Beat the Game humming towards release

Written by Jack Allin — June 18, 2017 at 12:02

Music is often a vital part of a game's presentation, but usually it's a background element, designed to enhance mood without drawing attention to itself. Not so in Worm Animation's upcoming Beat the Game, which puts music directly at the forefront of the player experience.

Beat the Game stars a young man named Mistik, who crashes his motorbike and now finds himself on a journey to "uncover the mysterious, abstract universe" around him. As a music producer always in pursuit of the "ultimate track," this means exploring the "beautiful, dream-like environments" to discover and record a catalogue of interesting new sounds. Then you can fire up your "portable holographic music mixer complete with volume faders and effects," allowing you to "use your samples in any combination you like. From mellow, dusty rollers, to upbeat, acid house, Beat The Game’s intuitive sequencer ensures every combination sounds good—it’s just a case of creating something that fits your mood."

It's unclear what, if any, story exists beyond the music-creation element, but with indie designers Cemre Ozkurt and Yesim Demirci Ozkurt inspired "as much by twentieth century surrealists, Dali and Ernst, as modern European techno," the game promises a surreal desert world to explore with a "cast of warm, funny characters and a visual style that draws on classic animation." A scanner will help you to track down sounds, and while Mistick is controlled in third-person, at times you can "rapidly hunt the desert for hidden objects by remote controlled 'Roboball' with its first-person camera." 

There is no firm release date for Beat the Game just yet, but it's in the final mixing stage itself, with completion scheduled sometime this summer on Windows, Mac, Linux and Xbox One. To learn more about the game in the meantime, check out the developer's website for additional details.