The Beat: Rockstars of the Galaxy Review - Another Hit by Nerdlab Games!
Transcript
Have you ever wanted to be a rock star? Have you ever wanted to travel in space? Have you ever wanted to be a galactic rock star? Hello my friends. Today that's what you're going to be. You're going to be the drummer or the keys player, the singer or the guitar player flying around to different venues around the galaxy rocking the house making aliens love you. Today we take a look at The Beat Rockstars of the Galaxy. This is from Nerd Lab Games. This is the same publisher that's brought us Mindbug and Agent Avenue, two amazing games. This is a limited communication cooperative game. Let me show how it works. I'll see you on the other side.
Before I get to the moment you've been waiting for, I wanted to tell you about finding your grill game at Noble Knight Games. Grill games are games that you've always wanted but are no longer in print and very hard to find. Hence, finding the holy grail. Noble Knight buys and sells pre-owned games and developed a condition grading system from 30 years of experience from buying and selling games so you know exactly what you're getting. Maybe it's the top 100 game mechs versus Minions and you don't want to wait a year for the next printing. Or maybe the slipcase version of the classic game Acquire from the 1960s. So go on your holy grail quest at Noble Knight Games by clicking the link in the description of this video or on the eye up there in the upper right. In the beat Rockstars of the Galaxy, you get to be one of the members of a galactic band like the drummer or the guitar player or the keys player or the singer. And each of you have your own deck with your character on it with cards ranging from one to five and some with some special abilities that we'll go over later. Now each game is short, 10 to 20 minutes.
And each of them you'll play at a single venue. There's 26 different venues or levels in the game. There'll be easy ones like Twin Moon Truck Stop, or there'll be some medium difficulty ones like the Jupiter Jazz Club, or there might be some hard ones like the Binary Ballroom. And in those venues, you're going to be playing songs like In the Airlock Tonight or Be Me Up before You Go or Born in the Milky Way. So, let's take a look at an easy venue. This is the first venue. We're going to have six songs. So, it's actually going to be a deck of six songs that we're going to need to go through at this venue. Now, what we're trying to do is we're going to be this is a limited communication co-op game. You can't really talk. Um, but we're trying to play the intergalactic song. And we the song needs a sort of a volume level of like 13, if you will. And here, what we're going to need on this one is we're going to need one or more song to be on point. Meaning, all of our cards when we play them exactly match 13. Three of them or more can be loud, which is greater than 13. If it's less than 13, we fail. We can fail two of them safely, but if we fail a third one, we lose. It also has a special ability, which says or special requirement, last song must be loud. So, this is the easiest one in the game. So, we're trying to get a total of 13 or more, generally speaking.
Now, each player will randomly put three cards from their deck in front of them so everyone can see which cards are not in their hand. Now, cards range from one to five, and there's three copies of each of them. So, over the course of the game, as players are playing cards, you can start deducing what players definitely don't have in their hand, maybe, or even what the probabilities of them having certain numbers in their hand. So, each player is going to play a card face down in front of themselves, and you can you can't talk, but you can do it confidently, or you can do it, not so sure. Um, and so players are going to play, and then once they're there, everyone's going to flip them up. And so, we flip them up and this is a total of 15. And so, it's greater than 13. So, this is going to go to the loud and then a new song's going to come out. Now, that's the very basics of the game. That's actually the highest number in the game, 16. What I didn't show you yet are events. Now, each individual song is going to have an event that will alter how that song is played. Like the guest star, even cards are plus one. Or the sound police, fives count as one. Or old school spotlights, the song is one additional needed per player. So, if you're playing four players, that last one would have been a 17. So, now you go to the next song. Now, these would usually be a little further down. The ones that fail go right below it. But to keep everything in frame, I've got this here. So, this is 16 mosh pit madness.
