Unbeatable (stylised as either UNBEATABLE or unbeatable)[b] is a rhythmadventure game developed by D-CELL GAMES and published by Playstack.[1] Set in a world in which music is outlawed, the player controls Beat, the vocalist of a small band, who explores areas containing side quests and battles against cops. The game received support in 2021 when its Kickstarter was funded in 15 hours, along with a proof-of-concept demo, unbeatable: [White Label], which released new stages weekly during the duration of the Kickstarter.[2]Unbeatable was released for PlayStation 5, Windows and Xbox Series X/S in December 2025. It has received positive critical reception.
Unbeatable has two different methods of gameplay. One is an exploration mode in which the player character Beat can explore the areas that she finds herself in, play baseball, serve drinks, and write new songs. The player can play minigames for each of these activities, while talking with locals and completing side quests. The other major gameplay type is when the player performs music. In this mode, Unbeatable uses two buttons to control the upper and lower tracks, which are used when Beat plays music or gets into brawls with local law enforcement.[3][4] The demo supports five difficulty levels: Beginner, Normal, Hard, Expert, and Unbeatable.[1] The progression is structured that the adventure gameplay is set on preparing and writing songs for concerts as well as exploring or fighting cops, and the rhythm gameplay happens in the concerts that may also be busted by police.[citation needed]
The game's soundtrack will be released in two forms: one of an album titled ALBUM. which will contain all the vocal tracks and their acoustic versions, which would be all the music that the in-game band "UNBEATABLE" would have written diegetically. The other album, unbeatable [ost] will have both the vocal and acoustic tracks as well as the background music and other tracks being the proper soundtrack.[5]
Plot
The main character is Beat, a vocalist who awakens in an unknown city. Music has been outlawed by a police state known as HARM (Harmony And Resonance Management) due to the threat of the Silence, strange monsters thought to be summoned by music. Beat befriends twelve-year-old girl Quaver, whose mother, Eve, was a pop star who died at a concert seven years ago in an incident that saw the first sighting of the Silence. The two break into a HARM prison to free Treble and Clef, sibling musical prodigies who have been arrested numerous times for attempting to perform music. Penny, a smuggler, helps them all break out of prison, and the other four of them form a band. After fleeing HARM, Penny helps them all secure a recording studio and begin doing underground music gigs to pay their bills, while Beat fights off the Silence they summon with their music and various HARM officers.
HARM seemingly destroys the studio, and Penny manipulates Beat into infiltrating HARM Tower, the world's tallest building, to get revenge. Beat walks into a trap, and Penny reveals herself to be Sforzando, HARM's lead researcher. Sforzando explains that the Silence are actually holes in the universe given form by emotions, and that Beat is almost entirely a Silence herself. Further, if people realized what the Silence truly were, the universe would collapse. Sforzando attempts to subdue Beat, but fails and is defeated. She is fired for her unscrupulous experiments, but the city becomes consumed by dark miasma as people rebel against HARM.
Beat then remembers her past as a girl named Beatrice from modern-day Earth. Beatrice, struggling after the cancer death of her mother, drops out of college. She is later fired from her job for being late for work due to her band practice and goes into massive debt despite her sister's pleas, but her dreams of stardom are shattered when her band rejects her for a lack of talent and looks. Distraught, she accidentally runs into traffic and is hit by a car, with the HARM universe either a coma dream or a parallel universe she manifested in. Realizing the city's failure to move past Eve's death is causing the Silence, she holds a massive arena concert, causing a full rebellion against HARM and the Silence to dissipate. After happily celebrating with her bandmates, Beat suddenly disappears and wakes up in her own world, and is seen playing guitar again in Beatrice's apartment. Meanwhile, Quaver is sitting in her own room with her hair down, no longer wearing the hair ribbon she inherited from Eve.
Development and release
Unbeatable uses an anime-inspired art style, with 2D sprites placed into 3D environments in order to create a contrast between the characters and surrounding environment. In an interview with Creative Bloq, art director Andrew Tsai described the contrast as "these really lavishly animated characters and these very overtly 3D plainly shaded models that kind of stick out a little bit", adding that the game is "not hiding the fact that it has 3D environments and not at all trying to blend the characters within them."[6]
The game went through many stages and its art style developed over time. Originally funded in a Kickstarter campaign in April 2021, a proof of concept called unbeatable: [white label],[7] a demo for the full release, and 12 songs on Bandcamp were released.[8]
Unbeatable was planned to be released on November 6, 2025. A day before the release date, it was pushed back due to quality assurance issues relating to the console versions.[9][10] The developers stated they wished the game to be released at once on all platforms.[11]
Unbeatable was released for Windows and PlayStation 5 on December 9, 2025, and for Xbox Series X/S on December 17, 2025.[12][13] The game concurrently released with the Breakout Edition expansion, which includes eleven additional songs written in collaboration with various guest composers.[14]
Reception
Pre-release
Unbeatable's demo received positive reception from journalists. Anthony Franklin II from Vice said that the game was a "a pretty good time", and wrote comedically about the game's "unbeatable" difficulty.[1] Stacey Henley from TheGamer praised the game's atmosphere, calling Unbeatable "a game that, where so many others just didn't have enough, seems to have more."[7] Oisin Kuhnke from Rock Paper Shotgun wrote that Unbeatable "has the best hook of any game ever" and is positioned it as their future game of the year of 2025.[3]
Leigh Price from Rock Paper Shotgun gave a positive review, calling it a "sincere celebration of the creative spirit that overcomes its own rough edges by getting everything right where it counts".[19]
Notes
123456Exclusive to the Breakout Edition expansion.
"UNBEATABLE". Steam. Retrieved April 29, 2025– via Steam. Features: [...] Please, whatever you do, the title is either all caps or no caps. Be kind to us.
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