I think when it comes to this topic I have to shout out Thumper. Interesting idea for a thread, by the way.
I looked up a video to put here, ended up hypnotized and watching the whole thing, because it's this game. The whole vibe just draws you in, it's so dense and so trippy, it's unlike anything else I've seen. The soundtrack, it's not the kind of music you'd expect from a rhythm game but in many ways that's exactly why it works so well, instead of the levels being designed around the music, it's the music that is designed around the levels. Hence the level design being absolutely stellar - I totally lost track of time, but when the player in the video got to the last stage, I knew it was the last stage just because of the level design, you really grow to understand it and it makes sense in a way that's hard to describe. And then the mechanics that are so fun and so deep while only using a single button on the controller. And then how ridiculously beautiful this game looks, even more ridiculous when you consider it's only 700MB and might as well run on a calculator at 60fps. Honestly I don't know how this game is so good but it is. Definitely the apex of rhythm games imo.
