The Beat: Rockstars of the Galaxy - Review
Transcript
Welcome to Allies or Enemies. I'm Jess.
And I am Shawn. And today we are talking about The Beat: Rockstar's of the Galaxy. And our copy was provided, but the thoughts are all our own.
The Beat is a two to four player game designed by Morten Blaabjerg and Christian Kudal. And it is a cooperative game where you are in in in an intergalactic space band. And this bit like you mix The Mind with The Crew, but we'll come back to that. First, let's look at an overview.
You start each venue with three cards down and five in your hand and a number of songs depending on the venue. Each turn, you flip a song. Then everyone plays a card from their hand without speaking. The song is your target number. If you get it right, it goes on the on point side. If you get more, it goes on the loud side. If you get less, it counts as a fail. Each venue has a number of on points and louds that you need to succeed and a max number of fails that you can have before you lose. All of this is also affected by an event that you'll flip each round and by the venue's special rules. Again, there is no communication, but you can play some cards face up and use others to give a clue to how high the number that you played is. If you succeed at the venue, move on to the next one. If you can do all 26, you become the greatest band in the universe.
So, I said at the beginning that this game feels like a mix of the crew mixed with The Mind. And in The Mind, you're all playing cards and you're trying to make sure you're playing cards in ascending order. So, you're trying to like mind meld with everybody around you to try and guess what they have and what they'll play. And this is a little bit like that because there's very limited communication, but you do have some information available for what card they may have. And then in for The Crew, you have all of these different missions that you're going through that have slightly like different rules and conditions. And for this game, you have different venues that also have like different parameters.
And then The Crew also has those same communication restrictions. And that is a big thing about this game. You are allowed to communicate. So, before you start a venue, you can talk about kind of your game plan. And then you're not allowed to say anything about what the numbers are in your hand at all. You're not allowed to say, "Oh, I think I have high ones or low ones." Or you definitely can't say like, "I have a three." The one thing you can do is once you flip that card and everyone's ready to play their cards, you can play fast or you can kind of hesitate. And that tells people a little bit. And as you play more, I think with the same group, it tells people kind of more and more. But at the same time, there are a lot of times when you've got two cards and two people need to play a different card. Both are just as important. And you playing that fast card could just as easily mean a one as a five.
Yeah, it definitely could. But you do have other bits of information available as well because you can see everybody's cards that they've already played in their stage area. And that's going to be really important because if I see that you've played all of your threes, then I know that's a card you won't be playing. Also, you have those different like indicators because you have the cues that will indicate whether the card that someone's playing is lower or higher than. And that can help a lot. Like if you turn a four to say it's higher than
Right. It's obviously going to be a five. Yeah, and with that group in front of you as well, everyone has the exact same deck of 15 cards. So, you by the time you get kind of to the end of the hand, you've got a really good idea. You know exactly once someone's picked up their final cards, you can you know exactly what's in their hand, but you still don't know what they're going to play. You also have one that you just put down face up. And you can do those and that obviously is going to give a lot of information, but if you do that or that cue, you can't take it back. But the other person can even if they played before as long as they haven't given you any info. So, all that's helpful, but what's not so helpful is the events that are going to happen every round.
Yeah, and so there's for every song there's an event card, and that's going to change what you can play. So, it might say all fives count as ones or like all even cards are worth an extra one. So, sometimes they're helpful, but add a little like wrench in the works, and sometimes they make it way more challenging, and it's something that you very much have to be aware of.
Yeah, you really do. And sometimes it'll say you can't use those cues or you can't play those cards face up or this card will double another card. Those ones are interesting where it's if if someone plays a one, whoever's to the right of them will have their card doubled. But then everyone plays a one trying to double everyone else's card and you still lose. And then the other big thing is those challenges. And so that is really the part that's like the crew because if you played the crew and an awful lot of folks have, you are going to have those challenges that get harder and harder and harder. That is really the case here.
Yeah, absolutely. Because the first few venues you play at are like fairly easy to win, but I think that's important because it's teaching you how to play the game. Like for the easy levels, there's one easy level where it says like somebody has to play the solo card just to remind you this is something that you can do. And then another one is like you have to have played an encore by the end because there's just not even enough songs to win without it. And again, that helps remind you, "Oh, okay. If we need more songs, we need to make sure we're playing an encore."
Mhm. But the thing with those early levels is they definitely gave us a false sense of of security and confidence cuz we started playing and we thought, "Is this game so easy? This is so easy. I don't know about this." And then we got to about level six and we went, "Oh, I see. Okay, easy time's over. Now we got to think about it." And then it gets interesting because then they really are a different puzzle each time. So, there's one like the level six where you have to get exactly You have to have exactly this many right on the money. So, you have to have exactly the number. You have to have this many louder and you have to have this many fails and you have to fail three times first and then get those other things. And so, that's interesting cuz it's really restricting and then they start to get kind of like wacky as well. So, there's one where every time you're louder or you fail, it's fine. You just put it to the bottom of the deck, but you've got to keep playing till you get six perfect and you're restricted You're restricted in all of these because you only have 12 cards in your hand. And that's a big thing cuz you cannot play all your big guys right out of the gate.
