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Beat The Game review

Beat The Game is the debut title from Indie game developers and 3D animation studio: Worm Animation. Taking one solid boot to the industry and kicking it down by surprise, this title is certainly one to add to your library if you are a lover of lush gaming worlds.

It’s a strange tale, man and his music. What is even stranger is the world you find yourself immersed into when you fire up Beat The Game. A surreal journey into a Dali-esque world, you play Mistik: a seemingly stranded humanoid character that is content walking around in the musical void after a motorbike crash. The game itself capitalizes on not having much context for plot–leaving the player to connect any dots through robust visual cues and clues.

Gameplay is very much a casual stroll through an art installation. The sheer beauty of the graphics is something to really take note here–even at just a glance, this game provides some of the best concept art I’ve ever laid eyes on. Emphasizing on the weird and the wacky, Beat The Game is very intent on plucking you from reality and dropping you in Mistik’s floppy, banana-shaped shoes.

Watch the Beat the Game launch trailer below:

[brid video=”177720″ player=”531″ title=”Beat The Game Trailer Steam Release”]

 

Having a casual walk around, Mistik can’t run, jump, or fight in any way. Threat is quickly dissipated and you’re encouraged to explore, poke and prod at the world around you. Creatures litter the intriguing oasis–some big, some small, some out of reach and some interactable. It becomes a mission to find and collect various sounds, to which ultimately you build a musical track on Mistik’s recorder. The recorder itself is something to behold in design: a sleek and easy to navigate HUD, beat matching already taken care of, and beautiful sounds that seem to loop and interact with each other seamlessly. You tend to instantly fancy yourself as a DJ just through the freedom of the handy device on it’s own.

Coupled with the recorder is Mistik’s ability to listen for sounds, capturing them for use. The game revolves around this mechanic. Floating abstract shapes bounce around and orbit in the atmosphere above–so far out of reach, giving the feeling of vast scale. You find the limited amount of various sounds and transfer them to your recorder. At the end, you throw a concert for a group of geometrically inclined alien life forms, turning the tide of exploration into a mini game that’s not quite a rhythm game, but not quite isn’t either.

View some screenshots from Beat the Game in our gallery:

The main problem with Beat The Game is that there’s simply not enough of it. It’s gorgeous, completely enthralling and so mind-meltingly stunning, that you find yourself strangely adapted to live in it. However, before you know it, it’s over. Giving around one to two hours of gameplay, I find myself along with many others, conflicted. On the one hand, here is a game that you’re paying £6.99 to play that only gives one main goal and is the length of a demo. On the other hand, you’re clearly paying for a work of art, and in no way are you under any illusions about that. It is the one and only complaint I have about this title, everything else is so polished and tight that it’s no wonder this diamond came sparkling out of it. I dare say that it’s nothing of a coincidence that Worm is separated into two parts: Indie game development and an animation studio. The two work in tandem perfectly.

There is a reason this game is consistent with it’s high ratings, despite the main complaint of not having enough content. It’s a true work of art, made by an animation studio that gave you, the player, the chance to walk around in their world. If you are paying for art, fantastic! You won’t get a better title than this one. But if you are paying for game content–combat, puzzles to solve, leveling…then this one might not be for you.

Publisher: Worm Animation Developer: Worm Animation Release Date: September 7, 2017 Reviewed On: PC/Steam Also Available On: iOS

Sara Boardman
Sara Boardman
By day, Sara is a video game fanatic, playing since her fingers could work a controller, keyboard and mouse. By night, she's a cartoonist who likes to draw silly pictures of her whippet, Phil.

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