Beatstar from Space Ape is a game app with a simple premise: Use motion controls to “play” music on your phone, like a basic phone version of the classic Guitar Hero games. But in practice, it’s so fun and customizable that communities of sprang up just to follow and discuss the game and how to get good. So let’s dive into the basics and what you need to know to improve!
Beatstar Summary
This single-player music game is a wonderful way to make time fly by. Get your fingers ready, because it can also quickly get challenging. The game uses a basic touchscreen board with different icons representing parts of a song – anything from vocals and percussion to famous guitar riffs. The more complicated the song, the faster and more demanding the requirements.
From this basic premise, the game app offers masterful replayability and a massive library of songs. That library is the true gem behind the addictive app. Unlike Guitar Hero’s fairly sparse selection of classic songs, Beatstar has a huge collection of hits (at last glance, well over 600), from classic rock to the bop you heard on the radio last year. Songs of the week include the latest chart-toppers from The Weeknd, Lil Nas X, Ed Sheeran, and so many others. No matter what genre you like, you can probably find some of your bands here.
With this mix, Beatstar has won a legion of fans and even does pop-up events around the world, as well as other activities. However, the game also restricts play with a number of microtransaction options, which we’ll discuss below, along with ways to can get the most out of the game.
Beatstar Premise
Pick a song and start playing! The mechanics of Beatstar are easy to describe and you can learn them in moments…but mastering them is a different story. When you start a song, it starts streaming a basic board – it’s not really correlated to music notes the way classics like Guitar Hero did, but the concept is close. Different parts of the song get different indicators for your busy thumbs. Some you have to tap, some you have to hold for the duration of the icon, and some you have to swipe in certain directions.
As you can imagine, faster-paced and more complex songs can quickly become more challenging. Beatstar has ways to influence this, too, notably ratings that go from Normal to Extreme to warn listeners what they’re getting into. There’s also a sense of progression with a Journey leveling system: The game starts you out with Normal difficulty songs, and the better your accuracy, the higher medals you get. Score the highest medals like Diamond, and you’ll quickly unlock Beatcoins which eventually unlock new songs, until you eventually have access to the majority of the library. You can also unlock specific songs by winning gems. Fortunately, you have the option to pick the genre for your song box, so you can focus on the type of music you like most.
But that’s not all you can do. Scoring well also enables you to unlock new avatar items to dress up your player character and customize them completely. You can also get track skins, which change the appearance of the icons and other aspects of play for some added fun.
Key Features
This whole process is gated by several key modes and transaction-based activities. The most important include:
- Time gating: Beatstar has added a number of time-gating limitations to the game. Most notably, you can only play a certain number of songs for free each day, usually around an hour or so. After that, you have to pay to get more gems, which unlock additional plays to keep going or allow you to continue a song even if you “failed” it. Or you can purchase unlimited play which ignores your reward limits and lets you just keep on playing.
- Wishlist cards: You have the ability to like songs you haven’t unlocked yet. Then you can use a special Wishlist card option to unlock a box that will randomly give you one of your liked songs.
- Single-player events: Beatstar is packed with different events to participate in once you unlock them in your Journey. Some events are daily, like Daily Shuffle, which highlights a specific song in your collection to win extra rewards from if you do well. You can play Daily Shuffle twice a day like this. Another single-player event in the weekly Beat Chaser, which allows players to win special tokens by playing songs associated with the weekly beat.
- Multiplayer events: Other events are larger in nature. In multiplayer events, which are almost always running, you compete against other players. Rank well for a specific song, and you can win tokens that allow you to win randomized awards. These awards are usually cosmetic items but can also be songs. These events may also unlock certain types of songs for their duration.
- Deluxe Editions: These are special versions of standard songs in the game that provide more of a challenge. They’re often sped up a bit and have more challenges for your fingers.
- Tour Pass: Tour Pass is the Beat Star version of seasons, ongoing content that gets updated and changed over time with new versions. It also functions as a subscription service, with both a free version and a premium paid version available. As you play after you join a season, you collect Tour Points. These allow you to unlock special Tour Pass rewards which are only available for a limited time. The premium rewards are, of course, better and more likely to contain special new songs. Tours are typically synced up with real-world seasons, events, and the music associated with them (i.e., summer beats).
