Beat Saber is a rhythm game that plays like an embodied puzzle game which creates a visceral connection to 10 custom music tracks. It’s similar to Soundboxing and Audio Shield, but you use extended lightsabers rather than your fists, which makes you feel like a ninja. I had a chance to talk with the chief programmer Jan Ilavsky and music composer Jaroslav Beck at GDC about the development of Beat Saber, some more details about their scoring algorithm, and where they’re taking it in the future.
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I had a chance to get early practice with the beta version, and I played for an hour a day over the course of a week. It’s an extremely satisfying game that I expect will have a lot of crossover appeal for people who have never tried VR before. The LIV mixed reality streaming integration means that you’re going to be seeing a lot of Beat Saber videos in the next few weeks of people sharing their perfect runs, flow states, and expressions of personality through dancing. Beat Saber really utilizes the best aspects of embodied gameplay that is completely unique to VR, and there is a challenging puzzle aspect with the arrows dictating which direction you need to swipe.
Beat Saber launched in early access on Steam on May 1st, and there’s a lot more content and features sure to come in the future.
Here’s a couple of my runs of Beat Saber on expert mode:
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Music: Fatality & Summer Trip