Pop-punk coming-of-age rhythm game Loud looks cute

Pop-punk is not my musical (brand new) bag but I can’t resist a coming-of-age story about a teenager who finds their place in the world by picking up a guitar. Give me Pugwall, give me Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains, give me Loud. Announced yesterday, the rhythm game will tell the tale of teen girl who goes from playing air guitar on a broom to wailing on the world stage. Loud looks cute, somewhere between Life Is Strange and Guitar Hero, and you can see a bit in the trailer below.

There’s Astrid, lost in the world, waiting on her broom in her bedroom until she gets a real guitar. From there, she makes friends, joins a band, and begins the inevitably bumpy ride to the top of the pop-punk music world. It is very pop-punk, and very teenaged, and I am very here for that. I like when a teenager learns self-expression and collides with the cutthroat adult world. And in the game.

Also, I like all the posters for fake bands. I think I might have seen Angry Angry Goblyn during my doom metal days.

For us, it looks like Loud will mean jamming on notes as they approach markers, like Guitar Hero splayed out into a star surrounding the screen. Quite how that controls is unclear, but the Steam page does note it requires a gamepad—no keyboard and mouse support.

It’ll have 14 songs across 14 story chapters (plus one bonus song), so it doesn’t sound huge, but it doesn’t need to be. And it’ll only cost $12 (on Switch, at least, presumably also on PC) so sure.

Loud is due to debut July 15th on Nintendo Switch, then will come later to PC (via Steam), PlayStation, and Xbox. It’s made and published by Hyperstrange.