Welcome to the Steam Version of Beat Hazard.
You'll notice when you first launch the game on Beat Hazard Ultra there will be two options, Beat Hazard Classic and Beat Hazard Ultra. This is a guide on Ultra. The menu should look like this. This is a menu of the Beat Hazard Classic. The most glaring cosmetic difference is the large, bold "ULTRA" sitting under Beat Hazard.

The main differences between Beat Hazard and Beat Hazard Ultra is the inclusion of give or take 20 perks, more modes (including multiplayer), and an option to increase or decrease the intensity of the visuals. If you are a complete greenhorn, and have no clue of what is going on, it's recommended you hit instructions. If you are familiar with Twin Stick shooters though, skip on ahead to Single Player.

These are the essential four modes you'll be playing.

The first mode on this list is Standard Mode.


Standard mode is what you would expect from a game like Beat Hazard. You pick a song and play to the duration of a song until the end. You're only goal is to destroy as many enemies on the screen as possible, and survive until the end of the song.



Standard Mode is one the only mode where you can truly pick the difficulty of the song.


Survival is a bit of a twist on Standard. Survival begins on the Easiest Difficulty, and allows you to pick a song to start at. You must continuosly survive until the end of the track, for the game to then pick another random track sitting anywhere in your computer for you to seguey into. The difficulty gradually increases every few minutes. This game mode ends when you run out of lives. Songs that you have passed through, and the song that you started on during survival will not be counted as completed, or even started. This mode is good for people who want a true test of their abilities. My highest score was 24 million, and lasted for 26 minutes.


Boss Rush is extremely similar to Survival, in the fact that it ends when you run out of lives, and continues throughout your entire library of songs and sound files. The main difference is that you will only fight bosses that appear during songs. A timer will count down from the moment the boss spawns for you to defeat them before the next boss spawns. The more time you have left over, the more points you get. After your 40th wave, it will be impossible to defeat a boss before the next one spawns. Death is inevitable, and will be painful in this mode.


Chill out is the game's practice mode. You will have an infinite amount of lives and the mode only ends when you quit out of the mode. This mode is good for screwing around, or doing some serious practice. You're high score won't be saved, or put on any leaderboards, you're points won't be saved either for your ranking, and your songs won't count as completed.

The most important aspect of the game is actually picking music.
If you don't have your own music that you like to listen to to bring to the table, Beat Hazard and Beat Hazard Ultra both have large selections of music to bring to the table. You'll be treated to the large amount of free tracks to play an infinite amount of times that will always be on your Computer until you uninstall the game, and you are also treated to a multitude of online free radios systems that allow you to pick a song on their playlist, or even roll the dice and hope for the best with other radio systems, like Last.FM

The system for finding files in here may be old, but it works. You can literally find any song/sound file that is compatible to the game. So if you have that stash of pirated music that you doubt you could get your hands on in the game, trust me, you can.

Just a bit of a tangent and a side note, it is recommended that you know the song before you play it, if it comes from your personal library. The intensity of the song will affect the gameplay. This will be explained shortly, but make sure you know what you're going to end up playing.

Now for the meat of the Guide.



Movement is as simple as using the WASD setup if you decided to go with that, or rebind it to whatever you did in the options menu. On the easier difficulties, movement is almost a complete option. Staying Stationary is a completely viable strategy on the easier difficulties, and is probably the best choice, if you really are playing on the easiest difficulties.

On the harder difficulties, leading up to hardcore, insane, and Suicidal, movement is required. Undestroyable projectiles, strafing enemies with odd attack patterns, enemies that will pull or push you to your doom, etc. Enemies will be covered in the enemy section soon.


Shooting is easier than moving.
To aim, move your mouse to point in the general (or exact) direction of where you want your shots to go, and they will go there. If you left the options alone, left mouse button should be your firing button, and your right mouse button should be your Super Bomb. I'll go into detail about powerups soon.