Image: Vitamin Games & Kwalee

Give a rhythm game community the tools to make their own content and the ability to share it, and they will. Few games make that as abundantly clear as Afterbeat. Formerly known as Project Arrhythmia, it's a musical bullet-dodger in the style of Just Shapes & Beats. You're a tiny dot stuck in a living, angry music video, leaving you to weave your way through screen-filling attacks and bullet waves all synched to the beat. After more than a decade of development, the main story mode is finally complete, and it brings with it a MOUNTAIN of community-made content. You're getting a lot of bang for your buck with this one.

Don't worry if you're not a bullet hell sicko. Most Afterbeat stages are designed to be experienced and enjoyed as an audiovisual gestalt. While there are of course some brutal challenges, most only require moderate dexterity and are well checkpointed.

The final release adds a finale to the game's main story mode. A story about a pair of future scientists trying to unravel the secrets of an apocalyptic disease through a rhythm-based interface. While it's mostly just an excuse to throw you into a couple dozen playable music videos, there's some interesting stuff here, with the later stages integrated well into the narrative.

But the real star of the show here is the community stuff, a vast archive that'll only grow as more people filter in for the full release. Currently, there are over 3,600 stages to play, some of which kinda put the base game to shame. Case in point, check out VOLCANO by virmay and ManIsLiS, a story-heavy throwdown accompanied by some literally block-rocking beats:

And on a slightly less intense note, Chromastellia by groggo is a wonderful trip through a sky full of angry triangles and the descent beyond:

Afterbeat is out now for £13.75/$15, with a 25% launch discount, and savings if you own one-button rhythm gem A Dance of Fire and Ice, which boasts over 25,000 community-made tracks to play. Both get a major recommendation (they're both in our genre guide to rhythm games), and there's a demo available for Afterbeat, too.