Beat the Game is not a typical video game. Worm Animation’s first foray into the gaming industry showcases fresh ideas, as it blends music-making with open world adventure. By incorporating features from these two genres, Beat the Game succeeds in being memorable and unique. While it is a rather short game that players can beat quickly, Beat the Game is worth playing for the innovative gaming experience it provides.
The game begins by showing the unnamed protagonist riding a motorcycle through a desert. Things go wrong, however, when the motorcycle crashes and the protagonist is stuck in the desert wastelands.
Once the protagonist wakes up stranded in the desert, players begin to control him. They are tasked with and advance the story by exploring the desert, which constitutes a small open world. By interacting with the objects and people scattered around the desert, players begin to see the main objective of the game: to collect sounds that can be used to produce music. Players cannot create deeply nuanced music utilizing the sounds they accumulate in Beat the Game, but tinkering with the options provided can be a fun experience.
To aid players in their searches, Worm Animations gives the main character the ability to scan the surrounding area for sounds. This feature proves instrumental, as players need to collect all of the sounds in order to complete the game.
Most of the sounds are not hard to find, making the experience that Beat the Game delivers more about enjoying the journey through the beautiful, bizarre environment of the desert than about reaching the game’s climax. The desert and its inhabitants are all rendered in an abstract, surrealist style, and this fact gives Beat the Game character and sets it apart from other music-based video games. Beat the Game is truly shines when players take their time to wander through the open world and appreciate the detail that Worm Animations lavished into their creation.
However, while it is on the one hand a positive element of the game, the desert also constitutes one of Beat the Game’s biggest flaws. The setting is so small that players don’t even need to bother using the mini-map that is provided to them. It takes almost no time to navigate across the entirety of the map, which places a restriction on the amount of content that the game can offer. Worm Animations tries to get around this limitation by having separate day and night scenes in which players can interact with different objects, but this mechanic does not sufficiently mask the problem.
However, the worst aspect of the game does not deal with the gameplay, music, or open world. Rather, it is the fact that Beat the Game only takes between one and two hours to beat. The game feels unfinished, as the protagonist meets characters who are not fully fleshed out by the time the game ends and engages with objects that he never uses.
Beat the Game is worth playing for its simultaneously bizarre and beautiful open world, as well as for its genre-melding gameplay. However, it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of how long it takes to beat. The alacrity with which players can complete Beat the Game is the main reason why the game does not deserve a ranking higher than 7/10.
Rating: 7/10
Here is Beat The Game Steam Release Trailer:
Beat The Game is available for PC, Mac and Linux via Steam.
PC Review
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Overall Score - 7/107/10
I'm a recent graduate of Columbia University. Gaming has been a passion of mine my entire life; I enjoy everything from RPGs and FPSs to stealth and narrative-driven games. I love the deeply immersive quality that good video games inherently possess, and am looking forward to highlighting games worthy of acclaim. When I'm not studying or reading, you can catch me playing games like Uncharted, Dishonored, The Witcher 3, and Far Cry.
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