POWER BEAT RACER

by hels
Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.24
Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.08
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.08
Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.00
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.52
Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.64
Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.78
Mood★★★★★★★★★★2.87
banner.png

Quick! Collect POWER ORBS to sustain your ships power level, drop to zero and it's game over! Can you go the distance in this radical rhythm game that's a blast to the future ? ?

- Switch lanes with the arrow keys!
- Collect POWER ORBS with the respective buttons!
- GO THE DISTANCE!!

TIMELAPSE VIDEO:


screenshot

Comments17

shashwat
shashwat31 Jul 2017, 08:20
I like the concept, but it's hard to keep track of which key is which color. If there was a reminder on the game screen, that would be really nice.
Falk Bruskeland
Falk Bruskeland31 Jul 2017, 13:00
Cool game. It reminds me of those buzz games.
WillData
WillData31 Jul 2017, 13:03
I'm downright awful at rhythm games but I really enjoyed this. The sound and visual design are great and I'm sure someone better than me can get through hard like a champ haha
AdroitConceptions31 Jul 2017, 13:19
It would have been nice to have the key to press in the orbs instead of having to rely on memory. Took a few times to figure out that you needed to press the color matched letter to actually pick up the orb, not just run into it. Could have used some better feedback on successful/failure pickup of orb.
gwinnell
gwinnell31 Jul 2017, 18:00
Nice colours! Music is great too - I like the hard track the most. :musical_note:

Obviously with it being colours (cyan/purple/pink) and not something like a key (z/x/c) or accepted ordered tuple (a/b/c, 1/2/3) that scrolls past, there's a level of indirection that makes it tricky to pick up and immediately enjoy.

I powered through that however and *almost* had a great time. I unfortunately found the beats you're meant to hit are about 1/8th beat off the accented or expected beats in the music. That again is something you could get used to but it means the game is more of about audio/visual misdirection than rhythm. Perhaps it is just the fault of WebGL/WebAudio, but I have no way of knowing.

Sorry if that's hard to hear! What I will do is I will rank each category according to its own merit instead. :thumbsup:
Eric Florio
Eric Florio1 Aug 2017, 07:59
Interesting idea, a simple tweak in the classic guitar hero style mechanics.
The art is great too.
Nice work!
pfeyffer
pfeyffer1 Aug 2017, 09:14
Cool game, I like the retro art style. The orbs need to be lettered with their respective key codes, at least in normal mode. This game is a little more difficult to play with a non-american keyboard (z and y are flipped).
Tuxic
Tuxic1 Aug 2017, 17:14
really dig the pixel art and the music, really cool! Gameplay wise, this game is hard. Maybe it's my keyboard, but it seemed like the delay for pressing correct keys was very small, hence a lot of lost notes. Also, I have an AZERTY keyboard, and for some reason layout switching on my computer didn't work on your game. So the Z key is like, 2 rows above X and C, makes it even more challenging :) really nice game!
willvasco2 Aug 2017, 02:12
Very cool, I enjoyed it. The only thing that kept me from playing on was the proximity on the note hits was downright unforgiving, and there was a point where I had been perfect up until missing one note by just a bit and I instantly died, and this was on normal! Other than the unforgiving and somewhat unfair difficulty, solid game
Spetsdod2 Aug 2017, 05:21
Nice entry. As others have mentioned, having to memorize the colors was a little frustrating (made harder by the fact that I couldn't see the colors/buttons the first few times because the instructions were scrolled off the screen), and the timing on a few of the notes was pretty tough. A solid offering though, and I liked it. Thank you for the game.
Shell Pirate
Shell Pirate2 Aug 2017, 10:42
This is an alright entry. I quite liked the simple but effective artstyle and I especially enjoyed the little racer portrait in the bottom left. The music was nice and rhythmic which is what one should expect from this type of game. What hindered my experience was the lack of labels on the orbs and the fact that the timing felt off. Perhaps a more forgiving time window would fix this, as I found I had to press the button ever so slightly before the beats hit which threw me off completely. If you address these issues, I think this could be a quite fun arcade-y experience.
sanojian
sanojian2 Aug 2017, 11:21
Really hard to get the timing right to start but once you get in the groove you can cruise. Nice entry. I suggestion is to make the power bar bigger. I could not see it at all when concentrating on the dots.
eLeDe
eLeDe2 Aug 2017, 21:03
I like that the music speed increases with the game speed. It is a bit difficult at the first try to remember what colors correspond to what key. For future improvements it will be nice a short tutorial stage.

Nice work!
Johngun3 Aug 2017, 01:37
Nice take on the theme, loved the music and gameplay. It was a bit hard to remember the keys in-game, a small indicator would be nice. As the song progresses the difficulty suddenly spikes a bit.

Other than that a very nice work.
Mastersmith983 Aug 2017, 01:51
A very simple and intuitive game. Button responsiveness seems a bit off (could just be me though) and I found it difficult that there wasn't an onscreen prompt reminding me what colors were associated with which buttons. The graphics and audio have a suitably 8-bit theme and I could totally see myself playing this on the Game Boy back in the day!
Rami
Rami4 Aug 2017, 19:29
A simple and good game, nice work !
LeviDSmith
LeviDSmith20 Aug 2017, 08:49
The gameplay felt solid for a rhythm game. The beats felt like they were in time with the music. I made it far, but couldn't ever reach the full distance. Sometime the game felt lenient, but then as I got further it seemed like if I just missed one beat then it was instant game over. I think a lot could be added like bonus multipliers for getting so many beats in a row and maybe add enemy cars that you would need to dodge.
Found a bug?
Tell us on Discord