This song, threes count double. So, threes are going to be sixes, which is great because this is a hard song to land because it's the highest number in the game. Now, this song deck is scaled for the number of players and such like that, but there's also some special abilities that go on. Now, all the cards that you're playing, song for song, keep going in front of you. So, again, you're learning more about the player's hand or what might not be in their hand or what might be in their hand. And there's a lot of deduction. Also, everyone's deck has some cards with some three different special abilities on it. This one is an eyeball face up. When you play this card, you play it face up. Now, if other players have played a card face down and someone else plays a card face up, they can take this back, change their mind, and put a different card down. Now, let's say on a previous song, I put this Q card here. Then, once per venue, I can take this card. When I play one face down, I can say this card is greater than four or this card is less than four. And that gives people some information. And when you don't that it's a one time used per venue, so you keep it that way and know you've used it. The last ability is an encore. When you flip a card, it has an encore on it.
There's a certain amount of songs that are on top of this that are possible encore songs. They want you to play more. If you want to, the player plays this can take a song from here and put it into the deck. Sometimes you're going to want to do that because it's going to be depending on what's here, what you've done so far. Sometimes you won't want an on because it's just going to make it harder for you to finish the level. So depending on a lot of variables, you may or may not want that, which is a cool aspect. And lastly, one player starts with the solo card. Now, this is once per uh venue, they flip this over and they play two cards instead of one. Uh, and that's pretty much the main part of the game. So, for each venue, again, you're trying to fulfill all these obligations. If you've done so, you've won and you can move on to the next venue. There's 26 different venues, and you're trying to win cooperatively. Before I get to the moment you've been waiting for, I wanted to let you know that Game Toppers is known for their high quality game mats with over 38 styles and 12 sizes from some of the top artists in the industry like Vincent Duty and Ryan Lockett. They have the perfect storage solutions for all your mats like mat bags and matt racks. They just launched the mats game bazaar crowdfunding campaign which highlights the greatest mats on earth including the new Victorian steampunk mat and many others. Visit gametame topperslc.com or search Kickstarter for gametoppers Mattbazar to learn more. Okay, some of my biases coming in. Um, I was interested in this because NerdLab Games is just knocking out of the park.
Mindbug they came out with years ago and is one of the best tactical card games I've ever played. Asian Avenue is an amazing two-player sort of quick game that's just awesome. Uh, little bit of a head game. And I love limited communication games. I love cooperative games. So, this is like right up my alley. And I'm a musician. I play saxophone. Spoiler. You're gonna hear me play a saxophone at the end of this review because it's gonna get a saxophone serenade which inducts it into my gaming library because it's that good. Just spoiled my review. But let me tell you what those are my biases coming in. Let me tell you about what I liked about it. I think the theme is the theme is cool. Come on. You're a galactic rock band going around trying to play things loud and right on point and it's just fun. It's silly. The game is not really thematic. It's very abstract, but it's a cool and fun theme and it's done well. Um, I love in this game that you're deducing what to play based on what's been played. Now, this is somewhat similar, I would say pretty similar to a game that was popular last year called Take Time. It made a big splash. It's doing really well. I favorably reviewed it. It got a sax on Saturday as well.
And this game in comparison to that, I actually like this one better because there's more open information and there's more deducing of hey, what can somebody not play or what is someone least less likely to have in their hand or what is something more likely for them to have in their hand because I haven't played any yet. So likely there's at least one of them in their hand, right? So and as the the venue goes on and the you're playing song after song, you're going to get more and more information which gives you more more concrete information to do on. I love deduction games and the deductive element of this really makes it that that I think for me personally speaking this is sort of replaced or you know taken care of take time for me. Now I have had other players that I played this with play this and they love it too but that they're gamers and they're like well this one does have a little bit more going on with the abilities and this and that that they wouldn't like just play this overtake time for like non-gamers family parties and things like that. I could see that for sure.
Um, but from a onetoone gamer to a gamer, I like this one better and the people that I have played do too. Um, I like that the uh the events, so you have the events themselves, which change every song, and the song cards, which are sort of the numbers that you need to get there. Randomizing those, which is going to happen every game, gives this game really infinite replay-ability because you add that to the deduction I just said. You could play the same venue a million times. Sure, conceptually you're doing the same thing, but it's a puzzle. You have cards in your hand. You're deducing what the other player's cards are in their hands, and you're trying to hit specific numbers and with specific alterations with the events. So, yes, it's a puzzle, and you can play through all these a million times, and it's just a puzzle with certain restrictions, but there's that randomness in there as well. I love the special cards playing face up. It's so cool to like people look unsure. You're like, "Oh, you know what? I'm going to play a face up card. You're like, "Oh, I'm going to take that card back. I'll play another face down one." That's really cool. The Q cards are awesome.
