Developer: Awe Interactive
Steam Deck Compatibility?: Playable
Rrp: £15.49 (Gog.com and Steam)
BPM is a roguelite rhythm FPS one of the few that seem to exist. Rhythm games are something I’ve always struggled with, it’s just not something that comes naturally to me. Strangely though, I’ve not found that with this game, I just fall into it. From what I can tell I believe I can attribute my success to the fact that it’s (mostly) your weapon that fires and reloads in time to the music meaning I can strafe like normal. There are other things also tied to the music as well, of course. Such as the double jump and dodge ability but I found those fairly easy to factor into my movements.
Like most roguelites BPM uses procedural generation to create and populate its levels. Each level is made of several rooms, each of which will lock upon entry and not unlock until all enemies are dead (unless its a shop or other such special room). Upon death enemies will sometimes drop coins and when a room is cleared a chest will appear that will also contain a reward, usually that reward is a coin but sometimes it may be health, an item, a weapon or even a stat upgrade.
That’s right this game has stats, the more they increase the better you perform. Most are self explanatory such as damage, range or speed. But others are more difficult to understand and are left up to the player to interoperate those being ability, luck and precision.
As you play you’ll unlock new characters to play as and game modes called challenges. Each character has their own quirk and starting weapon, some of these quirks can make the game quite challenging. For example, there is one character who’s health is very high but also ticks down over time. However, they also regenerate health whenever they hurt an enemy so its in your interest to speed through the level and find the ending boss while quickly despatching enemies in the way.
I have to say I’ve had a lot of fun with this game, I’ll make a point of returning to it from time to time. If you just want to reach the ending boss and kill it without caring for unlocking other characters its a fairly short experience, but that would be something of a disservice to this game.
