Deemo is a fantastic little game for iOS and Android which fits into the magical sub genre, ‘like Guitar Hero, but…’.
Deemo is like Guitar Hero, but instead strumming along on a plastic guitar to your favorite Slipknot track, you’re tapping your iPad in time to a more-often-than-not beautifully written piano composition.
At first look, you’d probably hazard a guess that this is indeed a rough approximation of Piano Hero. Or, based on the artstyle and the way notes are represented on-screen, Piano Band. This would be a fair assumption to make, and after downloading the game it was my initial reaction too - Deemo however, is far more than that, and simply slapping it with the name Piano Hero does it a great disservice. I’m no pianist, but you don’t have to be to enjoy Deemo.
Your tree starts as a tiny sprout
The game’s title comes from its main protagonist. You play Deemo, a voiceless being reminiscent of Slender Man who appears to be a virtuoso on the piano. The pastel-art inspired animations shown to you piecemeal as you play through the game show a young girl falling from the sky, landing in what appears to be your chapel. As you play through the piano pieces available to you, the girl takes a liking to you. The girl isn’t the only one taking a like to you however, as the tree which stands in the middle of your chapel grows in response to the music you play. Playing new songs, or the same song on a new difficulty will make the tree grow faster as you try to return your new friend to the skies from which she fell.
The girl will speak about Deemo and her situation if you tap on her; grammar enthusiasts will be quick to spot the grammatical errors which pop up from time to time, but considering the girls strange origins there is nothing to suggest that the girl speaks English as a first language. The game itself didn’t originate on our side of the world, having been designed by a Taiwaneese developer: Rayark Inc. Deemo never speaks, but a glance at the artwork adorning each level suggests that he’s fond of the girl - something the girl suspects as well.
Get into the groove
As you scroll through the various songs in the game you are greeted with a beautiful picture depicting Deemo and/or the girl getting into the song, dressing up to reflect the genre and feel of the song. It’s a simple yet elegant way to get a real feel for the characters and how they enjoy each other’s company. As you complete each song, you see how much the tree has grown; it quickly becomes apparent that you are not only growing this tree to return your new friend to the sky, but having fun as you do it.
Deemo kind of reminds me of the adorable Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy in this respect - Deemo may not have the vast lexicon that you and I have, but his level of emotional intelligence far exceeds ours to the point where he doesn’t need words to communicate. He speaks through his piano, and you know exactly what he’s saying without vocalizing a thing.
The levels are as hard or as easy as you want them to be. The process works like this: you scroll through the songs and artwork until you find something you want to play - my personal favorite is Wings of Piano. You then tap the little circle to the left of the track name to pick the difficulty - I’m no pianist, but Easy bored me and Hard had me grinning like a fool. This game is seriously fun on Hard.
It’s surprisingly hard to screen-cap and play Deemo at the same time
You then pick a track speed. This does not affect the speed at which the song plays - rather it changes the speed at which the Guitar Hero-esque conveyor belt brings you the notes which you are about to play. The speed is set to one by default, and that speed is fun enough as it is for beginners, but you should raise it up to 4 or 5 for a fun but manageable challenge; crank it up to 9 if you want to numb your fingers. It’s blindingly fast, but still not impossible. I could once play Through the Fire and Flames on hard. This is fast.
As previously mentioned, I am no pianist. I can play any guitar you hand to me, but pianos are out of my league. My brother is a pianist though, so I handed Deemo to him. “How many positions are there?”, he asked. “One”, I replied as I handed him Wings of Piano on Hard-5. I watched his face turn from confusion to delight as the notes flew towards his fingers.
Everything about Deemo is quaint. The pause button is a stave. The home, reset and other buttons on the pause screen will look cool to those who can’t read music, and elicit delight from those of you who can. There are a total of 45 tracks in Deemo from a list of various composers, and not all of them are simple piano pieces. There are traditional pieces, jazz piano pieces, anime soundtrack-esque pieces, and even metal piano and RnB piano pieces. At various points Deemo will even play percussion instruments; there’s a lot of variation and Deemo has the potential to keep you amused for hours.
Deemo is a lovely game which I don’t think I will ever delete from my ipad, but it is by no means perfect. Deemo is free but comes with the ability to buy extra tracks. The difference between Deemo and Guitar Hero here is that instead of buying one song for a given price, you can go up the stairs in Deemo’s cathedral to the music library. Here you can speak to a mysterious woman and buy a collection of songs for £2.50. The original collection which comes free with the game expands as you play through them - you start with a few, and expand the list to quite a large amount as you play through them and grow the tree. You would be forgiven for thinking the same of the DLC song collections, but alas they never really expand; Deemo‘s Second Collection starts at 5 songs. I have expanded it to 6 after about an hour or two of repeating the same songs. I would usually expect more than 15 minutes worth of content from a DLC pack of that price, which has stopped me from buying the rest of the packs.
The other problem that I have with Deemo is that as fun as repeating the same song is, the tree will grow vastly with your first playthrough, but there doesn’t seem to be a noticeable difference in growth between Easy-1 and Hard-9. Likewise, while there is rapid growth from playing each level the first time, there is almost imperceptible growth from repetitive plays. This means that if you want to see if Deemo will ever get his new friend home you have two choices: bite your tongue and play Wings of Piano on repeat until you learn of her fate, or pay to get there instead.
But at the end of the day, Deemo is such a quaint little game that it’s hard to stay mad at it for long. Put simply, it’s fun to play. Anime lovers and Japanophiles alike will all love the music, as will any fan of music with a piano in it. While Deemo will occasionally swap out his piano for a percussion instrument, this game is everything you would want from a free version of Piano Hero on the iPad, but with none of the licensed tracks. The tracks it does provide, however, will have you playing through them on repeat because you just can’t get that beautiful melody out of your head.
Nic Bunce
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