‘Rock Band' With Your Hands: VR Game ‘Beatable' Looks Incredible
Beatable, which enters early access on the Meta Horizon Store today, only costs $9.99 and lets you play music using your hands on a table. There's no danger of smashing your Meta Quest controllers, running through over half a dozen plastic Rock Band drum sets (guilty!), or missing an input on an elaborately designed virtual rig — this is as tactile as they come. Really, it might be the most intuitive physical game ever made for VR headsets.
All you need is an appropriately raised flat surface (e.g. tea tray, footstool, very docile and level-spined dog) for tapping, clapping, and finger snapping. It hopes to make the genre more of a real-world, tactile experience, and really, it needs to be seen to be believed — a record-setting performance by XR creative director Chuan Liu, filmed without the bells and whistles of post-production, shows how the mechanics work, and just how scalable the game could be for veteran rhythm-action players.
Beatable is pushing itself as the prime way to turn your real-life space into a studio — and part of the game. While you're fully in control with your hands to make beats and gestures to hit notes, XR Games has also built in calibration tools to keep it as accurate as possible. If you want to remove yourself from your surroundings, that's fine too, as you can ditch the mixed-reality settings.
XR's Beatable soundtrack has launched with songs from artists local to the developer — including multi-platinum British DJ Tom Zanetti, bhangra group RDB, and Gamini Khurara — plus tunes from its previous, delightfully fun release Zombieland: Headshot Fever. It aims to curate an audio experience that doesn't rely on a load of stock rhythm-game songs at you, much like vanilla Beat Saber.
It sounds like XR is excited for more musical expansions, and if Beatable proves to be a hit, the best thing it could do is offer deep support for musicians and creators to add their own tracks, and even adapt others in the public domain, much like the superb Trombone Champ. All strictly legal, of course — but opening the floodgates for more content is always critical to long-term success.
If you want to become an early adopter (I'm picking it up for the weekend), XR Games offers a Discord for those who want to give feedback or swap scores. It's early access right now, but the simplicity of the idea could send Beatable to the moon. Let's hope this one takes off.
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