Between Heartbeats Demo

Viruses are quite deadly in the right circumstances, although humans have managed to come up with numerous ways to keep them under control. We have plenty of treatments to deal with unpleasant diseases nowadays, but there are still some that do not seem to have a cure. On the other hand, there is always the hope that the future will bring us closer to a solution.

Between Heartbeats is an arcade shoot ‘em up in which you get to go face-to-face with viruses and destroy them before they get a chance to infect the host. In essence, you play the role of a microbot duo that gets injected into the bloodstream of the patient in order to deal with the problem directly. By using the special abilities of the two microbots, it is possible to survive the harsh environment inside of a human body.

Story-wise, the plot takes place sometime in the future, where humans have managed to achieve a lot of progress in the field of nanotechnology. As such, it is now feasible to send nanobots inside humans to take care of viruses, although the actual task is not as simple as you might believe. Instead, every encounter must be carefully dealt with, otherwise the bots are simply neutralized.

Since you play with two characters at once, you have the chance to switch between them for different tasks. One of the bots is responsible for the actual shooting, while the other has the ability to heal damaged tissue. Obviously, both must be protected at all times, otherwise you won’t be able to finish the levels. On the other hand, the gameplay is not very refined yet, because there are many things that do not work too well.

For starters, you have limited ammunition, which means that you must use it wisely. The ammo recharges itself if you just wait for a few seconds, but the process is very slow and boring. You have a time limit to keep an eye on, which means that you are forced to wait while your time is running out. It is both stressful and frustrating, but not in a way that would get better with experience. This also breaks the fast-paced gameplay illusion, because you are mostly just keeping an eye on the ammunition instead of the action itself.

In the end, Between Heartbeats is still quite enjoyable, even if it’s not in perfect shape right now. As long as the developers realize that some of the mechanics just do not function well in combination with each other, things are bound to get a lot more fun and engaging.

Note: Between Heartbeats is currently running a Kickstarter campaign, so you can support the developers by donating a certain sum of money. To do so, you can visit the project's Kickstarter page.