- Player tags: Player tags aren’t just associated with your avatar, they also allow you to search for contacts and add friends. Then you can compete with others over your favorite songs and who can pull off the best performance.
More Games Like Beatstar
There are a lot of rhythm games out there, and plenty of them in app form. If you want to find more games like Beatstar, it’s not hard. However, if you particularly like Beatstar’s style and level of challenge, we can recommend another Space Ape game: Country Star.
Country Star shares a lot of similarities with Beatstar, but as you can guess, it’s more focused on country music. Space Ape has a lot of other game apps, but this one is the closest to the Beatstar experience that you’ll be able to get.
Beatstar Cheats & Codes
We’ve gone through the many layers of Beatstar, but we bet you’re wondering how to make the whole thing easier. Or, at least you’ll want to maximize your time so you can get the best rewards. Let’s go over the best tricks for the truly ambitious, and what you should know about each one.
Use a Generator
The most direct cheat that people use for Beatstar is downloading a resource generator. This is a hack that can give you unlimited gems and other resource. Then you can unlock anything that you want in the game, including unlimited play. There are a few different versions floating around, and you can find YouTube tutorials on how they work.
However, this hacking method has a lot of built-in risks, too. These generators are not official and can be very shady, potentially opening your phone up to malware or other issues. At the least, you’ll have to sign up for a subscription service and be forced to fill out a survey. Or you may be required to download free games (also potentially malware or adware) onto your phone. That may be a high price to pay for unlimited resources, but it does appear to deliver on its promise.
Make Your Own Practice Mode
We mentioned above that time limits imposed each day limit how often you can play the game. But if you’ve reached max rewards or near the end of your time limit, there’s something else you can try. Once you near the end of your last song, you can quit out of it entirely. You won’t get an points or credit for playing the song. However, when you restart the app, you should be able to play it again.
Repeat this as many times as you want. It’s a great way to improve your skills so you’ll be ready to excel tomorrow. You won’t get any credit for it, but it can still give you an edge.
Download Codes for Songs or More
These are codes that Beatstar makes available to get various song prizes and similar offerings. The trick is that many of them can work more than once, so people can share them with friends and help others get additional songs. You can find lists for these codes in the Beatstar community where they’re permitted, like on Reddit.
We can’t guarantee that any of these codes will work, but if you want some free stuff you can search through them. Unlike hacks like resource generators and other cheats, these should be safe to try out even if they don’t work.
Download a Full Mod for Beatstar
Downloading a mod for a game also carries a lot of risk. Not only can it add malware to your phone, but it could brick it entirely or make Beatstar unplayable if something goes wrong. However, if you want to take the risk there are mods available for the game to enable additional modes. This one on Modyolo allows you to turn on an auto-perfect mode, for example, so you can quickly level up and amass currency.
We’re sometimes hesitant to recommend mods like these because even if they’re trustworthy, they have a habit of being very buggy. They also don’t tend to be updated much, which makes them unusable over time. We linked to an option that seems fairly stable for now, but keep in mind that issues can crop up over time.
Beatstar Cheats FAQs
You’ve got extra questions, we’ve got important answers for Beatstar players!
What’s the Difference Between Song Cases and Song Cards?
This is a point of confusion for new players. Song cards are a type of currency that you can earn to eventually unlock a song box. Song boxes contain important drops, notably new songs, that you can choose. Cards allow you to focus on various genres or difficulties, too.
Song cases contain three different card drops and give you free stuff. You can unlock them after three hours of play or other circumstances. A case is basically just a way to get a few cards at once.
How Can You Get Perfect Scores on Beatstar?
If you don’t want to use mods, then you’ll need to practice. Really dedicated Beatstar players have a number of tricks they use to improve. That includes proper hand positions, usually with the phone laying on a flat surface and fingers spread out over the touchscreen. This helps with speed, reach, and accuracy.
Does Beatstar Have Promotions or Discounts?
It has promotions that you can claim to get extended playing time, yes. And some discounts may be available with the seasons and their offerings, but that’s not guaranteed.
The image featured at the top of this post is ©Space Ape.