Beat Hazard - Music is the Weapon

I have reviewed action-music games before, but seldom have I seen anything quite like Beat Hazard. Made by one-man development team Cold Beam Games the game takes two disparate genres and combines them. Does it manage to combine the music and top-down shooter genres into a compelling game?

The game at first glance is a typical top-down shooter akin to Geometry Wars, or for the very old school, Asteroids. Gameplay is controlled by your music, and yes I said your music. Much like top-selling indie title Audiosurf you can use your own music to create new levels in the game which means near infinite replay value.

Saying gameplay is tied to music doesn't quite cut it, everything is tied to music. This may sound easy, the slower the song the less enemies you have to deal with, but it's not really true. Depending on the pitch, amplitude, and frequency of your music you will be facing many different obstacles and enemies. Asteroids will clump around and move through your space, sometime enemies will fly around, and other times you will have squadrons of enemies firing upon you. You will also have the occasional boss to deal with which has a bunch of weapons and hit-points and can easily kill you.

"So I just keep firing right?" Wrong, you can hold down the trigger button all you want, the bullets fire based on your music too. So if the music dictates a boss shows up and you then have a slow part of a song, you are going to be scrambling for kill it before you ammo drops down to a slow dotted line.

Other factors also affect your firing ability, such as the volume of your music and the power of your gun. You may be thinking I mean volume of the music itself as in amplitude, but I mean the actual volume of your music in the game. You start off kinda quiet, and as you collect VOL powerups the music gets louder which increases the visual feedback as well as the power of your bullets. POW powerups upgrade your guns allowing you to fire multiple streams of bullets. There are other powerups such as bombs (clear the screen) and +1 (adds one to your multiplier) and Life (adds another life).

The game has varying levels of difficulty and numerous play modes including a chill out mode and survival mode. Pushing you forward in the game (the proverbial carrot on a stick) is the rankings, as you get points you get promotions to different ranks which each give you a different powerup at start or other bonus. For instance, getting to a certain rank might make a VOL powerup appear at the beginning of the song meaning you pretty much get stronger bullets from the start. Other bonuses include increased multipliers and other pickups.

I purchased the game on Steam which means I got a few extras with the game, like Achievements, Leaderboards, and support for the Steam Cloud. Achievements have some very difficult qualifications like Don't Panic which requires you not fire for 60 Seconds, or Brutal Boss Kill which requires you kill a boss before it fires.

The game is very unique, and an amazing accomplishment for one person. It is well worth the cost of admission. At only $10 you will get quite a bit of enjoyment out of the game if you keep in mind that in the end the game changes depending on your music. If you listen to Classical it'll be a totally different experience compared to Prog Rock or Rap. I'm not saying the game can't work with any genre of music, but be prepared to be shooting and dodging to whatever music you chose.