BPM: BULLETS PER MINUTE

One minor thumbs up for being a pioneer. The rest is just depressing. I want it to be good. I like punishing games. I don't like unfairly punishing games that clap a majority of your health bar because you couldn't see the one shield guard in the mass of monochrome. In a game where you're punished for not reacting immediately, the screen can't be entirely one color. There are no instant sight reads, it's just a mass of red-orange (save for the literal last level and one side track). And if you're going to make a rhythm game, make the reactions to enemies actually follow something resembling a rhythm. Just because they shoot on beat doesn't mean I have to dodge on beat, which feels awful and ruins flow. Good concept ruined by poor balance and the color orange.

Ты попросил биты помедленней 140 bpm Теперь трясешься пиздoс, но Питер — мой Вифлеем Eбaный ты бомж, тебе здесь пиздeц Лишь взобравшись на мой хер, ты покоришь Эверест

The game is a very awesome idea that was executed poorly. It's about an hour of fun before it gets repetitive. There isn't much gameplay there, the sticker price is egregious for what it is (probably to make whatever sales it goes on look better).

man i had some fun with this but coming back to it now i'm just endlessly pissed off by the 'too far' message. if you can't balance a game over the simple fact that in close quarters bullets might as well be pulses of laser light from a to b maybe don't make games?

BPM: Let the rhythm guide your every bullet - or drop dead. I am tempted to simply call this game art, and no matter how much the difficulty tortures me, I wouldn't change a single bit. However, that's not the end of the story. The game is likely based on the idea of making a FPS Necrodancer but ended up being an unforgiving rhythm-based precision first-person shooter in perma-death land with an appeal to speedrunners (hence, a FPS roguelike). While rhythm is important, you won't get anywhere without good shooting skills. There are some roguelite elements (like the bank) but specifically the character unlocks (apart from Skuld who plays more like Post Void) are rather different skill/difficulty levels, and we are forced to learn everything the hard way. And there is indeed a lot to learn in terms of builds. Unfortunately, I feel this is where the game falls short. The most successful builds are geared towards going infinite: Infinite shield, life, ammo, ultimates... name it. And if you are not an elite player, you can only make it with an OP build, and thus, the game becomes a slot machine on higher difficulty levels. Nonetheless, if you go into this game with serious intentions, it is practically guaranteed that you will come out refined on the other end. However, the endgame of BPM does not simply ask you to master the game (Odr), but to reach flawless perfection (Sanngridr, hellish, yikes). This feels unnecessary and keeps some people from enjoying the game to its full extent, but I would still recommend it to everyone who seeks a challenge and is willing to improve. 7.5/10

Okay so i'm deciding to rewrite my review after putting in more hours and beating more runs and playing more characters. Okay so lets start with my initial thoughts. This game is a lot of fun and is very unique and interesting. Sure it has no story, no tutorial, no real item descriptions, and a very bare bones difficulty modifier but even with those issues aside it still manages to be a lot of fun and tote that line of difficult but annoying and a fun challenge decently well. I love the style of this game and that the devs were clearly passionate about making a rhythm first person game set to heavy metal with a unique art style and gameplay. I think this shouldn't be discouraged as innovation and ideas are always good to have and we shouldn't just want every game to be the same game. However....this game is kind of a contradiction and kind of dumb as hell at times. My biggest example of this is the characters.... So starting off you have health buffs, health items, shields, items that use health as a currency, Knife shrines that give an item in exchange for health, healing spells, half the shop dedicated to healing items guaranteed, enemy damage on touch, and flyer enemies that are extremely hard to dodge due to their predictive aim that reads your inputs. And they made 30% of the character (no i checked my math) unable to use any of that. Just straight out can't use it. It's worthless to them. You know why? Because they don't use health. 2 are 1 shot characters that die in 1 hit unless you use the like i want to say 2 items that can negate damage. and the other uses gold as health who loses half of his gold flat out if you take any damage. Why? Why make so much of your game about health and getting stronger via health if you make that many characters unable to use any of it. And why make all of those items still drop? On top of that a real gripe i've started having is the RNG. I love complete random roguelites of course but you need to have some limitations because as some reviews have pointed out. You can be completely shafted and have the run completely dead in the water because you just get unlucky and get for example 0 keys and then on top of that you can get even more unlucky and have every chest that drops from a room completion be a locked chest meaning you can't open it. Oh and of course you can also have the shrines in the same room be a shrine where you have to hand keys over for an item. Like huh? You're telling me I can't use anything on this floor because my luck says so? It's very dumb and it's not uncommon because i've had it happen. Multiple times. that aside what urks me a lot as well as how many runs you will have to do because of this. Especially if you want to do the characters who don't use health. Due to the flyers predicting your movement and shooting where you will go rather than where you are and also having infinite range this can lead to runs being dead with in minutes. I've seen forums about people saying "it took me about 200 runs to beat the game on hard with this character" and i'm like are you ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ insane no game should take that many runs to beat. Mind you each run is at least 30-40 ish minutes if you get far. You see the issues here i hope. Overall I think the game is fun and cool but not being able to make the game look easier on the eyes. the balance of the characters, the lack of care to make runs at least be doable because of the insane amount of rng, as well as the horrible balance of certain enemies or enemy rooms (because i love getting the guy who makes a bubble that covers the whole map that you have to go through at a certain beat while i have 10 flies and the shield guy who shoots tracking bolts each beat who can't be shot at from the front all up my ass in 1 room that is about 30 feet wide) really make the game not fun. i enjoy throwing a couple runs at it here and there just to maybe get lucky but I honestly hate this game at times and it has by far made me smack my chair or desk way more than any game because i often feel the deaths are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ which is not something you want. you want deaths to feel like i messed up not that the game messed up or is hitting me with an impossible challenge. i still would recommend the game but just a word of warning to know what you're getting into and be mentally prepared for it because I am already at the point where I wish more people made mods for this game so i could remove the flyers or slow their projectiles or give the 1 shot characters the ability to use 90% of the drops.

