OFFBEAT: Review on Linux and Steam Deck
Learn how to produce music with OFFBEAT, both a game and a music creating platform developed by Whetstone Games and published by Pantaloon. Works great on Steam Deck (Playable) and on Linux with Proton.
The game starts with your uncle gifting you a music sequencer, and then asks you to create a ringtone with it. You plug your tiger keyboard (not a musical cat toy) and start making music with them.
The music sequencer is your main producing tool allows you to set some inputs, pick the notes you want to play from each input and at which time they should play. It also allows you to set beats per minute, and the key of the composition. Once you are satisfied, you can save it to a cassette tape.
The initial keyboard, for a toy, it is quite robust, it can mimic a piano, an organ, it also makes meows and engine revving sounds. There is a limit of 3 notes input at a time to create chords. By clicking on it, you can go to an interface that let you play it, or tweak its settings (which kind of sound you want it to make). But you don’t need to play the instrument, the sequencer will take care of that.
Then ,you will unlock new toys and equipment to make different type of sounds, or modify the sound of another. Like a singing gnome, that you can use it to mimic a choir (or even to set a droning beat with the right tweaks), a cymbal-banging monkey that will be your first thing close to a drum, and a paper shredder that works as an effect module to the toys.
There is an economy in the game: you make money with your tunes, but it is more like a non-linear progression system than resource management. Your uncle will pay for the ringtone, then a friend of his will contact you with a request, then people from the neighborhood that learned about you from your previous works, and so on. They all will pay for your work. But they will only contact you if you have the equipment required for the work.
With the money you make, you can go to the catalog and buy new equipment. Once you buy the new toy, someone will contact you requesting you to make music that might require that toy. When I got the gnome, Lilith reached me out and requested a song with the “aah”’s the gnome makes to create the right atmosphere for a ritual.
Every job you take has a little story to it, and you learn a bit more about the people and local business, who they are and how they evolve in parallel with your own progress. While it might seem minor, I think OFFBEAT would be a bit dull without this narrative aspect. It would be more like a tool for music production than a game. The curiosity of my next prospect client call is another motivator to progress in the game.
Another person you will meet is Lacey, a pirate radio dude that will teach you how to hack your toys to make most out of it. Like changing the cat to go one octave higher or lower, and your monkey to also shake an egg (rattling sound).
While not an educational game, you will learn a bunch about music production. When either you play with the toys, or set the track on the sequencer, some balloons with text will appear on the side. Those balloons will appear on your in-game binder, describing what happened for that to appear. Clients will progressively ask for more of those elements. They might want raising aah, a shredded sound, or a meow that you have to add at some point in the track.
Sadly, not all requests were on the binders, so I had to consult Wikipedia for some of those.
The game does not judge quality, only if you met the criteria requested. I was requested a 3 part-song, and while I was satisfied with the first 2, I delivered a terrible 3rd part because I was a bit late with this review and I wanted to progress. If anything, I wish there was a way to revisit past works and do better, but if that was possible life would be so much better (it would be nice if you could do that in the game as well).
The art of the game is superb. I like the pixel art style. While it varies from simple style on the larger view, to a more elaborated one when you are up close to the instrument, and to something that looks like a very compressed and limited colour range JPG on the second hand ads, they all are coherent together with the theme of the game, and they look great. If anything, I wish they used the screen space more effectively, mainly for the instruments. It would make things better for smaller screen sizes, like on the Steam Deck.
The game lets you save the music you make as .WAV, and you have the rights to do what you want with them. While I there is no export function in game, your music files are saved in:
‘/home/user/Games/steam/steamapps/compatdata/4468030/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/AppData/LocalLow/Whetstone Games/OFFBEAT/exported_audio’
Here are a couple of samples:
Occult Ritual
Ice Cream Jingle
An an official demonstration of what you can do:
I would also like to bring some attention to the publisher, Pantaloon. While they do not have many games under their label, I got to know them first as a promoting firm, what they do quite well. In recent times, they might be the only company I enjoy reading press releases: non-click bait titles, paired with well-thought and human-like text, that always gets my curiosity towards their games. Also, they promote their stuff in fairly unique ways. Recently, they worked with the game Paranormashight: The Marmaid’s Curse (reviewed by Eki a few weeks ago). And a couple of Steam Next Fest ago, when I first learned about them, they promoted Vultures - Scavengers of Death (which I have an upcoming review in the works), offering the first few hundreds of people able to complete the demo the full version upon release.
Despite being in Early Access on Steam, I really enjoyed my time with the current state of OFFBEAT. I did not bump into any bugs, and the game seems to be well polished enough. From the roadmap available on Steam, the devs are adding plenty more before a full release: instruments, effects, jobs, stories, and quality of life improvements.
It is easy to recommend, with the only caveat that the game does not have proper support for controllers. The Steam Deck will emulate your mouse if you do not have one plugged. That is why I played mainly on the PC. On the Deck, I mostly used the trackpad because I find it more precise than the analog sticks, and I am not a big fan of touching the screen. Also, if you are familiar with keyboards or other instrument applications on touchscreen (tablets or phones) that lets you play chords with multiple fingers, here it is just emulating the mouse, so you can’t use multi-touch on the Deck. That’s a clear limitation.
OFFBEAT is on Steam and we received a key from the publisher for this review.