Hyperbeat Review
Hyperbeat is brief and a little twee at times, but its lively musical flights are one-of-a-kind.
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What is it A bite-sized, dreamlike rhythm game with dizzying visuals.Release date October 22, 2025Expect to pay $15/£12.79Publisher Dreamware MediaDeveloper Alice Bottino, Chancellor WallinReviewed on Windows 11, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 TI, Intel Core i7-12700F, 16 GB RAMMultiplayer NoneSteam Deck VerifiedLink Steam
You're running out of time. You'll certainly have less of it by the time you're done reading this review, and less still if you decide to pick up Hyperbeat: a rhythm game that roped me in with its oddball UI, low-poly dreamscapes, and atmospheric central hub full of NPCs eager to introspect with you. It is a small, severe world that quickly charmed me.
While all rhythm games are about timing, time writ large, which you have a little less of by now, is Hyperbeat's foremost obsession. One hub NPC is a musician who longs for their bygone depression, if only because it was a source of inspiration in the days before their "flop era." Another is a churlish artist whose precious moments are wasted fretting over the feedback of an audience (or talking to you, for that matter).
Every step you take in the hub world—a liminal space-and-bar called the Wellspring—is punctuated by the sound of seconds ticking by, and each level is completed by crashing into a clock and shattering it. You start conversations with other characters by taking a beat, metaphorical and literal, long enough to fill up a quarter rest symbol in sheet music notation. I've only spent a few hours with Hyperbeat, but it made sure I appreciated each passing measure.
I was impressed, then, when its levels had me losing track of time after all that hullabaloo about clocks and such. Each stage has you, a faceless knight, soar through an abstract tunnel trying to intercept button prompts as they whizz past, colliding with them or swinging your weapon at them in time to a song. Think an on-rails shooter like Star Fox 64, but your objective is to fly into targets rather than shoot down enemies.
The UI and control setup are unlike any rhythm game I've played, so much so that I was constantly switching back and forth between gamepad and mouse as I puzzled my way through which was more comfortable.
Source: PC Gamer
