Beat'n Groovy is a music video game

Music video game

A music video game, also commonly known as a music game, is a video game where the gameplay is meaningfully and often almost entirely oriented around the player's interactions with a musical score or individual songs...

 distributed over Xbox Live Arcade

Xbox Live Arcade

Xbox Live Arcade is a type of video game download distribution available primarily in a section of the Xbox Live Marketplace, Microsoft's digital distribution network for the Xbox 360, that focuses on smaller downloadable games from both major publishers and independent game developers...

. It was released on October 8, 2008 for 800 MSP

Microsoft Points

Microsoft Points are the currency of the Xbox Live Marketplace, Games for Windows - Live Marketplace, Windows Live Gallery, and Zune online stores. The points allow users to purchase content without a credit card and to reduce the number of small credit card transaction fees, which Microsoft would...

 ($10 USD). The game is based on Pop'n Music

Pop'n Music

, commonly abbreviated as Pop'n, PM or PNM, is a music video game in the Bemani series made by the Konami Corporation. This game is known for its bright colors, upbeat songs, and cartoon character graphics...

, a similarly styled arcade/PlayStation 2

PlayStation 2

The PlayStation 2 is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Sony as part of the PlayStation series. Its development was announced in March 1999 and it was first released on March 4, 2000, in Japan...

 game series that has not been released officially outside of Japan.

Gameplay

As scrolling notes scroll down the screen, the player is to press the corresponding button on the controller, which plays a keysound which fills in part of the selected song. Players are judged on the accuracy of their hits, and a life bar on the side of the screen increases or decreases depending on their performance. The life bar must be at or over 60% at the end of the song in order to pass. The game features nine songs (ranked on a difficulty level of 1 to 9, although the hardest song is only a 3), and seven playable characters. 3-key and 5-key modes are available, with online multiplayer modes using 3-key only. An additional play mode using the Xbox Live Vision camera is also available.

Reception

IGN

IGN

IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...

's Hilary Goldstien gave Beat'n Groovy a 2.0/10, critiquing the game as "poorly designed and poorly executed", and dubbing the song list as being "horrendous".