Project Heartbeat

About

Project Heartbeat is a single player and multiplayer action game with a anime theme. It was developed by EIRTeam and was released on March 26, 2020. It received very positive reviews from players.

Project Heartbeat is a cute community-driven rhythm game inspired by titles such as Clone Hero and Project Diva, featuring music from top artists of the Eurobeat genre made popular by the Initial D anime and manga. You can also create your own charts and share them with your friends!

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91%

Audience ScoreBased on 273 reviews

music14 positive mentions

stability6 negative mentions

Faithful Project Diva-style rhythm gameplay with support for both console and arcade mechanics.
Strong community and workshop integration enabling access to numerous custom charts and easy song sharing.
Robust chart editor that's user-friendly and supports creation of custom content with good import tools for PPD and Mega Mix+ songs.

Limited official song library, heavily reliant on community-made content which often skews towards very high difficulty, making it less accessible for newcomers.
Editor and game still have bugs and stability issues, including crashes and lack of autosave features.
Certain UI and audio elements feel unpolished, such as sharp note sounds and occasional awkward menu navigation.

music
162 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
9%
89%
2%
The music aspect is praised for its extensive support of community-created and imported songs, notably including Project Diva Megamix+ tracks, offering a broad and challenging selection that appeals especially to experienced rhythm game players. However, the official song list is limited and often skewed toward extreme difficulty levels, making it less accessible for beginners. The game excels in customization and workshop integration but faces issues like an unstable editor, occasional syncing problems, and a steep learning curve due to the predominance of hard charts.
- “The best part of the game is being able to play Project Diva Megamix+ songs (including mods) inside of Heartbeat (if you own Megamix+).”
- “Huge workshop potential and you can import your songs from PPD and Megamix+ (including mods) onto Heartbeat. 9/10.”
- “The official song list is small, but the game seems to be mostly oriented towards user-created edits, and as a player it's everything I ever really wanted in that regard.”
- “The only and my biggest downside is that as someone who played Project Diva games - be prepared for quite a big drop in quality of charting and available music (I would call this 'Project Diva osu!').”
- “Most community-made songs only have extreme difficulty charts, making it hard to pick up if you haven't already played Project Diva.”
gameplay
47 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
15%
79%
6%
The gameplay faithfully replicates and blends mechanics from the Project Diva series, notably arcade and console styles, offering a solid and engaging rhythm experience that appeals strongly to fans of those games. Its main strength lies in robust community-driven content and workshop support, though newcomers may find the difficulty and learning curve challenging. While some UI and filtering issues exist, the gameplay is responsive, well-polished, and supported by an active, helpful community.
- “As an avid Project Diva player who loves the edit mode in the original console games, I was amazed to see a community-driven game based around both the arcade mechanics and console mechanics (sometimes even including a mix of both gameplay options). There are some official songs, but the main mechanic of the game is the community-made levels.”
- “Workshop support for both Project Diva F style gameplay and Future Tone style gameplay is phenomenal and one of the main reasons I bought Project Heartbeat, but the lack of filtering by gameplay type is an odd omission.”
- “If you're a fan of Project Diva gameplay, be it the arcade play style, console play style, or both, this is a game you'll love!”
- “Limited song selection and overloaded UI/gameplay structures weakens the rhythm styles.”
- “Pd is a lot easier to get into since it's arcade-y and super beginner friendly, compared to Project Heartbeat, which is largely community driven. There are a few official maps that are really well done and have all difficulty levels, but once you want to actually play the whole purpose of its existence, the community content, it gets a lot more dicey if you don't already like Project Diva type gameplay (especially since a lot of community maps are extremely hard for no reason, just awfully mapped).”
- “There is no learning curve here, and especially if it's your first experience of this gameplay you won't enjoy it.”
stability
7 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
14%
86%
The game experiences occasional crashes and numerous bugs, particularly in the track editor, which is noted to be glitchy and sometimes unreliable. However, the developer team is actively working to fix these issues, and the game overall runs well and is stable enough for regular play despite some imperfections.
- “Overall this game is a solid 9/10, it does what it needs and runs great.”
- “The track editor, in my experience editing tracks on both Linux and Windows, is very buggy.”
- “There are so many little glitches that it makes the editor a pain to use, as well as some features not working, such as the offset function.”
- “There are also some bugs and glitches when trying to test play what you've made.”
graphics
7 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
43%
14%
43%
The graphics are generally clean and functional across different screen sizes, with solid design and color that show care and effort. However, some users find the visuals bland and lacking the dynamic energy typical of rhythm games, suggesting improvements like customizable song visuals could enhance the experience. Overall, while good for an early access title, the graphics have room for more engaging and lively presentation.
- “All the graphics are clean and work well on both small screens (like on the Steam Deck) and on large screens (like on my 4k monitor).”
- “For an early access game, the price is fair, the graphics, design, colour and everything else is amazing and it looks like it's had a heart and soul put into it!”
- “This game would really benefit from borrowing some of that energy, or even better, from taking a step back and thinking about what makes rhythm games so appealing in the first place: their visuals, their juice.”
- “But in terms of visuals, it feels really bland.”
- “Players want to be engaged by the visuals and feedback, not just the mechanics.”
- “Customizable song visuals (i.e., darken video, visualizer) are lacking.”
grinding
6 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Grinding in the game is generally manageable but tends to be tedious, partly due to cumbersome tool interfaces and setup processes. While the game simplifies certain aspects compared to alternatives like ppd, some tasks—such as chart offset adjustments—still require time-consuming workarounds. Overall, progress is being made to reduce grind, but some repetitive effort remains.
- “Unfortunately, the current tools make grinding feel a lot more tedious.”
- “The only way to really get around this is to use a tool like Audacity to bake the chart's offset into the audio file itself, which is a fairly tedious process.”
- “This ties into the above, as the lack of it makes playing for high scores a lot more tedious than it should be.”
optimization
3 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game is highly optimized, running smoothly even on weaker hardware and offering a responsive, stylish UI. Some users experienced isolated performance issues likely tied to their specific machines, but overall, the game outperforms similar titles in stability and responsiveness.
- “I had no performance issues on my PC, and my only gripe is the kinda lifeless button sounds, with no built-in alternatives, even though you can apply your own.”
- “9.5/10 (only because of weird performance issues on my specific machine, but others with weaker hardware run way better. Most likely my specific machine having issues. Other than that, it is a perfect game.)”
- “Its performance is significantly better than other similar games, with a timing window that actually feels right. The PPD importer lets you play even more songs than what's currently available on the Steam workshop, with a UI that looks stylish and feels snappy.”
humor
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The humor in the game is highlighted through its funny workshop songs, adding a lighthearted and entertaining element to the experience.
replayability
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The replayability is somewhat limited, as users tend to lose interest in charts once they have fully completed them.