Early Access Review of ‘Beatable’: Ingenious Hand-Tracking Elevates Casual Rhythm Gaming

Is Quest’s hand tracking good enough for a rhythm game, especially one that thrives on low latency and precise inputs? After diving into the early access version of BEATABLE, where you’re engaged in tapping, clapping, and snapping to catchy beats, I found XR Games’ latest offering suitable for casual play. However, I’m left questioning whether it truly delivers the precision and responsiveness needed for more intense gameplay.

BEATABLE Details:

• Developer: XR Games
• Available On: Horizon Store (Quest 2 and above)
• Reviewed On: Quest 3
• Release Date: April 10th, 2025
• Price: $10

Note: As this is an Early Access game, it is still in development and subject to future changes. This review evaluates its current state and does not provide a numerical score.

Gameplay

Whether you’re seated or standing, you don’t need much space—just a small section of your desk, table, or any flat surface will do. BEATABLE sets up four tapping lanes where beats come at you from the horizon. The game area is roughly the size of a keyboard, featuring two beat types—the regular ‘note’ and the ‘hold note’—along with air symbols for clapping and finger snapping. It’s a refreshing change from the high-energy, calorie-burning swings of Beat Saber, offering a mixed reality mode too, which is pretty neat.

Learning to play BEATABLE is just as straightforward as Beat Saber. It involves tapping your open palm on the table, making it easier to grasp compared to games like Guitar Hero, where you match buttons to on-screen colors. However, whether I’ll master BEATABLE remains uncertain for a few reasons.

The joy of finger-snapping with one hand while quickly switching to tap notes with the other is undeniable, yet Quest’s hand tracking might still be a smidge too laggy to build the rock-solid, 100% repeatable muscle memory you need for higher difficulty levels.

Here’s the thing—while I don’t have precise tools to measure how consistently I land notes or hit ‘Perfect’ marks, the precision feels adequate for casual gameplay. Achieving expertise, on the other hand, might involve a lot of experimentation with hand positions. I found myself hovering over notes, attempting to strike with minimal force, yielding mixed results.

Given that it relies entirely on hand-tracking, BEATABLE compensates by applying minor input and audio delays, syncing detection effectively—a method console developers often use. Calibrating your play area accurately to your table is crucial before starting, to avoid missing notes. Also, don’t forget—good lighting is essential for optimal results.

While exact precision is key for honing top-tier skills, my chief concern with BEATABLE wasn’t the precision or the fairly catchy, if somewhat unfamiliar, music it offers. The real issue for me is the stickiness of its gameplay, which I’ll delve into in the Immersion section below.

Immersion

I’m torn on this one. VR rhythm games usually make me feel cool, and I’ve never been bothered by how silly I might look playing them—something you shouldn’t worry about either. Yet, BEATABLE seems to lack that ‘cool’ feeling for me.

Tapping on a desk and hitting beats is engaging, offering a variety of intriguing flow patterns in intermediate and expert-level songs. Despite these qualities, BEATABLE doesn’t convey the sensation of being more than just a desk-tapper.

Sure, Beat Saber doesn’t make you a master swordsman, and Dance Dance Revolution doesn’t turn you into a dancer, but they make you feel like one in the moment. In BEATABLE, I find myself performing the actions without a deeper connection to them. And maybe that’s alright.

However, if it involved, say, bongos or the urgency of handling a control panel to prevent an impending explosion—something beyond just tapping a note bar on a table with aesthetically pleasing visuals—I might find BEATABLE more captivating.

That said, XR Games likely didn’t prioritize the ‘cool’ factor. Instead, they tackled the challenge of hand-tracking games, which is the absence of haptic feedback. BEATABLE cleverly uses the table as its ‘button,’ although I do wish it was a little more dependable.

Comfort

BEATABLE scores high on comfort, playable anywhere with a flat surface, either seated or standing. It doesn’t involve artificial locomotion.

Pro Tip: If you’re repetitively tapping for long periods or haven’t perfected the force needed for reliable hits, consider a large desktop foam pad to cushion the impact and mute the noise.

Conclusion

For casual play, the precision feels adequate; however, the potential for honing expertise remains questionable for now. The innovative use of the table for haptic feedback is truly ingenious. I hope the developers continue to address Quest’s hand-tracking challenges. If BEATABLE successfully does that and keeps the DLC music updates coming, it could pave the way for an exciting new subgenre in XR gaming.

Note: This game is in Early Access, meaning the developers regard it as incomplete and likely to change over time. This review evaluates the game only in its current Early Access state and will not receive a numerical score.