PulseWave Steam Demo Review
Verdict: Maybe
A rhythm shooter roguelike where every weapon fires on the beat, and that same shot is also how you move. I loved the he
PulseWave had me nodding along on headphones to a rhythm bar that went fire, nothing, nothing, fire, and then fighting that same system when the shot was also my only way to move. It is a rhythm Shooter Roguelike, and about an hour and a half in I was still doing wide circles every run, wondering if I was playing it wrong or if the design just points there.
My verdict is a Maybe. The rhythm idea is strong and the headphones moment is real, but tying propulsion to the same weapons left me feeling stranded on one circling style, and about an hour and a half in it was still the only style that worked for me. I would wishlist to see how the full game opens up meta progression and makes other strategies more obvious. Demo is on the Steam page now; full game planned for 2026.
Pros
- Headphones on the beat bar: you can hear the next duh or empty beat before it fires
- CRT readability gripe already got a promised toggle from the developer in Steam discussions
- Core idea of a beat strip of weapons building into a run pattern is strong
Cons
- Your guns are also your engines, so movement is locked to the beat strip. Even if that is the design, it was the main thing that made me want to bounce, and I spent the session circling just to keep damage and escape lined up
Presentation
The developers sent this one over. Being honest about it, if I had come across it browsing Steam I would likely have scrolled past. Not a hard no, just nothing on the store front that grabbed me.
The graphics are very simple, with a CRT overlay of wobbly scanlines pushing a retro look. That overlay was my first bugbear. My old eyes could not read some of the writing underneath it. Someone raised the same point in the Steam discussions, and the developer said they will add an option to turn it off. That is the kind of Steam-discussion response I like to see from every studio.
Core Loop
You play as an arrow that is meant to be a spaceship, floating over a starfield while neon hexagons, circles and squares come at you. Health sits in the top-right. Lose it all and the round ends. Bigger shapes hit harder, small circles are fast, and red hexagons soak a bit more damage. Beyond that I never fully worked out what every colour and shape meant. Some enemies run into you, others shoot. The frame is Arcade Action, with a Shooter loop and Roguelike run upgrades on top.
You fire out the back of the ship. That shot is both your damage and your propulsion. Along the bottom there are about eight boxes timed to the music, and an indicator shows which slot is about to fire. Empty slots do nothing. Filled ones fire an attack, push you forward, and damage anything behind you. You start with only a couple of slots filled and pick up more weapons through the run, so your ship's beat pattern builds up over time.
With headphones on, the music is good, and knowing the next beat is going to go duh, nothing, nothing, duh is a proper pay-off. You can hear the rhythm of what your ship is about to do before it happens. That is the bit I really liked.
Shop and Upgrades
Gold does double duty. It levels you up in the run and it also buys shop gear. The shop is a wormhole visual on the map. You fly your ship over the top of it and click to open. It is a wormhole in look only, not in function, and it does not teleport you anywhere.
Inside are rear missiles that travel slower than your normal shot, a pulse wave that hits anything near you, a front laser with no pushback, and vitality with a heal. That no-pushback point on the laser matters. Every other weapon is also your propulsion, so a forward-firing weapon would push you backward and mess up your movement. The laser is the exception, and my build ignored it anyway because everything I ran lived on what was happening behind me.
Level-up modifiers layer on top of the shop gear. A splitter turns one rear missile into two, a repeater fires two on the same path, and a bigger explosion radius applies to explosives. Between runs there is already a light meta shop where you buy upgrades before you go again.
The Circle Problem
Watching the trailer, players almost stay still and precision-dodge shapes as they come. That is not the game I played. I went in circles the whole time, shepherding shapes behind me so I was running away and hitting them with rear fire in the same motion. The strategy always felt the same: wide circle near the map edge, rear fire into the pack, scoop the gold on the way over.
There is no tutorial, so you start cracking on and work it out on the fly. I wonder if a nudge in the right direction early on would have unlocked the trailer's style for me. Relying on the weapons for movement was the problem, and it was the main thing that made me want to bounce. I wanted another way to steer and never found one this session.
Developer: Miko Moares
View on Steam
Tags: Action, Arcade, Shooter, Roguelike, Casual, Indie
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