test where you clear 4 consecutive charts with a special gauge), it also features an online rating system. You can compete with players worldwide.
This rating system is ingenious - basically, taking a somewhat collapsed score on high-difficulty charts gives better ratings than high accuracy on lower charts. This motivates unlocking high-difficulty charts, but boss song unlocks require high scores - and the settings are exquisite. When I realized this, I shuddered. They're going to make you improve your skills forever.

Boss song unlocking. Basically requires scores

Also, there are scenes where you're forced to use avant-garde options. For example, hi-speed (chart falling speed setting) might be fixed, or if it's fixed that's still okay, but there are settings where you think "what is this." No-speed was a reasonable setting after all.
Unlock elements that require repeated play are also designed to finish faster the better you are at rhythm games.

Overall, it has high completeness as a rhythm game, and mechanisms that contribute well to skill improvement, which is the main axis of fun, are built in. Since there are still many things I can't unlock with my current skill level, it seems like I'll be able to enjoy it for a long time.

Abundant Songs and Luxurious Artists

The abundance of songs is also amazing. Currently, nearly 170 songs are included, with plenty of original songs, famous songs, and collaboration songs.

From artists famous in BMS like Lime, EBIMAYO, Reku Mochizuki, to those active commercially like Camellia, Akira Complex^[1] - it's a mystery how they gathered them. Let me mention again, this game is free.

There are many artists probably not familiar in Japan, and most are songs I heard for the first time, but they're all very good songs. I can feel the production team's curation ability.

My personal favorite is ASTELLION. This isn't a game original, but it's truly a song that fits rhythm games. BPM696 also gives a sense of security.

Custom Pixel Art Jackets for All Songs

All songs have pixel art style jackets that match their atmosphere. I'm not certain, but it seems like all jackets are custom-drawn, not just for original songs, but even for collaborations and other songs. This is really good.

As an example, let's look at a song that originally had a jacket.

For Tanchiky's ENERGY SYNERGY MATRIX, instead of applying a filter to the existing jacket, it's newly drawn with the shamisen-playing cat from the movie.

ESM's original jacket

ESM vivid/stasis version

Shamisen-playing cat from the movie

For Cotton Candy RUSH, while the original character is the same, the hair color is changed to purple to match vivid/stasis, achieving world consistency.

Cotton Candy RUSH's original jacket

Cotton Candy RUSH vivid/stasis version

For the collaboration song from Rotaeno, "MVURBD" by the familiar ETIA., the jacket shows the protagonist Saturday wearing sunglasses, which perfectly matches the song's sense of speed.

MVURBD's Rotaeno jacket

MVURBD vivid/stasis version

Many jackets and some character art seem to be by Fiddy. The character art has a distinctive style, so you'll notice it when you see it.

Craftsmanship

As we've seen, vivid pixel art style artwork is maintained throughout (except for character art). While fonts and graphics in the game are understandable, the thoroughness extending to song jackets is spectacular. I can feel the passion for impression unity (probably due to production circumstances, the art style changes suddenly sometimes... but that's part of the charm).

Also, while I mentioned chart gimmicks, this game is full of gimmicks throughout. I think there are many you won't notice, so after clearing everything once, you'll probably play by looking at spoilers for completion. There you might be surprised again by the craftsmanship and volume. You'll be able to feel the original craftsmanship and updates from years of development.

For Some Reason It's Free

This is weird!

Summary

Overall, this was a game that gave me the realization that "rhythm games are fun."

In rhythm games, the training to improve one's skill occupies a large part of the fun^[2][3], but this work places story at the center and successfully enhances the fun as a game through puzzles, presentation, gimmicks, systems, and impression unity.
While there have been examples of incorporating each of these individually into rhythm games, I think the difference from other rhythm games is that one package successfully contains all of them.

This is my personal best rhythm game of 2025, where you can see the creator's passion and understanding for rhythm games.
Updates including song additions are planned until the end of this year, so I want to keep playing.

(Bonus) Recent Events

• 5.0.1 including bugfixes seems to be distributed soon
• RTA in Japan Summer 2025 will feature a showcase run on 8/13. Congratulations. It's probably gameplay of incredible gimmick charts, so there shouldn't be many spoilers, but if you're concerned, clear it early and watch the stream with your arms crossed
  • On speedrun.com, 4 runners named Saturday can be seen. Since various things have been settled with the official version, the number might increase. I'm looking forward to seeing regular RTAs too. It seems common to use Autoplay ON option that doesn't involve rhythm gaming, so it's no longer a rhythm game...

脚注

1. A memorial message plays in the game ↩︎

2. From the perspective of fusion with story, TOMOSUKE's activities are similar, so it might be compatible with Hinabita♪ fans ↩︎

3. Operational mobile rhythm games often have stories, but I often feel disconnection from songs and lack of presentation since songs come first. Writing this, I realize I haven't played recently, so the situation might have changed ↩︎