Beats, Mayhem, and Bold Ideas: The Making of Strik9 Rhythm Rat Rampage
Rhythm games and bullet heaven survivors aren’t something you usually hear in the same sentence, let alone a genre mashup. In fact, there’s only a handful of games that even attempted it. Throw in a little roguelike, and that’s where you’ll find Strik9: Rhythm Rat Rampage.
In this game, enemies fill your screen from every angle, and every shot and special attack you make must land on the beat while you dodge to stay alive.
I got a chance to try the demo at Indie Jam 2026, and it’s something else, at least in my experience.
It took only a moment before I found myself familiarising with the controls and gauging the patterns of the beat. Having bullets fly everywhere, while I kept track of where I was headed, dodged incoming attacks, and kept up with the beat was rather overstimulating at first. There were even moments where the timing of my attacks slipped past the rhythm before I eventually caught up to it. Where my ears failed, the on-screen visualiser helped me pick back up. Once I did, the beat patterns became second nature.
For me, it started with sensory overload that eventually became pure adrenaline and flow.
That flow state was by design. Basika Games, the Philippines-based studio behind Strik9: Rhythm Rat Rampage, built the entire game around one design principle: music-first. The music is the foundation of everything else built on top of it. As Allister puts it, “The music shapes the world — bringing it together through a distinctive fusion of rhythm and action gameplay.”
Music-first is just one expression of a much bigger philosophy for the team. Basika Games refers to themselves as an “art-first” studio — one that treats games as a medium of art. And if games are art, then music, to them, is simply another brush on the canvas. The studio itself is merely a year old, but that mindset already shapes every decision behind the game, right down to how it was conceived.
Born From a Late-Night Conversation
Every game idea starts somewhere. Some of the best ideas come from the most unlikely places. Or in this case, the most unlikely hour.
TESSR: What first sparked the idea of Strik9, and what made you decide to go all in?
Allister: The initial idea behind Strik9 came from a late-night conversation between team members Migs and Amiel that ended with “what if we made a rhythm game?” The rest is history. The craziest ideas do come about during the odd hours of the evening.
TESSR: Were any of you already big fans of rhythm games? Did your personal experiences with the genre influence how Strik9 came together?
Allister: Some of us are fans of the genre — games like Patapon, O2Jam, and Guitar Hero, just to name a few. We also studied a few rhythm games to understand their differences from typical action games. However, Strik9: Rhythm Rat Rampage was born more out of the need to express music and games together as an art form.
That late-night conversation turned into something real, unlike Cinderella’s outfit that goes poof when midnight strikes. The instincts to go for it were backed by genre familiarity and years of professional experience in the field. The idea stuck because it matched who they already were, and Strik9: Rhythm Rat Rampage was the outcome of the team’s philosophy.
First Impressions That Fuel Your Adrenaline
Every game developer has their own way of knowing if their game is headed in the right direction — a specific reaction, an emotion, a moment they're chasing that tells them it's working. For Basika Games, that marker seems to be a sound or perhaps a gesture.
TESSR: What sort of experience do you want players to have when they play your game?
Allister: We want players to feel powerful and get an adrenaline rush from playing the game. Whenever players suddenly go “Whoa!” or start tut-tutting, that’s when we know we were able to cut through to them.
Having players hit that peak adrenaline rush is one thing. Getting them there in the first place is another challenge. Before the "Wooh!", they first need to understand how the game works and how fast they need to familiarise themselves with it. This is where Basika Games admits they're still finding their footing.
TESSR: From a game design perspective, what’s the most important thing you’re trying to get right in this game and why?
Allister: At this point in time, it would be player onboarding. While we’re pretty confident in our combat mechanics, tutorial implementation is a big problem that we’re still trying to get right. We’ve remade our tutorial so many times now because we believe that first impressions last.
TESSR: With the tutorial being something you’ve reworked so many times, how do you decide what players need to be taught versus what you want them to discover on their own?
Allister: There are several dimensions to this. From a purely technical standpoint, it would be based on how fast they would drop off the game during playtests or at exhibitions. We would observe and track at which key points of the tutorial they show signs of dropping off and build on iterations that we feel would reduce this scenario.
