In an alternate reality, in Post-Wall Berlin, a villain named Dietrich took control of the population with mindnumbing beats – among the victims is the protagonists’ brother Tony. Hence, it’s upon you to step into the shoes of Mia, a rebel with quite the kick, and dive into three different acts, fighting off hordes of robots to get closer and closer to the truth as to why Tony joined Dietrich and to save him!
To do that, you equip one of three different weapons in Beat Slayer and start unleashing light attacks and kicks onto enemies while building up the energy necessary to release your powerful ultimate ability onto your foes.
Developer: ByteRockers' Games
Publisher: ByteRockers' Games
Genre: 2D, Indie, Rhythm, Action Roguelike
Release Date: April 4th, 2024
Reviewed on: PC
Available on: PC
Copy was provided by the developers.
Dashing, kicking and slashing on the beat of the music is something that is heavily incentivized as it allows you to build up a streak – and once it reaches 20 hits, you’ll deal increased damage thanks to the “Tanzrausch” mechanic. If you’re off-beat and break the streak, you’ll have to start over again and make do with no damage boost whatsoever.
Throughout your runs, you encounter various nodes granting you a different upgrade of sorts after defeating the nodes’ enemies. From applying elemental effects to your abilities to enhancing your critical modifiers, damage reduction, and energy gains, there is a lot in store for you.
The different elemental effects and the cool builds that come with them are my personal highlights in BeatSlayer.
“Virus”, for instance, lets you apply a stacking damage-over-time effect onto enemies – and once it reaches max stacks, it discharges into a powerful explosion. Other elemental effects include thunderclaps, chain-lightning effects and burning grounds, too, which also can apply to your dash, strikes, kicks and ultimate abilities.
What really hooked me with BeatSlayer was how well the game was designed around the damage you theoretically have access to.
The enemies are many, the scars you take away from battle are big, and it all seems fair because, technically speaking, your damage is 20% higher – or it’s supposed to be at least as you’re supposed to build up your Tanzrausch. It’s all balanced around the Tanzrausch mechanic and your defensive kit.
If you’re good at the game, it feels very rewarding and satisfying and even a run where you don’t get the strongest build going is still winnable. Even when you’re not consistent at getting to that beat streak, you still have your dash and the kicks to defend yourself and mitigate damage.
Your kick lets you interrupt enemies or even stun them if you kick them into other enemies and/or walls – and well, your dash’s cooldown is practically non-existent, meaning that in theory (once you’ve gotten good at the game), you can express your skills quite easily by dodging attacks, mixing in kicks into your attack patterns and allowing yourself to really focus on dishing out big damage.
Playing well is heavily incentivized and as such, the rhythm-based mechanics of the game are heavily intertwined with the action-heavy combat. It doesn’t feel out of place. It makes perfect sense, actually.
BeatSlayer works really well, in fact. The powerups modify your abilities in meaningful ways and the way they tie together, creating synergies and blending into your very own sort of playstyle, is great. I’m a big fan of that. There are even abilities you can get that work explicitly with other parts of your abilities, like thunderclaps happening twice and virus applying thunderclaps on that big explosion for instance. So, you now apply virus and each virus hit applies thunderclaps (big AoE) which triggers twice (big AoE x2). It’s a lot of fun!
What I didn’t like, however, was the meta progression – or permanent unlocks… or rather, how it’s implemented.
Back at your base, you get experience for quests you’ve completed, including tutorials which is a fine way to do it. Defeat X enemies, reach Act Y, etc. – it happens naturally and it encourages you to reach certain milestones or go out of your way to parry attacks and stay on beat, for instance.
My issue comes with the experience you can find on those nodes I mentioned previously. From time to time, you can pick up experience on those nodes instead of upgrades or healing items or literally anything that would have given you strength. If you’re unlucky, the paths will just lead you to experience instead of the next increase in damage or a potential heal, and it just doesn’t feel that good. This actively hinders you from coming back from a bad run.
Just because theoretically you can still hold your ground and mitigate damage, that doesn’t mean that luck is always in your favour, and a lack of damage can quickly turn any difficult roguelike into a hellish experience. Having experience nodes as an option feels actively punishing to me.
Another issue I have personally, though, is with the rhythm aspect.
A good rhythm game features a vast array of, typically, fantastic music. Look at Crypt of the Necrodancer, look at BPM: Bullets Per Minute, look at Furi. BeatSlayer essentially features one song… there are some variations to that one song that keep it somewhat fresh but I just wish there was more. What if there was a different rhythm, a sped-up version or something along the lines of the same rhythm but with a different melody.
In most roguelikes, if I don’t like the music or if it gets on my nerves, I turn off/down the music and just play my own… but in this case, I can’t do that because the music is important for the actual gameplay.
Another thing I’ve noticed is the absence of calibration – which in my opinion is another crucial feature for games that rely on audio queues coming in at the right time and buttons being pressed in a certain timeframe. Sometimes the audio is heard at a delay, after all, depending on your tech and not all players can adjust to that or their own “brain lag”. This would be a lovely accessibility feature.
Overall, I really did enjoy BeatSlayer! The combat is fun, and the skill ceiling is certainly up there (especially with three weapons, each with its own unique style and mechanics) but it’s rewarding to get there. The music, while it can get repetitive, is still pretty good and I’d imagine that the game would easily be a top-tier title if it had some more songs in its repertoire.
This post was originally written by Dan Dicere from Indiecator.
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