Afterbeat is a rhythm bullet hell where colorful, animated music visualizers try to kill you to the beat of catchy tunes.
Afterbeat. Credit: Vitamin Games / Kwalee
I was initially turned off by Afterbeat’s unwieldy computer terminal UI, mediocre dialogue, and stiff, unimaginative, anime-style character art. Once I started playing the actual levels and dove into the story, I became totally hooked. It’s too bad the game is saddled with those other clunky bits, because they weigh down something truly excellent.
Vitamin Games’ rhythm-based bullet hell was originally titled Project Arrhythmia, but was renamed Afterbeat earlier this year. It launched its 1.0 version earlier this month after seven years in Steam Early Access. Publisher Kwalee stepped in after Top Hat Games dropped the game last year, helping usher it to completion.
The story takes place in the near future. You’re an AI training nanobots in specialized simulations in a remote research facility. After a mysterious system crash resets you and leaves you with limited system access, you’re in the dark about the purpose of the research and where the human researchers are. Another AI appears in the system, and together you begin to learn what’s happened as you slowly regain system access.
Afterbeat. Credit: Vitamin Games / Kwalee
The nanobot simulations are the core of the gameplay. Each level is essentially an amazing music visualizer for a song. Your job as the nanobot is to avoid being killed by the eye candy. You can’t attack; all you can do is move and, in most levels, dash through trouble. Most rhythm games have you hit notes on a beat. In this one, you have to avoid them.
The electronic soundtrack is catchy, and each level is beautifully animated and completely unique. All the art here is made up of colorful, vectorized shapes that appear, move, deform, pulse, and form patterns with the music. Dimmed versions of the shapes warn you where they’ll appear on a following beat. In later levels, the gap between warning and danger can get especially short, sometimes sending me into a panic in a good way. Most of the imagery is completely abstract, except in some highly creative boss levels where an actual villain, rendered in the same style, chases you and tries to kill you. Some levels also feature camera movement and zooms, forcing you to keep up or deal with limited space to move.
Each level is divided into sections based on the song’s natural progression. You can take three hits before you’re forced to restart at the last section checkpoint. Reaching the next checkpoint heals you completely. I found the game to be mostly fair, thanks to the forgiving checkpoints. At least, most of the time. The difficulty sometimes spikes, and I felt like the game was going to give me a nervous breakdown. The hardest levels give you just one or two checkpoints, and some made me want to pull my hair out.
Afterbeat. Credit: Vitamin Games / Kwalee
Between levels, you’ll see a brief dialogue-driven cutscene between the AIs, represented by still portraits next to text boxes. I never found these very compelling. However, over the course of the game, your system is slowly decrypting news stories from the SAT network, and I found these fascinating. They reveal where you are and how things got this way. It’s a great, slowly revealed story and some of the most enjoyable lorebuilding I’ve seen in a game in a while. For those invested in the characters and their story, there are several possible endings.
The gulf between the quality of the backstory and the dialogue is vast. There’s a similar gap between the clunky UI and the impressively executed levels. I get the intent of the menu design—to mirror a text-based computer terminal, ASCII-art decorations and all. I still found it ugly and difficult to parse.
Afterbeat’s addictive, sometimes exhilarating rhythm bullet hell makes putting up with its glaring weaknesses worthwhile. The gorgeous music visualization, quick gameplay, and excellent worldbuilding had me totally invested. Don’t let your first impression when it boots up put you off.
Afterbeat
Afterbeat’s gorgeous, exhilarating rhythm bullet hell and excellent worldbuilding make putting up with its clunky wrapping worthwhile.
Afterbeat is a rhythm bullet hell where colorful, animated music visualizers try to kill you to the beat of catchy tunes.