RDSRT3 Recap — R1, P1

Posted 2025-01-18

If you haven't been following me anywhere else, RDSRT3 began today! A bunch of super cool Rhythm Doctor custom level creators made stuff for us to play for the very first time. Here's a recap of Round 1, Part 1. Spoilers for levels under the cut.

Round 0

The starting bracket for RDSRT3. There are eight matches in Round 1, two of them being 4-player pit matches.
The starting bracket for RDSRT3

Level:

  • Jitterbug / Stepcat - Symphony, ddrr0077 (16:38)

After the intro cutscene, the stream kicked off with an overview of the tournament format and then a showcase of the level used for seeding: Jitterbug, a marathon of a level with frozen subdivided oneshots. It also had a fun little nod to Deadly Slot Game from RDSRT2! The bottom 8 were split into two groups of 4, who are all going to face each other at the same time. The first one of these is happening tomorrow (Sunday), with Wolfedy, Somney, JoeDaFarmer, and Dimples! Watch out for the top 5 scorers throughout the tournament:

  • 5th: InfectiousStepocity — 24 misses (B+)
  • 4th: Rikri — 23 misses (B+)
  • 3rd: Willow — 19 misses (A+)
  • 2nd: RandomPersonJCI — 14 misses (A+)
  • 1st: Zack101155 — 9!!! misses (A+)

JCI vs Observances

A very blurry screenshot from the stream of NULCTRL. It is very bright and the left half of the image kind of gives off "glitchy view of the surface of the sun" vibes. The right half has a greater variety of color though it is just as blown out and haphazard as the other half.
Real demoscene hours

Levels:

  • Fly, My Wings / Milli — Mysthaps, fiascone (55:17)
  • NULCTRL / Silentroom — Zulax, TwoWayFort (1:02:37)
  • sp0m0ky / garlagan — Mysthaps, 1257Plays, Symphony (1:10:20)

A long-time RD player (and dev) vs a rising star in the levelmaking community! Fly, My Wings was a nice and chill start to the tournament proper. Thankfully, not as tough as Jitterbug — but because of that, JCI ended up getting an S+, nearly getting a 0-offset score, compared to Observances' 1 miss. Things are going to be close this entire round of the tournament, if this (and the next match) say anything! Next was NULCTRL, a chart with some wild visuals and solid gameplay from two creators with literally 4 levels under their belt, individually. JCI won this one as well with literally 1 miss, winning the match overall, but there was still one more level to go: sp0m0ky, which had swung holds, a very rare sight (and a sign of things to come?) Either way, Observances fought well, but JCI would end up moving on to Round 2.

Zack vs Econ

Screenshot of The Wet Moist by noche. The entire level takes place in an industrial environment presumably from Rain World, with a slugcat on a water pipe and two other slugcats in the water.
Awesome Rain World art by noche

Levels:

Hydrogen bomb vs coughing baby... Zack is honestly a sightreading powerhouse, I don't know how he does it. Anyway, the first level: The Wet Moist, from Rain World, and a level to match the game's environments by noche! Once again, an S+ and a 1-miss difference... It's honestly wild comparing all of these scores to those from RDSRT2. Next, Fledgling by TNS, who really stepped up their level editing game over these past few years. And finally, after a bit of stream troubleshooting (which is always difficult to do, props to the team there for trying to figure it out), My Time by bo en, made popular through OMORI, with some interesting 6-beat rows and syncopation. In the end, Zack sweeped the entire thing, but honestly Econ didn't do half-bad, never getting lower than a B+. Everything feels super close this tournament so far.

Lore and What's Next

Screenshot of one of the story cutscenes played between levels. All of the staff at Middlesea Hospital are in a meeting. Aimee, in response to Rodney, says 'You ate a petri dish because you thought it was jello.'
Rodney is totally fit to run an event like this

Timestamps:

In summary: Rodney's back and he's ready to make sure things don't go wrong this time, with the help of the mysterious Marvin Forrest and the slightly antsy Aimee Bay... It's slightly concerning that Dr. Forrest reached out to Rodney for this event instead of the other way around, considering he wasn't super on board with the Rhythm Doctor iniative, but surely that doesn't suggest any bad intentions, right? Either way, tomorrow (Sunday, Janurary 19, 2025) will continue Round 1! Starting at 11:00 AM PST, there will be 2 matches: the four-way pit match between Wolfedy, Somney, JoeDaFarmer, and Dimples, and the match between Dusk (yours truly!) and Rikri - the two grand finalists of RDSRT2. Who will come out on top? Time will tell! Wish me luck. You can find Part 2's stream at: https://www.youtube.com/live/6u-GSGMOm6Y

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