These are all of the tips that display on the loading screen and the pause menu.
The top line on the transcription is the snare drum, and the bottom line is the kick drum.
Press the A Button to hit the kick drum when the timing line passes over it, and hit the B Button or the Down Button to hit the snare drum.
If you don't press a button, or press it too early or too late, it's a miss and affects your accuracy rating!
The controls are arranged this way by default for a right handed drummer. If you're a lefty, or just feel more comfortable with the buttons the other way around, you can swap them in Settings.
Select the Set List to jump to the level you'd like to play. Many levels are in a series and build on themselves, but you can play them in any order or difficulty you'd like.
Use the Up and Down Buttons on the D-Pad or the Crank to scroll the Set List.
Use the Right and Left Buttons on the D-Pad to switch difficulty settings.
The Daily Jam is six rounds of randomly selected levels, and everyone plays the same ones!
Your score is your rounded accuracy multiplied by 10, so the maximum score for a round is 1,000 points and the maximum score for the jam is 6,000 points.
Scores are posted to an online leader board that resets every day at midnight GMT.
You can only play the Daily Jam once per day, so be sure to warm up first!
If you're having trouble with a level, you can play it for as long as you like in Practice Mode to get familiar with it.
No ratings are given while in Practice Mode.
In Free Play Mode, there is no transcription and you can free-form for as long as you like.
The A Button is the snare, and the B Button is the kick drum.
The Right Button opens the hi-hat, and the Left Button hits the crash cymbal.
The Up and Down buttons cycle through various hi-hat patterns, and the Crank adjusts the beats-per-minute.
This is the list of achievements in the game.
Backbeat uses the Playdate Achievements library, so your achievements will also be viewable in the Trophy Case app.
Try to unlock them all!
When you finish a level, you'll be shown your accuracy rating with the snare and kick drums which combine into your overall accuracy rating.
Your overall accuracy determines how many starts you're awarded for the level.
You can press the B Button to try the level again, hold the B Button to jump back to the Set List, or press the A Button to go to the next level.
In the Daily Jam, you can't retry a level, you can only move on to the next round.
Different options are available in the pause menu depending on where you are in the game.
While on the Main Menu, you can switch to another profile or enable Radio Mode.
Each profile has their own progression, save and achievements.
Radio Mode will disable your Playdate's auto-lock feature while on the Main Menu so you can groove to the beats!
While in the game, you can jump back to the Main Menu, restart a level in Practice Mode or restart the level all together.
On the Level Complete screen, you can jump back to the Main Menu or try the current level on another difficulty setting.
There are several options under Settings that allow you to customize the game.
Since this mode is not as reliable as button presses, it does not count toward achievements and can't be used for the Daily Jam