GridBeat!

The star of the show, of course, is the music. Naturally, it leans heavily into typical ‘80s-themed synth tracks, but they all work wonderfully well, and I started bopping my head immediately. If you’re a fan of rhythm games in general, I’d urge you to give this a shot, but just be mindful that it can be pretty brutal, so be prepared to hit ‘continue’ a lot.

As the adventure progresses, the difficulty swells, requiring precision and quick reactions. While this may deter newcomers, fans of puzzlers will adore the challenge.

GRIDBeat! is a well-designed hybrid that understands both halves of its identity, rhythm, and dungeon crawling, and manages to fuse them into something genuinely engaging. It refines the genre in a way that feels fresh. The gameplay is tight, the music is integral, and the overall experience hits that sweet spot between challenge and satisfaction. Most importantly, it finds that elusive rhythm game magic, that moment where everything clicks, and you stop thinking and play. And when a game gets you there? That’s when you know it’s doing something right.

Fun rhythm-fueled cyber-dungeon crawler

I love it when a game surprises me. Originality is hard to come by, and GRIDbeat has some impressive and original ideas. Although it is very tough, and some levels can feel a little rinse-and-repeat, it is a fantastic indie game. Additionally, the ability to play it on the Steam Deck with no issues or compromise was a massive bonus. Accordingly, I recommend grabbing a copy from Steam!

GRIDbeat! strikes a solid balance of arcade action and challenge for any type of gamer. Jump in for some solid tunes, stunning visuals, and well-crafted levels, or try to master its mechanics. Either way, you're bound to have a blast.

A novel and pretty unorthodox mixture of rhythm game and hacker challenges make for a wholly unique experience

GRIDbeat! it's a solid rhythm game, with an interesting basic idea and good technical execution, but also one of those that give the impression of being able to do something more.

GRIDbeat! for me, it was a very fun experience that mixed fun rhythm-based gameplay and upbeat music to create a rather unique experience that kept me engaged throughout, even with the gameplay being rather challenging to begin with. Throughout GRIDbeat! I was pleasantly surprised that the game assisted me in a way that most games don’t by having the actual game itself keep the beat of the song rather than an icon or a bar, which was a very fun change of pace in a game like this. Although the notification ding of acquiring collectibles would cause me to lose the beat on occasion, thanks to the game’s indications, it wasn’t too hard to pick up the beat after a few seconds of paying attention. The overall game world itself is very vibrant, with a lot of fun details that made it feel like we were actually inside the cyberspace fighting for our freedom rather than just watching someone do it.

I love almost everything about GRIDbeat, from its pleasing aesthetic to its computer language and its wonderful synthy music. I haven’t experienced anything quite like it before, and I admire its incredibly detailed and inventive ideas. It’s just a shame that it couldn’t carry that over into its difficulty and checkpoint system. If you’re after a game that will challenge your reflexes and brain-to-hand coordination, then this is the one, but I’ll be waiting in a server somewhere for that upgrade to bring me back to my hacking ways.