This article is about a rhythm game. For the domain of single-celled organisms, see Archaea.
This article's lead sectionmay be too short to adequately summarize the key points. Please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of all important aspects of the article. The reason given is: Needs details about the reception.(July 2025)
Arcaea is a rhythmvideo game developed and published by the British company Lowiro (stylized in all lowercase).[3] The game was released on iOS and Android mobile platforms on 9 March 2017. A single-player version of the game was released for the Nintendo Switch on 18 May 2021.[4]
The game serves as both a rhythm game with quite a bit of visual novel side gameplay, as it has a curated story novel with illustrations covering the two main female heroines, Tairitsu and Hikari. It is a three-dimensional music game, giving opportunity for unique and challenging gameplay.
Gameplay
Unlike other mobile rhythm games, Arcaea's gameplay uses three-dimensional chart lanes that are split into two parts: The top lane and the bottom lane. The top lane consists of two different note types; Arcs in blue(L) or pink(R) that are color coded to indicate which hand to play with, that require the player to hold the note throughout its duration (arcs go in 360 degrees of direction, creating unique chart patterns), and sky notes that are single-tap notes that are present on the top lane. The bottom lane consists of two note types as well: Floor notes and long notes. Floor notes are basic single-tap notes that are present on the bottom lane (much like the sky notes), and long notes require the player to hold throughout their duration.
During the gameplay, players must keep track of two sets of notes moving across the screen,[5] and tap the screen or press controller buttons when the notes intersect with the guiding lines.
The game has 5 base difficulties: Past, Present, Future, Eternal,[6] and Beyond[7] (shortened to PST, PRS, FTR, ETR, and BYD). It has a difficulty scale of 1-12, with + variants present, as low as the FTR difficulty (e.g., Future 9+), as a system better known for accurately capturing chart constants. The Arcaea chart constant is a detailed numerical value representing the difficulty/complexity of a song chart, providing a far more precise measure than the displayed difficulty level.[8]
The game features 3D rhythm mechanics, especially on the Present, Future and Beyond difficulty levels. This screenshot showcases such mechanics in a song on Future difficulty.
The game includes characters referred to as partners that give various beneficial effects while playing the rhythm game, and they gain experience points when selected for gameplay to play in World Mode, a gameplay mode consisting of worlds that allows players to actively play songs to collect more songs, in-game currency, story progress, and possibly partners. This is where the Stamina features take in play, as different Worlds require different amounts of stamina taken every song played. The game starts with 12 bars of stamina by default, where it takes exactly thirty minutes to gain a bar. Worlds typically take either 0, 2, or options for anything up to 6 bars of stamina. [5]
The player's overall skill level or rank on Arcaea is calculated by Potential. When a player starts with 0.00 PTT, the current highest potential ever reached by any other player mentioned is around 13.27 PTT. Potential is are result of mathematical calculations that revolve around a completed song of its chart difficulty, song grade, and score. A player's potential can either drop, rise, or stay after completing a song based on one's performance. This potential system does not contribute to gameplay in any way, except for some songs that may only be unlocked to play once the player meets the requirement of a certain potential level, usually at 11.00 PTT for many boss songs.
Arcaea's story is accessed through the Story Mode feature, where players progress through every separated little part of the chapters (also known as Story Packs) by playing the required songs under any difficulty.
Update History
At launch, the game only had 30 songs; as of version 5.10, it was later expanded to contain more than 400 songs. Along with original songs created from specific story packs, there are also collaboration packs from other rhythm games as well.
Arcaea Song Packs (mobile)
Main Story packs bolded Side Story packs italicized
Arcaea began as a single-developer project by Anton Prydatko, inspired by Japanese arcade rhythm games.[10] Prydatko founded Lowiro in the United Kingdom, though many of the musicians involved in Arcaea are Japanese indie or doujin composers, and the majority of its player base are also from Japan.[11]
It was important to the developers that the game's monetization method allow players to "own" their purchased content. Players can buy "packs" of songs and play them an unlimited number of times, unlike the "stamina" model commonly used in mobile game monetization, which restricts play time.[11]
Reception
Eric Ford of TouchArcade says that it has "an awesome art style combined with very upbeat songs and a nice twist to the traditional rhythm formula". But he also mentioned that some of the gameplay elements could make the game potentially difficult.[12]
Digitally Downloaded's Mike S. praised the game's aesthetic and music, and described its character art as "impeccable", though not memorable compared to other rhythm games. He disliked the game's requirements for unlocking new songs, considering them to be inappropriate for the game's paid release on the Nintendo Switch.[5]
Dani Maddox of Siliconera said the game's music was "just amazing", with a large range of songs and genres. However, she found the game's story mode to be poor, and encountered issues with controls in the Nintendo Switch version, such as the console's size when playing in touchscreen mode and the game being "finicky" with a controller.[13]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