Hey, this is more than a four. This is less than a four. Again, more deduce deduction information. Encore can help you get out of a tight spot. It's like, oh yeah, we need that extra song. Or no, we don't want an extra song. Awesome little lever there to pull. U Sometimes losing a song could be the best thing where you're like, "Oh, you know what? We have two songs left. We could lose this one. We're we're probably going to need to lose one of these two." Hm. We're good on loud. Let's You're thinking, let's let's lose this one because, you know, it's the higher number. It's going to be hard to get to. It's going to be hard to be loud on. Stuff like that. And so, sometimes you're purposely losing a song towards the end of the venue in order to make the last thing you need to do easier. Uh, and I like that aspect. Now, one thing on communication, it does say that once you start the v, you can plan things before the venue, and once you start the venue, you're not supposed to talk. Uh, these games a lot of times get a a bad rap for, hey, it's too vague.
You know, what can you say, what can't you say? This one's pretty clear, but I also will say I have found the game more fun if you can't say what's in your hand. You can't say what you're planning to do. But things like this where you're like, "Hey guys, there's two songs left. We have one loss left. We could fail a song. We might want to fail this one because, you know, um because of this reason." And again, the rules don't say you can do this, but I found the game more enjoyable to do that. Uh the levels get harder enough as they go on that sure that's going to make it a little easier for you. It might be easier on the smaller levels, but once you get to the bigger ones, doing those types of things, I think makes the game more fun, even though it's kind of against the spirit of the game. But again, most of these limited cooperative games, limited communications, they leave it a little vague. This isn't, but that was a little twist that we like to play with. Um, so for me, this is sort of like the game take time meets the mind a little bit.
Now, you're not really just playing things willy-nilly, but you are sort of like you have that thing where you're like, I don't know, or like boom, I'm playing this, you know, and that can tell you things. in that aspect of the mind this has with it. Um, and very much like take time. So, what did I not like about it? Well, this is one of those games. It's, you know, you're playing level for level, so it's best if you play with the same group and you play through the entire campaign, right? But if you have a new group, you're going to want to start at level one to kind of like ramp things up. And is that as interesting for you? Well, because it's a puzzle and I just mentioned randomly its randomness with of the events and stuff, it doesn't matter. It's not as bad as most of these campaign style games uh because there is that randomness. So even though you're playing the same venue, it still feels like a different puzzle. But I would still prefer to Hey, you know what? This is level one. I'm going to snooze through this. You guys are going to be trying to figure it out. I'd rather go play this with my other friends that were at like level 20 of 26. So we're really trying to finish it. So it is kind of best to go through the same group. It's starting over. It's still fun, but it always is like, "Oh man, I'm on level 20 now. I got to start back at level one." But it's a minor nitpick here for this this style of game. Um the play there's a I wish there was a player aid with the song distribution because you know the last game we had a four-player game and everyone was like wait a minute what did the songs range from? What's the lowest and what's the highest? It's good to know that um just generally speaking and and the distribution of those would be good to know uh like on a player aid somewhere.
Also the text on the event cards. Now I get it. The art takes up most of the card. That's great. It looks good. The title's high, which is good. The text of the ability is tiny. Now, I might just be complaining because I'm getting old and it's hard for me to see these days this small print, but I really wish they would have made that print bigger. Um, someone's just going to have to pick it up and look at it and just mention what the ability is. You're not going to be able to look at that ability, even if you're sitting next to the card and really see it without picking it up. I wish that text was a little bigger. Those are the negatives I have in the game. This is a fantastic game. This is coming out of Essen. Again, Nerd Lab Games has hit it out of the park again. This is uh fantastic. If you like take time, if you like limit communication co-op games, this is a fantastic one for all those reasons as I spoiled at the beginning. Now it's my turn to get on stage and do a saxan serenade. So here we go.