Beatbuddy: Tale of the Guardians is the début game from German indie game company THREAKS. It is a 2D rhythm-based adventure game in which you play as Beatbuddy, and along with your sisters Melody and Harmony, you must save the world of Symphonia from Prince Maestro.
As always, one of the first things I notice in a game is the detail of the artwork. I love a detailed game atmosphere, and Beatbuddy doesn’t disappoint. It might not have the same wonder that a 3D game has, but the hand-painted backdrops are pretty. The art style is also very reminiscent of the Bit-Blot game Aquaria, plus it is also set underwater. The one downside to the scenery, is that sometimes you don’t realise what is a foreground piece, and what is the background. You can end up sitting there for a little bit until you realise that the tunnel that looked like the background or foreground was in actual fact, the path that you needed to take.
The music is an integral part of the game, with it being the life that flows through Symphonia. As you progress through the game, you are greeted with different enemies and puzzles, who all create a new sound that fits in with the ambient music throughout the level. One of the first enemies you will meet is the Hi-Hat Crab, who will make a Hi-Hat sound until you smack him in the face and he hides along with his spiky snails (they hurt – a lot). Now and again, you’ll come across an area where the music is at it’s fullest, and it’s very well done. After a while, depending on how long you take to complete the level, the music can get a bit repetitive. The soundtrack for the game was created by known artists such as Austin Wintory (Journey), Parov Stelar, Sabrepulse and La Rochelle Band.
There are three options for controlling Beatbuddy, you can pick between either the keyboard, mouse or a gamepad. Using solely the keyboard can get a bit awkward at times when you’re trying to make a well timed u-turn down tunnels. The mouse option is a bit easier, and you can bind things to the keyboard as well so you don’t have to just use the mouse. My preference for this game would be the game pad, it’s just much easier to time the turns and move more fluidly than the other two options, which makes the timed puzzles a bit less frustrating to complete.
Difficulty wise there is no option to change the setting, however, while playing the game one would notice quite the variance in difficulty between one section of a game to the next. Most of the game, in my opinion, is pretty relaxed and easy to work out. However there are areas in which the timing to get through gates and other obstacles are of utmost importance, and a small deviation in your swimming will force you to start back over. This also kind of depends on the controls you have decided to use.
Beatbuddy isn’t exactly a long game, you can complete it in about 5 to 6 hours but there are extras that you can go back and earn if you like that sort of thing. In each level you have an amount of beats that look like little pink diamonds that you can collect. This usually involves exploring the levels a bit more and going down all available tunnels, or possibly solving some more simple little puzzles to grab them safely. As you collect beats in a level, upon level completion you get an image of a vinyl and that fills in as your points are calculated. Once you complete it, you get an extra that you can go and see in the Extras menu.
The story itself is pretty straight forward, but it’s simple and fun. Rhianna Pratchett (Mirror’s Edge and Tomb Raider) collaborated with THREAKS on this project, so I was under no illusions that the story was going to be slacking off in any regard. The characters are cute with their own little personalities, and while not deep characters, they are fun to come across – and you even get a funky Bubblebuggy to drive. The characters speak by beat-boxing and with a kind of Fire Emblem-esque floating head and speech bubble. Driving the Bubblebuggy can get quite annoying at times, since it moves to the beat in a jerky movement and you can only speed up on every second beat. Once you’re in the rhythm though, it’s not too awkward to manoeuvre and can get pretty fun.
Overall, it’s a pretty enjoyable game. It doesn’t require too much dedication if you just want a small game to pick up and play for half an hour. I did encounter a few bugs though, but I imagine they will be fixed in a patch in the future. At one stage the level froze and nothing would respond, but that was simply fixed with a pause and un-pause. Other people have reported that some checkpoints don’t work, but I have not yet encountered that. I would have expected a little more than 6 hours of gameplay from the game though, since it has been in development for 4 years, but on the other hand it is only £11.99/$14.99/€13.99.
I’d recommend this game to someone who likes music-based games and puzzle games, and who didn’t want something too deep and time consuming. I personally couldn’t sit down in one evening and play through it in one sitting, I had to give it a couple of days in between before I felt like picking it up and playing it again to maintain it’s charm.