Beatship logo Download Beatship

Go! Beatship! Find The Rhythm In You!

Beatship is an experimental rhythm-action game that doesn't actually contain any music. Instead, you are the driving force behind the levels. Play drums to shoot down waves of enemies... with style!

What?

Hey, you're hardly alone in not having a damned clue what that means. You can view a couple of videos from (much) earlier versions of Beatship, that demonstrate the game engine:

Functionality demo on YouTubeFlexibility demo on YouTube

Think of Beatship as like a cross between Space Invaders, Ikaruga, Wii Music and Rock Band. It's a puzzle; it's a music game; but more importantly, everything comes down to you. You don't get instructions, and you don't get a metronome to play to... you're completely alone, and you're expected to figure it out yourself.

Beatship doesn't try to be Rock Band. It is perhaps a drum trainer, but one that's freestyle to the max. So, if you're not already a competent drummer, this is probably not the game for you!

Difficulty demo on YouTube

Screenshots

City screenshotDesert screenshotCoastline screenshotRussia screenshotSpace screenshot

Who made this? (Contact)

Hi, I'm Aneurin Barker Snook. Pleased to meet you. You can check out my site at anny.fm or, if you use Twitter, I'm @annyfm. If you want to tell me how terrible Beatship is, feel free to email me at http://anny.fm/availability. I can accept hate mail, if a complaint justifies it, but otherwise I hope you use the address sensibly and politely. Thanks!

Requirements

Setup

With the above software installed for your platform, connect your drum set via USB to your computer, and use the Xbox 360 controller driver so it is recognised as a USB device. Then, assign the drum input to keyboard keys by way of your emulator, as follows:

Key mapping for your drum set

After this, simply download and then run the Beatship AIR installer. If your drums are set up correctly, you should be set up to play the tutorial level! (Note: if the Beatship installer downloads as a .zip file, change its extension to .air before running it.)

That link again

Download Beatship (AIR installer, ~2Mb)

Source

Interested in modding Beatship, or just want to trawl its innards? You can download the entire project (Flash CS3 or later required to view FLA document.) Let me know if you do anything cool with it!

Disclaimer

I cannot be held responsible for damage to or loss of data as a result of any software that you install in order to play Beatship. However, if you have a genuine problem with the game itself, feel free to contact me (http://anny.fm/availability) and I will try to get back to you ASAP.