Beat Boxer
Exercise to your own music! Punch, dodge, and dance around the ring.
BeatBoxer is a VR boxing game that puts you in the spotlight of your own boxing match. Play any song from Youtube or use Airplay to play a continuous stream of music from Spotify, Pandora, iTunes, or your favorite music app.
Train up from a feather weight, to world champ with increasing difficulty. Dip left and right to avoid dodges while executing upper cuts and jabs to the rhythm of your music. Immerse yourself and dance around the ring in Room-Scale VR. Put your opponent on the ropes and connect multiple streaks to increase your score.
Each song is generated in real time using our custom developed music analysis software that
Allows you to stream continuously from any Airplay device – or directly from Youtube.
BeatBoxer tracks your score in a local leaderboard so you can show your friends who really floats like a butter fly and stings like a bee.
Active developers on this project mean that new features are pumped out rapidly and community feedback molds new features.
Steam User 7
This game is in desparate need of polish, but despite that I'd rate it as quite possibly the best algorithm based (i.e. can play any track) rhythm game currently available in VR, and highly recommend it if you are into these type of games.
Pros:
- For the music I listen to (Symphonic / Power metal) it's algorithms synchronise the punches to the music quite well, in most cases much better than it's competitors (there are some exceptions, like in the track Sober by Voyager, which is one of the rare tracks that is actually quite satisfying to play in Audioshield, but less so here). The only game I'd rate higher in this regards is Holodance, but that is because the orb placement in that game is set by a human therefore always spot on.
- Gives you quite a workout - if you are hoping VR might help you lose weight this is an excellent game to use.
- Constantly have to turn around as the orbs change which direction they come from, but they do this well and you will never have an orb coming from outside of your peripheral vision, so you will never be surprised by an orb you didn't see.
- Have to dodge obstacles from time to time, not just punch everything.
Cons:
I fully expect that many of these cons will be resolved over time, since they are all just polish type issues, and nothing fundamentally wrong with the game. When I bought the game it lacked local .mp3 support, but that was added within a day.
- Local files only support .mp3 files - there is currently no .ogg or .flac support, which will be a disappointment for many audiophiles and free software advocates, and means I am unable to play the vast majority of my music collection.
- Whatever .mp3 decoder they are using added pops into several of my songs. These tracks were all legally purchased from Amazon and other online stores, and play fine in every other music player.
- File browser cannot scroll past the 40th entry in a directory, which can be a significant problem for those of us with a reasonable music collection (which I suspect is most of the audience for games like this).
- After scrolling down in one directory and entering another, no subdirectories may be displayed until blindly scrolling upwards.
- File browser does not remember where you last were in the filesystem after playing a track.
- Tends to favour turning clockwise, so after every track you may have to turn around counter-clockwise half a dozen times to straighten the cable out.
- Feedback seems inconsistent - the controllers vibrate for most punches, but not all - I'm pretty sure I didn't miss, but it doesn't feel like I hit anything.
Features I couldn't care less about, but probably work well if you do care about them:
- Something something iTunes something something.
- Youtube (because Australian Internet sucks and so does the audio quality)
Steam User 3
Bought this game after not winning the contest on Reddit, sigh. Still was very excited to try the game, and it is definitely a great game.
Was very easy to pick up and start playing. The song selection was superb, I could find everything I wanted quickly. It has a genre feature which was useful for when I didn’t want to search youtube for a song.
I started out on featherweight, which to be honest, at that difficulty the beat matching wasn’t perfect. But when I moved up to the higher difficulty levels they were spot on. The game gets very challenging on the higher difficulty and the dodge mechanic is really fun.
Airplay mode was awesome! I was able to stream my favorite radio stations on Spotify with having to stop and select new songs.
Pros:
-Easy to get started
-Good beat detection on higher difficulties
-Airplay Mode
-Dodge mechanic is really fun
Cons:
-Beat detection could be a little better at lowest difficulty
Steam User 3
Game gives you a work out! Even on easy! Make sure you stretch almost pulled a muscle dodging. Punching and dodging to music of your choice is fun! Not bad for first release. I'm sure suggestions can help improve this game! I would recommend this! Having an ability to choose a background scene be cool!
Steam User 1
Awesome!
What more can I say, I've found my new workout game!
Very fun, music + boxing is a winning combo
Plus you can get music from different sources
Only bad thing to note right now is a very bad loading time, that sometimes totally freezes the headset and needs to be reset (but the game was only just released, so I'm not letting that bother me just yet)
Steam User 4
This game...
This game is sweet, now i've never played audioshield, and i've held back due to some bad reviews about the rhythm of the music being off. This seems like it would be a big set back for me however after playing for an hour on a variation of songs, I can strongly say that Beat Boxer gives you the feeling of being a complete badass and destroying those beats with your fists!
Now some are off however when you're in the zone and just going with the flow of the music, you don't notice it, every hit feels nice, especcially when you put in the effort to swing hard for those beats. I do recomend this game and I don't want to go around comparing it to Audioshield because you also have the 360 degree aspect of the game which makes you aware of your surroundings constantly, this brings a whole new focus into the music beating genre in VR.
I'll stop rambling, all in all I'll say 8/10 -
Cons:
-Not a huge amount of feedback in controllers when hitting the beats (don't get the umph)
-Some of the beats in songs are off
Pros:
-EVERYTHING ELSE, JUST TRY IT! I promise you'll get a sweat on if you work hard enough XD
Steam User 2
This game is crazy entertaining. When it first came on my headset it literally had me giggling as I was flailing my arms around to punch and dodge my way through the first song. Think Guitar Hero for your entire body. I could definitely play this for hours, though I do recommend wearing comfortable clothes - it'll get you moving! I've played AudioShield, but it doesn't compare. The dodging aspect is a new and interesting twist, and I like that the game keeps you moving around the "ring."
The fact that you can pick just about any song off YouTube is really cool, but as a particularly indecisive person, it took me a while to get through the song selection part. Airplay mode was a lifesaver, as it allowed me to stream my favorite station on Spotify and just play song after song without having to stop and choose.
Overall great game and on the cheaper end for VR.
Steam User 1
Pros:
Being in a boxing ring is a good idea. Keeps you centred in the play area and easy to move and follow incoming orbs.
You have to dodge or duck occasionally. Not just move your head like Holopoint but move.
Can use Youtube songs.
Cons:
Almost zero haptic feedback is a big immersion killer. Little to show you've hit/missed the balls coming at you and nothing to show the force with which you hit.
Don't use Airplay so that's useless to me and i don't want iTunes. No local files yet (although that's coming)
tl:dr 6/10 needs a big update to the haptics and visuals before this feels less like tapping fairy balls with mittens and more like boxing to music.