And that's a big part about working together because sometimes I'll have to play my high numbers, but if you play your high numbers as well, then we've just kind of burnt our high numbers and that's going to come back and get us later. So, you really have to balance because you are going to need to play low numbers eventually.
Yeah. Yeah, you can't get out of it without playing those ones. And you do still have that little bit of mind meld of the Okay, we need a three and a four. We both have a three and a four. Who's playing a three and who's playing a four? And then just And then it's just down to that like confidence of what you're playing. And And think that that is interesting. So, the theme here is interesting. And at first I thought, "Oh, maybe it's a little bit pasted on." But then as we played it more, I kind of see all the little nods in there. And so, it is interesting because as a band you obviously you'd have to read each other. So, I like that part of it. Also, the idea that you're playing louder or you're playing perfectly or you're playing too quiet, that all makes a lot of sense to me. But the interesting thing is all of the the little touches that they put on. So, all of the songs are based on real songs. And so, I think that's cool. They're like fun little space puns based on the songs. And then all of the venues, so all the levels are actually called venues, they all have their own art. And then also in the book they all have like a little story about that venue.
Yeah, and those stories are unnecessary, but I appreciate that they're there. And I like the art as well. It really gives the sense of being an intergalactic space band. And for a game that is just about getting the right numbers, I think the theme is nicely incorporated because even those different types of cards like the encore card makes sense because you're playing another song. And you know, giving a cue, that makes sense because you're giving the musicians a cue for like when they need to play.
Yeah, so it's not like immersive that you're going to feel like you're in a band. You're not This isn't Rock Band or anything like that. So, don't get us wrong. But it's a fun theme. And it feels like they at least used it a bit and it helps to make a little bit more sense of the game. So, I do appreciate it. So, the Beat plays for two to four players. And a game like this does tend to be better at those higher player counts. But I was surprised that this actually does work at two players because comparing it again to The Mind and The Crew, The Mind you can't even play it two. The Crew you kind of can but you have to play with different rules. And so, I kind of assumed it would feel like that here, too. But they have done quite a bit to make this work at two players and it does work at two players.
Yeah, I think it works really well at two players. The adjustment is just the songs that get included because at two players the songs will have like values between four and 10. Whereas at four players it's going to be like eight to 15.
Yeah, and that does that changes things in actually quite a few ways. So at two players that bottom four is really we both need to play our twos or maybe I can sneak my one and you can play your three whereas that 10 is we both play fives. But at four players if everyone plays fives you are definitely going to be loud and that one like just kind of how that math works is a little bit different but at two players it really still does feel like we have to be on the same page and it really is that mind meld.
Yeah, and at two players it's a little bit easier to tell what someone's going to play because you're just thinking about one other person. So you know what cards that they have available. You do also at four, but there's just so many more things in the mix and so many more cards that it's a lot trickier to know where you're going to end up.
Yeah, and also a little bit trickier to nail those numbers right on the money. So you really have to be using those cues, you have to be using those the face up cards and maybe it's a little bit harder to fail although you can still definitely fail as we learned. You can definitely still fail. But at two maybe those hitting it right on the money is a little bit easier. It's just different but I think it does work at all of the player counts. So who is this game for? And we kind of keep on saying it but if you like The Mind and The Crew and you wish that those two things were mushed together, hey good news that is totally what this is. If you hate both of those games this probably isn't going to be the one for you.
Yeah, is a game where you have very limited communication. You're working cooperatively. You're trying to guess what cards the other players are playing, but there is strategy because you have a lot of information available with the cards they've already played, with the different cues you can give. So, it was more strategic than I expected.
Yeah, it is. But, this is by no means a heavy game. This is a very, very simple game where you've got a simple deck of 15 cards. You're just picking one card each time. And it's really about that reading each other's mind. And it's about finishing those different challenges. And I think that is going to be a big group that this is for. If you are the sort of person who can see you sitting down with a bunch of friends and just kind of trying to get through them. There's 26 of them. We've made it about halfway so far. But, trying to get through all those challenges and that's something that you enjoy, this is great for that cuz this is a nice everyone's got a drink. You're not thinking too hard. You can be chit-chatting. No one's arguing about rules cuz the rules are very simple. It's that kind of game.
Yeah, and you have to be okay with with failing as well. Like occasionally, it will just be a situation where there just isn't anything that you can do. The certain event card will happen or whatever and you'll you'll fail, but it's so easy to reset and try again.
But, this is the kind of game where you are going to get frustrated at some of those challenges and maybe even a little bit at your teammates. But, I can definitely see people, you know, if you're traveling with some friends playing this in different places. I could see people taking this camping. This is the kind of game you can easily teach to new players. But, also it kind of has that like addictive thing where you just want to keep playing it. You want to keep crossing off all of those those different challenges. And so, if you're that kind of person, this might be a fit for you. And that is it. Have you played The Beat? And what other games like this? What other kind of simple, addictive card games have you really enjoyed? Please let us know in the comments.
Thank you so much for watching. And as usual, please like, subscribe, and hopefully we'll see you next time for another game.