Rhythm Hive

Rhythm Hive Review: Every Song Is Open, but the Cards Still Keep Score

Is It Pay to Win? Studio Songs Are Open, Scores Follow Your Cards

The Music Arcade has three doors. Studio lists the whole catalog with no mission attached, Chapter Stage pays one-time rewards for clearing objectives in a fixed order, and Catch Live is the online room mode. Studio, Chapter and Catch Live runs spend Music Points, which refill daily or come from ads and Hive Gems. Charts mix taps, slides, flicks and bonus Special notes across Easy, Normal, Hard and Super Hard, and Super Hard stays locked until you clear Hard with more than half your HP left. Cards decide the rest: DRIMAGE's guide says Studio scores depend on accuracy, equipped theme cards and card buffs, so a clean run with weak cards trails a stocked collection on the leaderboard. Since the June 2023 Season 4 overhaul, cards no longer gate which songs you can play.

Catch Live: Two to Eight Players and No HP Bar

Catch Live arrived as a beta in July 2024. It matches you with players who picked the same group, or with anyone through Quick Match; a room starts with two people and holds eight. Entry costs 2 Music Points, while a Private Live room, joined by Live ID or a friend's invite, costs nothing. There is no HP bar, so a bad stretch can't end the song early. Colored Catch Notes spell out C-A-T-C-H, and completing the word starts a personal Catch Time bonus; Super Catch Time then lifts the whole room near the end. Rewards feed Lessons, where Record, Choreography and Stage skills add HP, accuracy and score in Studio. SEGA's Colorful Stage stops at five players per room.

0.05% XR Odds and $4.99 Hive Pass per Group: The Card Bill

DRIMAGE publishes pack odds in a public sheet, citing South Korea's game industry law. The Music Card Pack, opened with Rhythm Tokens earned in play, gives a B card 90% of the time and an XR card 0.05%. Royal packs, bought with tickets or Hive Gems, start at A grade with a 1% XR chance; the Mystic Cat theme pack doubles that, and its 10-card pull runs one slot at R-or-better odds. No random pack lists a UR chance, so UR cards come from fixed UR packs or from upgrading a max-level XR with Miracle Rhythm Cubes and Gold, an attempt that can fail. Standard packs draw from every group, a frequent complaint from single-group fans. Subscriptions bill per group: the US App Store lists Hive Pass at $4.99 and FAN Plus at $6.49 a month; prices vary by region.

Ten Songs Leave on October 29, 2026, While Themes Arrive Monthly

DRIMAGE, the HYBE game affiliate called HYBE IM until July 2025, ships a theme update about once a month; on October 1, 2026 it added the BTS unit track Heart on the Window (with WENDY), SEVENTEEN's SOS and a Mystic Cat card theme. On October 29, though, ten older tracks, five of them by SEVENTEEN, become unplayable, and only each song's top 100 scores stay in a Records Archive. Chart renewals also wipe past scores, as with BTS's Jump. The nine acts span six HYBE labels, but CORTIS, KATSEYE and &TEAM, which recent Play reviews keep requesting, are missing; Stray Kids and TWICE fans have SUPERSTAR JYPNATION, from the series that ran SuperStar BTS until June 2020. Google Play's data form lists installed apps and approximate location among collected data, shared with no third party.