About This Demo

BEATSHIFT ARENA — DEMO is the free preview of a multiplayer arena
shooter where weapons fire to the beat. Every shot, missile, and ability syncs
to the music — so the same arena plays differently on every track.

This demo packs the full core combat loop: beat-synced
weapons, dash and grapple movement, the exocube system, online and local
multiplayer up to 4 teams and 8 players, 4 real players, 4 AI, and a curated DMCA-safe music sampler.

The full game expands every axis — more modes, more maps, larger lobbies, modding,
custom content, and the complete 80+ track library.

What's in the Demo

• Beat-Synced Combat — Weapons fire on musical beat boundaries.
  Homing missiles ignite on beat. Shield shockwaves pulse to the rhythm.
  Switch songs, the same arena plays differently.

• Fast Movement — Dash, multi-jump, and grapple. You're a cube,
  you move fast, you hit hard.

• Exocube System — Dead players leave physical cubes in the arena.
  Claim them, push them with damage, or break them into upgrade drops. The
  arena reshapes itself through combat.

• Player Scaling — Take damage and grow larger. The bigger you
  get, the more powerful your weapons — but you're a bigger target, and your
  exocube blocks more of the arena when you die.

• Arena Shifts — Six bounding planes move mid-match, compressing
  and reshaping the playable space. Get caught outside the bounds and you're
  launched back in at high speed — synced to the beat.

• Upgrades — Homing missiles, defense orbs, shield shockwaves,
  primary fire boosts. Each operates on beat-synced timing.

• Team Territory — Color-coded squads fighting for control.
  Claimed exocubes score for your team and change the arena's color map.

Demo Contents

• 4v4 multiplayer — Up to 4 real players + 4 AI bots per match,
  player-hosted online or solo offline.

• Tutorial — Learn the basics, movement, and exocube
  mechanics.

• Practice vs AI — Solo against bots with adjustable
  difficulty.

• Curated music sampler — A hand-picked subset of the full
  DMCA-safe track library, covering different tempos and styles so you can
  hear how songs change combat.

• Full controller support — Keyboard/mouse, Xbox, PlayStation,
  and Steam Deck. Full rebind menu.

How Beat Sync Works

Every match runs on a music track. Your weapons don't fire
on a cooldown — they fire on the nearest beat boundary. Homing missiles wait
for the right moment in the bar to ignite. Shield shockwaves pulse when the
rhythm hits. The timing window shifts with every song, so the same loadout
plays differently depending on what's on.

Tracks ship with beatmaps that define note patterns, tempo
changes, and musical structure. The game reads these and builds firing
constraints from them — songs with faster BPM create tighter combat windows,
complex sections open more opportunities.

The Exocube Lifecycle

When a player is killed, their body becomes an exocube — a
solid block that stays in the arena, keeping the player's exact shape and
scale at the moment of death.

These cubes are up for grabs. Any team can claim one by
standing near it. Claimed cubes score for that team and become part of their
territory. But claimed cubes aren't permanent — enemies can damage them with
missiles and explosions, pushing them across the arena. Cubes knocked
somewhere they can't move shatter into a random pickup: homing missiles,
defense orbs, or shield boosts.

Over a match, the arena fills with the debris of every
fight. Chokepoints shift. Cover appears where it didn't exist before. The map
you end on isn't the map you started on.

Only in the Full Game

• Larger lobbies — default 8 players, scale up to whatever your network
  and host can handle (20+)

• Additional game modes — Capture the Cubes, Chaos, Peaceful Chaos, Bot
  Party, Practice CTC

• Additional arenas + community custom maps (auto-downloaded from
  host)

• Full 80+ track DMCA-safe library + drop-in custom music (popular
  community beatmap formats, just drop .zip files into the Music folder)

• Custom sounds — replace any in-game SFX with your own

• Moddable game modes — full JSON match-parameter control, save and
  share custom modes

• In-match config editor and map reset

• Discord rich presence + OBS integration

• Regular updates with new features

Wishlist BEATSHIFT ARENA to be notified at launch.

Join the Discord to share maps, music, and feedback.