I was almost fooled by Beatblock's deceptively simple style before being floored by what a delightfully brutal rhythm game it is

Beatblock is a brutal rhythmic wolf in sheep's clothing. Idling through its tutorial, I honestly wasn't expecting much. Where I'm used to tapping away at keys or gliding along a dance pad with my feet, all I needed for this game was my humble mouse. I slowly guide a paddle around a circular smiley in the centre of my screen, gobbling up tap notes and gently nudging along the path of hold notes while the occasional circle closes in around me, requiring a click to the beat.

I can't help but feel like developer BubbleTabby was intentionally luring me into a false sense of security with its drip-feeding. "Not bad, but let's face it—that was easy," the tutorial's text taunted. "Time to put it all together."

With half a dozen different note types to keep track of, Beatblock was suddenly a devilishly complex rhythm game wrapped up in simple Flash-era graphics. Keeping track of which notes required a mouse click and which ones didn't, while making sure my paddle wasn't veering too far off-course suddenly became a far more difficult task, without which I might have never ventured beyond this game's tutorial level.

The game only continues to build from there, too. I go through the demo's track list top-to-bottom, beginning with a song that introduces mines I have to avoid, while other songs have notes I have to whack with the side of my paddle as I swing around to hit the rest of the pattern, or negative notes that I have to turn around and grab with the back of my paddle instead. It's a great variety, with each song mixing it up so as not to totally overwhelm their charts while still providing a heap of challenge.

Something else the tutorial didn't let on is just how heavily integrated the visuals are into each song, which I'm an absolute sucker for. This first song is an all-out duel between myself and a western cowboy. I dance around mines while a crosshair skirts around my blobby smiley paddle-wielding lad.

The visual gimmicks do make songs harder to parse, but as someone who loves these things in other rhythm games like Pump it Up, it's getting no complaints from me. If anything, it's the whole point. Other songs see the notes pulsing or warping into different colours, each effect tying every song together into these individual experiences.

The songs bang too, far more than I expected. My personal favourite is CV35W's Público Cautivo, the song that introduces me to the slide notes. Not only do I get a handy little tutorial at the start, but the lyrics revolve around what I'm supposed to do and what happens if I don't hit them—spoiler alert, I drop the combo. It's the kind of weirdness I love in videogame music—this song in particular reminds me a lot of 2 Mello's excellent Twist Sound in Spin Rhythm XD.

I loved every single one of the five non-tutorial tracks on offer, and particularly had a fantastic time with ILOVEYOU.vbs as an entire audio-visual experience, flipping the background animation upside down and creating all sorts of chaos while I did my best to keep my combo going. I even got a little treat at the end in the form of a fishing minigame. And we all know your videogame isn't real if it doesn't include fishing.

Beatblock also has a level editor, and while I didn't do any tinkering around with it I'll be very excited to get stuck into maps that people far more talented than me have managed to concoct.

You can try out a demo for Beatblock now, with the full game launch thankfully not that far away. It'll be heading into early access on September 26, with BubbleTabby saying it intends to stay there for around a year before reaching its intended scope towards the end of 2026 with 40+ songs to choose from.