Backbeat News

Hello!

Thanks to support from our players we have identified several problems that impact different users of the game.

Firstly, player PRPE7UAL has helped us identify a situation where the game would hang on start with a white screen due to a Unity issue involving certan vsync settings on Nvidia graphics cards. Accordingly we have switched to using the software encoder for movie playback on all Windows builds. This should resolve launch issues you have in these setups.

Second, thanks to Yhprum we found an issue where the updated movement UI could cause unsolvable puzzles in a few levels due to subtle changes in how potential movesets are generated. 9-2 is one such level and should be solvable again now.

Finally, thanks to omgkitteh we discovered in previous versions of the game there was an unintended glitch that allowed Toshi to move in certain ways with his powermove. This was culled in the QoL update inadvertantly, but we have restored this behavior now to preserve the 1.0 experience of the game for those players which may have been using the glitch to solve some of the levels.

Thank you to our community for helping make Backbeat even better and more compatible on all devices.

As always, if you run into difficulty with the game, please reach out in the forums and we will assist as promptly as we can.

Thank you and happy music making!

From snowy Stockholm,
David

Hello Backbeat fans!

This month we have released a quality of life update to all platforms to help improve the game experience and get you on track to knocking out all the achievements. A new How To section is available in the pause menu showing off all the basic mechanics and scoring rules for Backbeat, along with short looping videos to demonstrate the feature. The move previews for each character are now displayed at all times to help with level readability. Tutorial text has also been reworked to explain some of the musical resources. Finally, the dialog system now has a more iconic UI in the lower left hand corner of the screen so you can throttle the cutscene playback speed or keep it interactive. All tutorial dialogue segments automatically shift to manual advance so you nothing slips by.

Thank you for continuing to support us! We are a four-person studio and your reviews and feedback help us keep producing fresh takes on strategy games. Please review Backbeat today, or reach out in the forums if you're having trouble.

Yours from Stockholm,
David and the Backbeat team

Hello Superfans!

We have been busy beavers this quarter working on all kinds of fun things in the office and now we can share some of them!

First and foremost, we have a new content update in Backbeat, the Gig and Gear Expansion! Update now and you will receive a bevy of fun new things to mess around with, some inspired by feedback from you:

• Six new chin-scratching time-based environment puzzles and hijinx
  
• Classic 4:3 CRT display mode
  
• A new master band title and the ultimate guitar effect pedal, OCTAVER
• Dialogue chatter volume adjustment
  
• Interface scale adjustment
  

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Six new remix levels take our heroine Watts and friends through adventures including fishing for change in arcades, hanging out at the mall, and breaking Josh out from unpaid overtime. And there's no better way to think outside the box then use a 90s 4:3 aspect ratio when solving your puzzles! Imagine what Backbeat would look like on an original 32-bit GameStation with CRT mode. For the hardiest Backbeat players, we've added an entirely new guitar pedal, OCTAVER, as the final unlock in the game. Can you reach 13000 style points to try out the phattest bass in town? We believe!

If you can't get enough of Backbeat's amazing music in Steam, we can't blame you! You can now take Backbeat's snazzy solos wherever you go as we've launched Ichigoichie Records on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, Tidal, and Deezer. Follow us and support your favorite indie developer on the go, leaving that soundtrack on LOOP. ːsteamhappyː


Try it on your favorite music service here: https://ditto.fm/backbeat-original-soundtrack


Our art team has been working on some new Backbeat remix comics and we're happy to share the next one. This time our heroes have been shortchanged by a certain club owner and need to stealthy retrieve their fair share. Check out episode two of Garage Band Bites, "Stiffed Again".

Read and follow on Instagram here.
Read and follow on Tapas here.

Today is our company's annual midsummer dinner in the garden outside our office, so we are toasting you! Thanks for helping make our 2023 a blast.



Get engaged!

Comment on this post and tell us what you think, or follow along on social.

Stay cool and funky!
-- David & the Backbeat team at Ichigoichie

Got a quarter? Give us a call!

Twitter - Facebook - Instagram - YouTube

Hello funky 151a superfans!

Since Backbeat launched on all platforms in March, we have been hard at work at new exciting things to share from the town of Hornsburg.

We can't say much now, but suffice it to say there are some awesome new features in development built largely from your feedback! Look for more information in the next couple of weeks.

In the meantime, we are proud to announce the launch of our official Backbeat web comic, Garage Band Bites. On Instagram and Tapas you can follow along with some fresh storylines involving our heroine, Watts, and her friends in Powerslyde. Check out the full episode 1 from the links below!



Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cs_VSmwoRU4/? Tapas: https://tapas.io/episode/2860574

Get engaged!

Comment on this post and tell us what you think, or follow along on social.

Stay cool and funky!
-- The Backbeat team at Ichigoichie

Got a quarter? Give us a call!

Twitter - Facebook - Instagram - YouTube

Our sophomore title, the funky sokoban/stealth-strategy mashup Backbeat is now available on Steam!



This is our second title launching on Steam and it’s really cool to see how much our company grown since Hexagroove: Tactical DJ in 2020. The first time around was a great experience but there was so much more we wanted make more accessible and inviting. In Backbeat we designed the interface from the ground up for 4K and able to scale across Windows, Mac, and Steam Deck, on monitors boxy and wide. The games we design at Ichigoichie are built on mashing up genres and deriving our gameplay mechanics from musical theory. This was at times a little overwhelming in Hexagroove, so we worked hard to portion out new mechanics in Backbeat through a much broader portion of the game. So much in fact you’ll still be learning new tricks more than three quarters through the main campaign!

Backbeat is at first glance a turn-based sokoban puzzle game. You have a band of up to four characters and must get them all to the goal within a limited number of turns. Each character moves differently presenting unique challenges. After some levels we introduce time mechanics to the mix, and you’ll need to synchronize each character’s timeline with the others, working together to unblock obstacles on the path to the goal. Finally, we add four shared resources you must manage while navigating space and time. Which turns you choose to change direction or interact with the environment cause these resources to increase or decrease. Maximize the resources and you get a high score. Run out of resources, and you’re in a failure state. Fortunately, rewinding the turns of each character individually is possible to allow incremental improvements to your puzzle solutions.



One thing we wanted to add to Backbeat was a story to motivate the your choices and set the stakes. The setting is 1995 in suburban Washington, D.C. and has a lot of callouts to the last days of the analog era before the advent of the internet. The narrative is a homage to ensemble 90s dramedies like “With Honors”, “The Commitments”, and “School of Rock”. Heroine Watts is doing her best to hold together a band of amateur funk musicians and contending with all the struggles of collaborative creation: inflated egos, clashing personality types, and external responsibilities to work and family. A diverse cast of characters exist in each of the two main bands, and we hope you can find one that speaks to you.

If you’re a fan of puzzle games, turn-based strategy, or story-rich retro experiences, then I think there’s something for you to appreciate, and many more novel features to discover. Start with the free demo and I hope you have some fun!

Here are some places to get tips on starting and up to speed on what makes Backbeat unique:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2946791114
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmCvB3AKNLU&list=PL-c7vBDSe07Lumz1ZKPuWGnDj-GNynJF5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rDkXJwnYMo&list=PL-c7vBDSe07Lumz1ZKPuWGnDj-GNynJF5&index=2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1Kn6_cXYhU&list=PL-c7vBDSe07Lumz1ZKPuWGnDj-GNynJF5&index=3

From lovely Stockholm,
David Ventura - Creative Director

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