BeatBeast

Player notes

About this game

BeatBeast is a rhythm-based shooter created by Afska, LaChia, and Synthenia for GBA Jam 2024. You play as Joaquin, a horse trying to shoot his way out of a strange musical world. Each encounter mixes platform movement, directional aiming, and carefully timed shots with a backing track, so surviving depends on reading both the boss pattern and the beat instead of simply firing as quickly as possible.

A complete run is designed to take roughly fifteen minutes, but the unusual combination of rhythm timing, dodging, aiming, and difficulty choices gives the game room for repeat attempts. The level-selection screen lets you adjust the challenge, while the tutorial introduces jumping, shooting, and target locking before the main fights become more demanding. The compact structure makes BeatBeast suitable for a short session, but its bosses reward learning patterns and improving accuracy over several runs.

The Game Boy Advance controls use the D-pad for aiming and menu navigation, A for jumping or confirming, B for shooting or going back, R for locking the current aim direction, and Start for pausing. L and R also change the difficulty on the selection screen. The official web version supports keyboard and gamepad input, while the downloadable release can run in a compatible GBA emulator or on supported hardware.

BeatBeast was built with a modified version of the Butano GBA engine. Its presentation includes an animated 3D-style title sequence and two different audio approaches: GSM music for menus and PCM playback during the action stages. The source repository documents how the jam ROM was built and provides the project code, while the official itch.io page hosts the playable release, control notes, soundtrack, and a full hard-mode playthrough.

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