A dance-flavored rhythm game: follow flowing rails and catch notes with your hands to 80+ songs, with online rooms for up to 10 players.
Synth Riders is a rhythm game from Kluge Interactive. It entered Steam Early Access in July 2018 and fully launched on PC VR and Quest in October 2019. Where some rhythm games are about slashing, Synth Riders leans toward dance: you catch glowing notes with your hands and trace long rails that guide your arms through flowing movements.
How it plays
Notes and rails fly toward you in time with the music, and you meet them with orbs attached to your hands. Several game modes change the feel:
- Rhythm mode, the standard scoring mode.
- Force mode, where you punch notes for a more intense workout.
- Modifiers and difficulty levels for every track.
The base game includes more than 80 songs, mostly electronic music, and a large catalog of paid music packs adds licensed artists. The PC version supports custom songs and includes a level editor. Separate "Experiences" add-ons are immersive music videos.
Multiplayer
Online rooms hold up to 10 players with voice chat, and play is cross-platform. It also suits fitness use, since longer sessions on higher difficulties are a real cardio workout.
Comfort
There is no artificial movement, and Meta rates the game as comfortable. It supports seated, standing and room-scale play, and hand tracking is available on Quest.
Platforms and what to know before buying
- The list price is $24.99 on the Meta Horizon Store, SteamVR and the PlayStation Store.
- On PlayStation VR2 it is sold as the Remastered Edition with headset rumble; PS VR owners got it as a free upgrade.
- On Apple Vision Pro it is part of the Apple Arcade subscription on the visionOS App Store.
- Owners of the PC VR version on Steam can also play it on the Steam Frame at no extra cost.
It is rated PEGI 12.