At the same time, we also set a qualitative goal of experience. We ask questions like, “What would players want to experience? Is it the right timing to experience a specific feature?” This is really helpful in determining what kind of discovery should happen (e.g., induced vs. subtle) and when it should happen (e.g., at the onset?). Or perhaps several minutes later?
Finding the Right Tempo
Sometimes ambition has its limitations. Ideas that make it to the drawing board still have to survive contact with reality. And the smartest move? Knowing what and how much to take away in the pursuit of one’s vision.
TESSR: What gameplay systems, mechanics, or ideas did you decide to leave out or simplify? Was it difficult making these decisions?
Allister: Player customisation and build-crafting is a major mechanic that we’ve had to simplify a bunch of times. Path of Exile is a game that our lead developer adores, and so a lot of our earlier build-customisation systems borrowed from that game. However, as development progressed, we realised that the amount of content we can do cannot really support a complex build-crafting system, so we had to simplify it by a lot. Scale-wise, it would be like filtering a hundred options down to ten- kind of a simplification.
TESSR: Were there any features that made it into the game that you're still doubting? And what is your personal favourite feature or mechanic?
Allister: The recent pivot to a more roguelike campaign system is barely tested, so we aren’t 100% confident in it. Most other elements of the game have been tried out by at least a thousand players at this point. While some players really liked the change, we’ve had a couple of passionate fans who said they preferred the original arcade-style presentation.
TESSR: That sounds like a huge structural pivot, from an arcade-style format to a roguelike. What made your team decide to take the game in a more roguelike direction?
Allister: It was about the kind of size and support the arcade-style could provide to our vision. If we wanted more content, the arcade style could end up being tedious and difficult to navigate — things would feel too linear and time-consuming. Not the experience we want to provide.
On the other hand, the roguelike format provides a better vehicle to experience more things that our team could flesh out, especially since the randomness and dynamism give players a more intuitive avenue for discovering more and more things. Additionally, we needed a reason for the player to keep on playing that an arcade-style format cannot give because there was no connection between each individual level. Combining all of these together, it then all felt natural to take that direction.
What survives to the final version often looks different from what was first imagined. These decisions take time to settle, shaped over many conversations rather than a single afternoon. Just like how Rome wasn’t built in a day, the process of creating Strik9: Rhythm Rat Rampage goes through constant recalibration, even after major decisions are made.
TESSR: Aside from gameplay features, what's been the biggest trade-off your team has had to make while developing the game?
Allister: Aligning what players want to play with what our creativity and budget allow. Both are limited resources, and we need to be able to determine what works best before they run out. Balancing complexity and novelty, and what’s feasible and familiar, has been one of the major considerations we’ve had to look into multiple times. While we would like to endlessly work on segments of the game to improve them, there is, of course, the reality of time and budget constraints.
The Music Is Just Getting Started
Despite the trade-offs, pivots, and recalibrations, the music held its lead role. It remains the beating heart of Strik9.
TESSR: After the players finished playing the game, what do you want them to walk away feeling and remembering?
Allister: We want them to feel wanting more and get an earworm from the game’s songs. We have 23 songs just in the demo alone, and each has its own distinct themes.
TESSR: Wow, that’s a lot of songs. With 23 songs already in the demo, and presumably many more in the full release, are there plans to drop the soundtrack separately down the line?
Allister: 110%. We're planning to upload our OST to YouTube, Spotify and other popular platforms once the songs are finalised.
And we are definitely looking forward to it.
Strik9: Rhythm Rat Rampage is underway and on its way to a full release, targeted for Q2 2027.
Wishlist the game on Steam, get a taste of it through the demo, and keep an ear out for what's coming next.
Author Bio
Alison Chai is a marketer at TESSR, an artist, and a gaming creator with a finance background. She enjoys exploring the intersections of creative work, structure, and mental well-being. Drawn to the idea of "organised chaos”, she believes that the right systems can elevate creative expression rather than limit it. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
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