March to the backbeat of your own drums, bass, sax and keyter.
From the creators of Hexagroove in 2019, Backbeat is a unique isometric experience that puts the creation of a band at the center of its narrative. Watts, the band’s leader, sets out to recruit members for her band who have a genuine passion for her music, complementing her style and funk. Each stage progresses like a puzzle, requiring you to guide the four band-her members to specific areas on the map. Completing each level is definitely satisfying, but it has a steep learning curve that can stall your progress and make gameplay more frustrating than fun.
Protagonist Watts begins the story with a desire to start her own funk band, but as a bassist, she recognizes that other musicians need to join this effort. Each level bookend is a dialogue-filled cutscene between Watts and the other characters she encounters, and while these are mostly interesting, the way the dialogue bubbles appear and disappear (effects sounds) are jarring and make dialogue difficult to understand.
Over 40 stages to complete Backbeat’s puzzles are a huge part of the experience, and while the gameplay is as simple as it appears on the surface, the challenges escalate fairly quickly. Forming a group of four makes the stage itself much more complicated, requiring one or more band members to activate objects to scoop past obstacles (often people in the way). there is. It’s not enough to lead each character to their goal. The order of their movements and even the direction they are facing is important. If you don’t immediately understand the mechanics, trial and error will not lead to consistent solutions to the puzzles you face.
Even the hints/tutorials for each stage can be pretty incomprehensible if you haven’t grasped the basics and mastered the new elements presented. is needed. It feels like understanding the music on a finer level really helps Backbeat pick up on what they’re writing down more easily. As much as I like the concept of to, there was a lot of attention to detail, and feelings of enjoyment eventually gave way to feelings of frustration. , I welcome more focused tutorials that show rather than explain.
But it was Backbeat’s presentation that I enjoyed consistently. Mid 90’s VHS style interstitials and good funk his music complement the gameplay nicely. Completing each stage actually generates its own song based on how the character moves towards the final goal. This serves as a suitable reward for solving each puzzle.Instrumental sound effects accompany the various character movements, and different settings for each level add to the variety. You can zoom out on the map to see the entire stage at a glance, but unfortunately there’s no way to rotate the camera for a better view.
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Backbeat’s puzzles are either click or don’t click, and otherwise very difficult to brute-force through. The mechanics are hard to understand and the stages have multiple solutions, but the patience and juggling required in the later stages ended up pushing me to the brink. I love everything about Backbeat’s presentation, aside from how the dialogue interactions work, and the story and writing are certainly engaging. Ultimately, though, unless you’re into music or have a real knack for movement- and resource-based puzzle games, there’s a good chance you’ll want to put Backbeat on the back burner.