[h1][b] TLDR: While some fun is to be had if you prefer FPS rhythm-based games, there’s too much of a focus on skill-based gameplay with no reward aside from achievements, instead of an enthralling roguelike.[/b] [/h1] [h1]PROS: [/h1] ➕Custom music option ➕Completely random character (Run) that adds some fun replayability [h1]NEUTRALS: [/h1] 🔹Can be very difficult, even on Easy 🔹Flys are the most annoying enemy ever [h1]CONS: [/h1] ➖Weapon range dumb and unfun ➖Art style can make it difficult to see ➖Severe lack of information and description on everything ➖Music can get very repetitive ➖Useless drops for certain characters (health drops on characters with 0 health) This game is very similar to Metal: Hellsinger (MH), as such, I’ll be making numerous references to it. Here is my review for MH: https://steamcommunity.com/id/Synikx/recommended/1061910?snr=1_5_9__402 [h1] [b] Content (Game world/Narrative) – [3/10] [/b] [/h1] The game world is generally very boring. It’s just a randomized series of square rooms with a random assortment of: enemies, chests, shop, blacksmith, gambling. I also unfortunately failed to notice any sort of secrets - breakable walls, hidden pathways, ect, which further makes the levels themselves a bit boring and unfun. The repetitive art style does not lend any favors to randomized rooms. There is no narrative, this is a pure roguelike. This is a shame, because there is clearly some pantheon influence in the characters and zones you visit. [h1][b] Gameplay (Mechanics/Difficulty) – [5/10] [/b] [/h1] BPM leans heavily into the roguelike elements, there is very little power that carries over between runs, and most of the characters you unlock come with severe negatives alongside their benefits that the player must work around, further adding to the skill-based mechanics. Essentially, like most roguelikes, you go through a randomized dungeon, get randomized items to incorporate in your build, and see if you can make it all the way through to the final boss. There are about ~8 dungeons before the final boss, each with their end boss having some unique mechanics like dodging specifically on beat. The items can be hit or miss. There are a few items (infinite ammo, minigun) that will snowball you into a victory no matter what, which makes me question the balance of other aspects of the game focused on player skill. When a couple items can carry you through an entire run, they should be nerfed and others should be buffed. Last thing I want to note is the strictness of item obtainability. One of the most powerful items I’ve gotten is the skeleton key. There are a ton of chests that are locked and you are drip-fed keys. You’ll have to make many choices that can make-or-break runs since a select few items are so powerful. I really didn’t like the key/locked chest element because of this. Locked chests seem like a hindrance that blocks the player by saying you can only have x amount of fun where x = keys. One thing of note, this is a very difficult game. You only get about 4 or 5 hits before you die and some of the unlockable characters are even less, or having 0 health and only armor. Even on easy mode, I found myself dying multiple times in the first dungeon. [h1] [b] Graphics (Quality/Technical) – [3/10] [/b] [/h1] Somewhat similar to Mirror’s Edge, the art style in BPM is almost obnoxiously oppressive. Everything is the same shade of orange or green or red. It can be hard to see enemies, or even just stat upgrades against a wall. I’m really not a fan. Graphically, nothing is very impressive. Technically, I encountered no bugs or issues. i9-13900KF | RTX 4090 | 64GB RAM | 1440p @ 240hz | Windows 11 installed on SSD [h1] [b] Audio – [5/10] [/b] [/h1] You’d imagine in a music-focused game, that the music would be good. It kinda/sorta is. The song variety is fairly dismal which leads to a lot of repetition. Especially early on with dying a lot and being stuck in the starting stages, it starts to get a bit annoying. Even more unfortunate, unlike Metal: Hellsinger, I never once got the adrenaline rush that comes when a song peaks during intense action sequences. Thankfully, the devs