What do you get when you take AI robots hellbent on destroying humans in an effort to save Earth and a group of four ninja cheerleaders adept at weaponry and blowing shit up? That would be Ra Ra Boom, the first game to come out of Cincinnati video game studio, Gylee Games.
Ra Ra Boom is a four-player co-op beat ‘em up game from this independent video game studio in Over-the-Rhine. Released on Aug. 12, the game’s story features four cheerleaders — Aris, Saida, Vee and Ren — who have grown up on a space station that orbits Earth after humans had to flee the planet 20 years prior. At the time, Earth tried utilizing AI to solve climate change, but the AI figured out the best way to save the planet was actually just to destroy all humans.
“So now, it’s 20 years later, and these girls have grown up in this environment, only in this space station. Earth is this mystery to them. And they think it’s this desolate, terrible place,” Chris Bergman, Gylee Games’ founder and CEO and the creator of Ra Ra Boom explains to CityBeat. “Something happens and they have to go back to Earth, and so this is them coming across this AI and this AI wanting to kill them, and then fighting their way through it and fighting robots — goofy robots.”
“Goofy” is key in the game. Despite the post-apocalyptic setting, Ra Ra Boom’s world doesn’t look like a wasteland. The artwork is colorful and fun, designed to invoke the nostalgia of ‘80s and ‘90s Saturday morning cartoons. It’s bright and campy and created by hand using cel animation.
“We’re not trying to make a brown game; it’s not dreary, right?” Bergman says. “We wanted to have it feel like you’re playing a Saturday morning cartoon. That was really important to us.”
Ra Ra Boom’s gameplay is similar to the classic beat ‘em up games it was inspired by — games like Marvel vs. Campcom 2, X-Men and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which Bergman would play in the arcade at Northgate Mall after skipping school as a kid. Where the game differs from those, however, is its “badass all-female cast” —
“The only male in the game is a bad guy voiced by me, but not on purpose. We ran out of time and money,” Bergman laughs.
— and its narrative- and character-driven focus.
“It’s a story about grief, a story about friendship, a coming-of-age story,” says Bergman. “We want you to experience the entire story. There’s a whole narrative there, and I think that’s really intentional for us. But we also wanted to create a universe where other games could live. Like, we’re very character-first before anything else, and we wanted to tell a story about these characters that, hopefully, players fall in love with and want to hear more from.”
The game takes about four to six hours to complete, and it’s a co-op, meaning players work collaboratively instead of being pitted against each other. The choice was a nod to Bergman’s childhood spent in arcades.
“That’s where I made my friends was in these co-op beat ‘em ups, right? That’s where I could actually sit and talk and get to know somebody and be like, ‘Oh, what school did you skip from to be playing this game right now?’” he explains. “Arcades were really, like, this place where it was sort of my first church, like the place where I felt included and welcomed. … Our first game, I definitely wanted to pay homage to that influence that it had on me.”
And while most beat ‘em up games are typically focused on melee combat, like punching and kicking, Ra Ra Boom also offers the players the option of range combat, and the characters have their own weapons.
“Aris has her Uzis. Saida has a rocket launcher. And so, you can focus on those sorts of range combat instead of the melee — or both. So that’s another big differentiator for us,” says Bergman.
Another key feature of Ra Ra Boom that Bergman hopes players will enjoy is the soundtrack. Bergman partnered with his friend, Drew Marcum, a sound designer and composer at Cincinnati-based Play Audio Agency, to create it. The duo formed a new EDM group called Toy District specifically for the soundtrack.
And not only is Ra Ra Boom the first game for Bergman’s studio, it’s the first game on the market that will feature the logo “Made in Cincinnati” when you fire it up.
“It’s the only game that you’ll see a ‘Made in Cincinnati’ logo, and this game is going out to 240 different countries in 13 languages. And they’re all going to see ‘Made in Cincinnati,’” Bergman says.
After six years of taking Ra Ra Boom from a concept that pushed Bergman to launch Gylee Games in the first place to a full-blown video game, it’s now available for players to experience and immerse themselves in the world and the stories of the characters Bergman helped create.
“I hope [players] fall in love with the characters. … I hope they just have fun,” Bergman tells CityBeat. “It’s meant to be really approachable. … anybody can play it. It’s meant to be light-hearted while emotional. I just really hope players enjoy it. And it’s a very optimistic game, and I think finding optimism in today’s world is challenging.”
Ra Ra Boom is now available for Xbox, PlayStation 5 and PC. You can learn more about the game at raraboom.com.
This article appears in Aug 6-19, 2025.