Over the past few years, a certain mobile rhythm game has been making waves in the community. Arcaea, a three-dimensional rhythm game produced by Lowiro, has been innovating and rapidly expanding ever since its massive 4.0 story update in the summer of 2022. The update included the “Final verdict” song pack, which concluded its long-running main story after five years of its first pack, “Eternal core”, releasing. This year has been no exception when it comes to major updates, with version 5.0 being released as part of Lowiro’s song contest. Let’s wander into a ‘New dimension’ and explore what’s new!
The Arcaea song contest is a semi-annual competition that invites composers from all over the globe to compose songs and submit them for a chance to be included in the game. What’s even more exciting is the grand prize, a new character added to the game themed around the song you submitted. The competition gained major popularity in 2020 with the grand prize winners being a well-known duo in the composing world, Silentroom and Frums. This year, the song contest was opened for the third time, tasking composers to create songs that contained their ideas for what the Arcaea world would look like after the main story concluded.
The winners of the 3rd movement were announced in August of 2023, opening the way for a major update to be added. This introduced a new character, Maya, whose main song, and the grand prize winner, was “Abstruse Dillema” composed by “Ashronaut” and “D-D-Dice”. The story of the song pack “Lasting Eden” had mixed reception, however what would happen next is considered a historic moment for Arcaea.
On September 19, 2023, the second wave of the song contest was teased, bringing along with it an exciting announcement, Arcaea version 5.0. The addition to the “Lasting eden” pack would include five more songs from the contest, as well as a hidden song. The new update made many quality-of-life changes, changing the song select backgrounds, adding a low-resolution mode, overhauling the UI, and much more. Once the hidden song, “Arghenna” composed by “Laur” and “Feryquitous”, was revealed, the extent of the update was seen. The side story pack was now part of the main story as its second act: “Catastrophe”.
The future for Arcaea is as bright as its in-story world, with many more collaborations with other popular rhythm games and original songs being teased, it’s looking as if Arcaea’s story is far from over. But that is a story for you to experience for yourself, so go out there, download the game, and have fun with its immersive gameplay and story!