found a lazy way around this by shifting the onus to the user by allowing you to use custom music. [h1] [b] Replay Factor (Longevity) – [6/10] [/b] [/h1] Fairly good, and probably BPMs best aspect is its ability to just jump right into a run and start blasting. I also really like one of the characters (Run), how every part of them is randomized, so you can start off with a completely random character in addition to whatever else you pick up. Could use some sort of online component though - leaderboards, daily runs, something like that. The only option is Challenges which seem a bit barebones and pointless. [h1] [b] Final Verdict – [4/10] [/b] [/h1] BPM: Bullets Per Minute (BPM) is a rhythm-oriented FPS game where you must shoot your weapon to the beats of the music to make it through randomized dungeons in a roguelike experience. To start with my negatives, the biggest for me is the repetitive music, restrictive player power and lack of any sort of in-game descriptions. When you have a game built around music, the first priority should be an excellent soundtrack, this is something to me that BPM doesn’t succeed on. Yes, you do have the option to use your own custom music, which is great, but I am a firm believer that in musically-oriented games, the onus of a good soundtrack should fall on the developer. I do not get the same adrenaline rush of shooting to the beats like I do with other FPS music games like the excellent Metal: Hellsinger. As for the player power, I think the game can be somewhat restrictive with player power locked behind keys needed for chests primarily, but the other issue is the guns. For a game that literally has “Bullets Per Minute” in its title, you would find it surprising to find the answer to that question to be quite low. Between pistols, revolvers, and slow-firing launchers, the projectiles per time frame are generally going to be on the lower end unless you find something crazy like a minigun. Lastly, the lack of in-game descriptions is just absurd and lazy. None of the characters even have ANY of their stats or their abilities displayed, the item pickups often have between 2-5 WORDS of description, and even the stats tells you nothing specific other than a simple point system - what is the difference between damage +1 vs ability +1? Who knows? Actually, the wiki does. Prepare to spend a bunch of time going through the BPM wiki because the game, for whatever reason, is absurdly vague. Learn from Slay the Spire here. As for my positives, I would say that the replay value of just jumping into a run promotes the skill-based presentation of the game. There are very little powers available to the player that carry over through different runs, combined with the lack of preparation means you can just pick a character, jump into the game, and start shooting. Not having to worry about any sort of deliberate choices can be a positive as there is no fluff to stop from jamming to the beats while shooting things. Overall, I think that BPM is okay. It’s hard to recommend when Metal: Hellsinger exists AND even has a roguelite mode. I think that everything BPM does, MH does better. I would only recommend BPM if you already played MH and want more rhythm FPS action OR you prefer skill-based roguelikes against a game that is narrative focused with roguelike gameplay being an afterthought. Otherwise, go play MH. [h1] [b] Recommend? [Y/N] [/b] [/h1] [h1]No[/h1] You can find my curator page here: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Synik_GR

Started BPM thinking it was DOOM with extra steps. It is. – Every bullet, every reload, every jump = must be on the beat – Missed the rhythm once and got humbled by a flying skull – Reloading to the music is fun until you forget the tempo and die like an idiot – Enemies don’t just kill you, they judge your sense of rhythm – Spent 2 hours on one boss because I can’t count to 4 – Felt like Guitar Hero, but instead of applause I got exploded – Soundtrack slaps so hard my neighbors now worship Odin – 10/10, the only game where being tone-deaf is a death sentence BPM isn’t an FPS. It’s a Viking rave where failure = instant funeral.