What is JoyBeat?
JoyBeat is a rhythm game in the spirit of drum games and arcade boss fights. Every track is a duel: a pixel-art boss stands at the end of a stone path at night and throws enemies down two lanes in time with the drums. You are the ninja at the bottom, and every enemy you cut on the beat plays a drum and fires a bolt into the boss.
There are only two buttons, so you can start right away: the left lane carries the kick drum, the right lane the snare. The enemies are placed on the drum hits that are really in the music, so if you listen, your hands find the rhythm on their own. A song lasts about 75 seconds – long enough for a fight, short enough for one more go.
JoyBeat runs in full screen on phones (held upright), tablets and computers – free, with no download and no account.
Goal: knock the boss out
Each cut takes a bite out of the boss’s health bar. The boss makes a last stand: it cannot be pushed below 10% of its health until the finale, the last chorus of the song, which the game announces with a FINAL ROUND banner. Only then can you knock it out – so the K.O. always lands on the climax of the music.
Miss too many enemies and your own health bar runs out, which ends the song early. A knock-out on each difficulty is marked next to the track, and your best score per track and difficulty is saved in your browser.
Timing and score
An enemy has to be cut the moment it touches the line. The closer to the drum hit, the better:
- Perfect
- within 45 ms of the beat – 115 points and full damage
- Great
- within 90 ms – 100 points
- Good
- within 140 ms – 70 points
- Miss
- the enemy reaches you: the streak and the multiplier are gone
- Mine
- never cut it – it hurts you like a miss
Boss attacks, streaks and loot
Before the music climbs, the boss attacks with a barrage: a gold wave across both lanes. Tap as fast as you can with both thumbs – every tap hurts the boss, and deflecting 70% of the barrage stuns it, so for the next two bars every cut does double damage.
A clean streak raises the multiplier from x1 to x2, x4 and x8, called BOOST. The multiplier counts for points and for damage, so a long streak hits the boss up to three times harder. One miss drops it back to x1. Glowing enemies carry loot: a heart (health), a shield (blocks one miss), a fire blade (double damage for a while), shurikens (straight into the boss) and a star (instant BOOST).
Tracks, bosses and difficulty
Eight tracks, slow to fast, each with its own boss. All of them are open from the start, on four difficulties (Easy, Normal, Hard, Expert):
- Rain Check
- 91 BPM, slow groove – vs DRIZZLE
- Insert Coin
- 100 BPM, warm-up – vs COIN-OP
- First Tape
- 109 BPM, straight beat – vs TAPE HEAD
- After Midnight
- 130 BPM – vs NIGHT OWL
- Concrete Sunset
- 136 BPM – vs SMOG
- Gym Disco ’97
- 139 BPM – vs DISCO SKULL
- Redline
- 175 BPM – vs REDLINE
- Head Crash
- 174 BPM, the finale – vs HEAD CRASH
Online scores
Every track has its own top 10. Finish a song and sign the guest book with a nickname – no account needed. The board shows the difficulty you played and a K.O. badge if you knocked the boss out. No-fail practice mode is there for learning a track and is not ranked. If your taps are consistently early or late, the results screen offers a one-tap sync fix.
Controls
- Touch
- tap the left half of the screen for the left lane, the right half for the right lane; the ❚❚ button pauses
- Keyboard
- ← and → (or Z / X, A / D, F / J), Esc or P to pause; in the menus ↑ ↓ pick a track, ← → the difficulty, Enter plays
- Mouse
- left button for the left lane, right button for the right lane
