Beat Hazard is an indie twin-stick
Shoot 'em Up created by Cold Beam Games and released on
Xbox LIVE Indie Games (the original game's debut),
Steam, the
PlayStation Network, the Apple App Store (for Macintosh computers and iOS devices), and Android smart phones and tablets. The premise is simple: choose a song, which in this case is a level, and shoot stuff up. The things you'll battle against consists of
space junk of varying sizes,
small space planes,
big space planes, smarter space planes, bigger AND smarter space planes,
two big star-fighters armed with
laser cannons and
homing projectiles,
gigantic battleships armed to the teeth with weapons, and then some. In other words:
shoot anything that moves.
Ever played
Asteroids? This game should look visually familiar. That is, until the space behind
your ship suddenly becomes a psychedelic audio visualization. Your small fighter craft appears in the middle of the screen, things fly in from all sides, and gotta you dodge 'em and shoot 'em. Now, here's the catch: the game's difficulty level is also controlled by your choice of music, not unlike in
Audiosurf. Survive the whole song and you complete the level — which means that
Epic Rocking equals
Marathon Level. Your spaceship's guns shoot faster and harder the faster and louder your chosen song is. And, on top of that, there are
Power-Ups that make the music even louder and, of course, increase the power of your guns. If you need a breather, there's a
Smart Bomb that harms everything around your ship's surroundings.
In Normal Play, you choose a song and play through it, and you're done. Pick a new song, shoot some more bad guys, rinse and repeat. If you prefer, you can engage in
Survival Mode and see how many songs you can get through before you lose all your lives. With the addition of
Beat Hazard Ultra, the game adds a new variety of enemies (like the Mini-Serpents and
Reapers), new game modes like a
Boss Rush and the aforemention Survival Mode, new special weapons to play around with, an even
HARDER difficulty, and more.
Note that because of the way the game works, relevant music tropes often get paired with a video game trope.
This game displays examples of:
- Abnormal Ammo:
- Your Energy Weapon, which could only be called a rave gun, shoots streams of technicolor awesome, fueled by music.
- In Beat Hazard Ultra, some of the bosses have guns that shoot smaller ships at you.
- Absurdly High Level Cap: Once you max out at Elite rank, you can still level-up your rank to Elite 1, Elite 2, Elite 76, and so on until Starg knows how high you can go.
- There is no known rank limit. However, there is a point limit. Breech it and each time it goes to the rank-point-adding-bar-thing it will start increasing rapidly... until you realize it's started from the lowest possible number (negative version of the highest) and is going from there, and is also stretching off of the screen. It doesn't actually break your total points or rank (you can go look at those elsewhere) but it is alarming to see at first.
- Asteroids Monster: The space debris, which they break up into multiple smaller upon destruction. In Beat Hazard Ultra, there are also floating debris that's also magnetic.
- Attack Reflector: You can use a Reflector Shield in Ultra that can send most of the projectiles right back into the enemies while protecting your ship from harm. It becomes especially handy when dealing with Reapers and bosses that fires homing weapons.
- Beam Spam: The deadly Tracker Cannon on boss ships. First, it uses a Laser Sight to aim at you. Then, it launches a salvo of beams at the place it locked you at. Hope you managed to move out of the way...
- Boss Rush: A Boss Rush mode was added in Beat Hazard Ultra, allowing you to fight against all the new bosses it has to offer.
- Bullet Hell: You shoot a lot. The bosses shoot a lot too. Some things you can shoot down, some you have to dodge.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: It's possible to destroy a boss ship before it can even fire. Doing so nets you the "Brutal Boss Kill" Achievement.
- Destructible Projectiles: You can shoot at and destroy mines and missiles. You can't do that to the red orbs, but they're easy enough to dodge.
- Downloadable Content: The Ultra expansion, which dramatically expands the game. There's also a cheap codec pack that enables you to play music in iTunes, m4a, mp4 and other formats* (this is only required for Windows users as Macintosh computers already support these formats).
- Dynamic Difficulty:
- Enemies fire more often as the music gets louder and faster.
- Your weapon's damage output is based on the music intensity. During a quiet bit your weapons do very little damage to enemies you can slaughter by the dozen with a single sweep of fire when it's intense.
- Dual Boss:
- Sometimes instead of one bigger boss you have to deal with two smaller ones. They still pack some serious punch though.
- You can have at least four different bosses on-screen at the same time during the Boss Rush mode.
