Headbangers: Rhythm Royale is a 2023 Battle Royale Rhythm Game developed by Glee-Cheese and published by Team17 for PC, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 5 and X-Box Series X|S. In this game, you play as one of a flock of thirty pigeons who compete in a series of rhythm and timing-based minigames in hopes of being the last pigeon standing.
Headbangers: Rhythm Royale provides examples of:
- Armless Biped: Pigeons are depicted in this game as having a head with a long stretchy neck, an elliptical body with tailfeathers, and two legs. They do not possess wings of any kind.
- Battle Rapping: "The Battle Box" is a one-on-one faceoff between two pigeons as they do their best to match an MC pigeon.
- Bilingual Bonus: A street sign from the intro to "First Piano Shooter" reads "Joie Fromage", which would be the developers Glee-Cheese translated into their native French.
- Button Mashing: At designated points during each round, the players can build a meter to unlock a bonus round by wildly spinning their control stick/neck. Several of the bonus rounds also require rapid button presses or circular motions to earn crumbs.
- Character Customization: Each season brings a new set of costumes and taunts that players can equip to customize their character. Other costumes are available as DLC.
- Company Cross References: Several costumes from the first season are based on Worms, one of Team17's best known franchises.
- Cosmetic Award: Spending your heard-earned crumbs and completing missions unlocks a large variety of costume options, as well as taunt animations and voice clips. None of them directly affect gameplay.
- Dance-Off: Season 3 introduces the Battle of the Dancers mode, a one-on-one dance competition between two pigeons.
- Demonic Head Shake: Appropriately for the game's title, one of the central elements is the player's ability to wildly move their pigeon's head and neck around at all times. One unlockable taunt results in disturbingly rapid shaking.
- Don't Try This at Home: The opening shot of "The Stunt Moles" is a warning sign that the moles are played by "professional pigeons" and to not try this at home.
- Homeworld Evacuation: The plot of "To The Sky" reflects a world where the bread crumbs have run out and the pigeons are forced to flee the planet using booster rockets.
- Mechanical Animals: Lobby-filling bots are presented as robotic pigeons.
- Not Zilla: One of the disruptions, and the one presented in the tutorial windows, is a pigeon dressed up as Godzilla and roaring at the top of its lungs.
- Overly-Long Tongue: The pigeons claim the passing item boxes by grabbing them with sticky frog-like tongues.
- Perfectly Cromulent Word: "To The Sky" coins the term "pigeonity" to refer to the pigeon population.
- Public Domain Soundtrack: "Piano Mezzo Forte" has your pigeons sing a variety of public domain classical pieces with emphasis on volume control. One of the disruptions is a ballerina pigeon singing Swan Lake.
- Quick Draw: "Faster Than Sound" is played up as The Western where pairs of pigeons stand in a face-off, listen to a series of sound effects and react first to the designated answer.
- Remixed Level: Four of the five finales are variants of earlier stages. Aside from the obvious "Run Pigeon Run 2", "After Party" is based on "Garden Party", "That '70s Race" is based on "Space Race" and "Oui Votre Majesté!" is based on "Yes Commander!"
- Retraux: "Run Pigeon Run" is designed to look like a Game Boy game. Its sequel adds color but still looks like a game that hasn't escaped the 1980's.
- Shout-Out:
- "Yes Commander!" is highly reminiscent of "Blue Birds" from the Rhythm Heaven series, as a military bird orders a squad of other birds to perform such actions as pecking their beaks and stretching out their necks. Ordering them to jump and turn is new, though.
- One of the final rounds is called "That '70s Race".
- Several costumes are based on characters such as Batman, Superman, Rambo and the like.
- "Simon Says" Mini-Game: "Garden Party", "Fitness", "First Piano Shooter", "The Ring", "To The Sky", "The Battle Box", "The Stunt Moles", "Glottissimo", and "After Party" are all minigames revolving around watching a pattern of notes or motions and then reproducing it.
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Suspiciously Similar Song: Several songs from "That '70s Race" closely resemble famous songs of the era such as John Lennon's "Imagine" and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody". The Battle of the Dancers mode has a large enough library of pigeon-themed pastiches to fill a soundtrack album. - Unexpected Genre Change: While most of the games are simple rhythm tapping, quick reaction and Simon Says, several require more in-depth knowledge. "Guess It!" requires the player to identify musical instruments from their sounds, "Guilty!" involves identifying outfits from stereotypical music associated with them, and "Faster Than Sound" requires you to react first to a sound effect based on seeing its picture.
- Whack-a-Monster: While it plays more like a "Simon Says" Mini-Game, "The Stunt Moles" aims for this presentation with pigeons dressed like moles popping their heads out of the ground while the player hammers them to the beat.