- Epic Rocking: if you enjoy Marathon Levels, try it. It'll hurt, though.
- Epileptic Flashing Lights: The game starts with a seizure warning. Unfortunately, they made it skippable.
- Expansion Pack: Beat Hazard Ultra, which caused a leaderboard and rank reset upon release due to changes in how quieter-but-still-intense sections of songs are handled (which is part of a free patch). There's enough new content in there to make it feel like a new game entirely.
- Harder Than Hard: Hardcore not hard enough for you? Give Insane a try. Still not hard enough? Try Suicidal.
- Interface Screw:
- When Volume and Weapon Power meters are full and the background visuals get going, it can be very hard to tell what's happening on screen. An intentional design decision as it changes with the difficulty and turning down the graphics intensity reduces your point harvest.
- Certain enemies in the Ultra expansion can mess with your ship. Stalkers and Repulsers use gravity beams to either pull your ship in or push it away, potentially into something you shouldn't hit. Bosses can potentially have either type on some of their hardpoints. There's also an enemy that essentially amounts to a chain of glowing energy balls that if you hit, do not damage you but disable your weaponry momentarily; mines dropped from a Miner can also cripple your ship's ability to use anything.
- Laser Sight: When you see a boss use one, avoid it. That's the Tracker Cannon.
- Macross Missile Massacre:
- Homing Missile launchers on boss ships. Also, you can take it Up to Eleven with weapon power upgrades and the song's tempo. Reapers in Beat Hazard Ultra unleashes one upon death.
- The Ring Mine launchers on Suicidal are slightly faster and fire in larger quantities per burst.
- The Micro-Missiles in Ultra gives you one of these. They prioritize the most threatening target on screen, totally bypassing other enemies to reach it. If some missiles are left over afterwards, they will automatically track the next most dangerous target and so on. The Reflector Shield can also turn enemy missiles and Ring Mines back at the enemies
- Meta Multiplayer: Leaderboards.
- Musical Assassin: You! Unfortunately, this also goes for the enemies and bosses, whose energy projectiles change color and pulsate in time with the music.
- Music Player Game
- No Plot? No Problem!: And who needs one to blast away an armada of space ships, asteroids, and robotic serpents while raving out to your favorite music anyway!
- Painfully Slow Projectile: Orb Launcher. Unlike the Homing Missiles and Ring Mines, you can't shoot them down.
- The Power of Rock: Throw on your favorite rock song and go to town.
- Power-Up: The VOL and POW power-ups raises your ship's firepower and spread respectively, while the +1 and +5 Multiplier Bonus ups your score multiplier. In Ultra, you can also get ammo for your special weapons you've equipped.
- RPG Elements:
- The game remembers your scores from each song and treats them as experience points, with levels having the names of naval ranks such as Cadet and Commander. Prior to Beat Hazard Ultra each level afforded you a tangible bonus, such as extra starting lives or Smart Bombs. Reaching max rank let you start off with the Beat Hazard at full power!
- Beat Hazard Ultra changed the always-enabled level-up awards into a perks system
giving you 3 slots (which can be increased to 8 in Ultra) to equip perks with, and you'll have to upgrade perks separately. Additionally, the expansion pack adds a handful of new perks, mostly pertaining to new weapons.
- Scoring Points: What's it all about, dude.
- Self-Imposed Challenge: The whole point.
- Serial Escalation: Cold Beam Games previously implemented a slider to turn down the intense visuals (with a decrease in point scoring to match). As of the Beat Hazard Ultra expansion, it can be turned up to 150% or even 200%. Some people want it to go up to 500%!
- Sheathe Your Sword: Wait a few seconds without shooting and you'll get a Dare Devil bonus which increases your multiplier. Holding fire for a minute gives an Achievement.
- Shout Out: One of the perks is called Jamie Wants Big Boom.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: Try shooting ships to Michael Giacchino's Married Life theme from Up sometime.
- Smart Bomb: You can unleash an explosive blast that can clear some enemies on screen.
- Space Fighter: You, and many of the enemies you face.
- Theme Music Power-Up: Going from a soft section to a loud section of a song (or from a soft to loud song in Survival mode) results in this — for you and the enemies!
- Title Drop: The Super Mode caused by maxing out Volume and Weapon Power at the same time is called Beat Hazard.
- Wave Motion Gun: The Ultra Beam.
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