Getting Started
PewBeat is an idle survivors game. Your ship is bolted to the middle of an 800×800 arena and shoots on its own. You don’t dodge — you build.
The core loop
- Enemies spawn in waves. Clear every enemy and the wave advances. Some enemies — Wizzle, Goldie, Lash — block wave completion until dealt with.
- Your ship auto-attacks the nearest target. You never aim or move. Your class ability fires on its own timer or on kills.
- Kills pay gold. Gold buys permanent upgrades that carry across every future run.
- Every 5th wave is a boss, and boss waves rain assist balls to help you.
- Wave 6, 11, 16 … open a band-buff vote — three stacking buffs, one of which is hidden.
- Wave 5 turns on the rhythm layer. Collecting things on the musical beat builds a combo that drops gold balls.
- Wave 100 is the finale. Clear it and you win — and unlock a ship.
Your first run
Press Start Game and you land in the Room. Pick your ship with the ‹ › arrows on your card — Laser is the default and a perfectly good first pick — then press Start. Every run begins at wave 1.
In the arena, the things worth your attention are: the coin counter top-left (green when you can afford something), the Upgrade button under it (or Tab), the HP bar along the bottom, and the cyan Charge Skill bar just under your ship. Anything bouncing around the arena is a pickup — tap it.
Small hint bubbles appear once each, pointing a ring at whatever they are explaining — tapping your ship to spend the charge skill, the beat ring, holding Reinforcement Clone, the bouncing pickups, the buff vote, a boss timer bar, and the Upgrade button the first time it turns green. They never block play and go away on their own after 15 seconds. You can replay the set from Account › Reset Tutorials.
The Upgrade menu opens during play and the game keeps running. Buying is instant and applies immediately — a laser level bought mid-wave speeds the beam up right away. Hold a cost button to buy repeatedly. If you need a real break, Esc opens Settings, which pauses a single-player run.
The Room
There is no separate co-op screen any more. Start Game always opens the Room, on your own, and it only becomes a party if you invite someone.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Host | Opens the room up and gives you a six-character Room code to share. The title changes to Room: CODE with a copy button beside it — before that it just reads Solo. |
| Join | Two tabs: Public Rooms to browse open rooms and tap one, or Room Codeto type somebody else’s code — it is not case-sensitive. On Bluetooth, Join scans for a nearby host. |
| WiFi / Bluetooth | The toggle beside Host and Join picks how you connect. Bluetooth is Android-only and needs no internet; it defaults to whichever is available. |
| Planet [Change] | Cycles Sand → Ice → Magma. It decides your wave-100 boss. In a party only the host can change it. See Planets. |
| Player cards | A 2×2 grid — you plus three Open slots. The arrows on your own card cycle your ship, and the small badges show your equipped charge skill and support clone. |
| Start | Alone, this just starts a single-player run. In a party only the host has it, and everybody else has Ready instead. |
Flipping WiFi ↔ Bluetooth while people are connected asks you to confirm, then kicks everyone and re-hosts on the other transport. Anyone who joined has to come back with the new code.
What to buy first
Every upgrade costs 10 × level² (class levels are not bought — see Ship Mastery), so early levels are nearly free and later ones are brutal. A sensible opening order:
| Priority | Upgrade | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Health Increase | +20 max and current HP per level. The cheapest way to stop dying at wave 12 to a tank you couldn’t kill in time. |
| 2 | Stronger Bullets | +10% damage per level, and it scales almost every class ability too — the laser beam, tentacle whips, flame bolts and the Gemini drone all read it. |
| 3 | Additional Bullets | Only 9 levels, each +1 shot in the fan. Enormous total value, and it caps out fast. |
| 4 | Your class | Double price, but the timer classes go from one shot per 50 seconds to one per second across the level range. Rushing it makes the ship feel like a different ship. |
| 5 | Faster Bullets | +4% fire rate and +20% bullet travel speed per level. Good, just less dramatic than the others. |
The start screen
| Button | What it opens |
|---|---|
| Start Game | The Room — planet, ship, then Start. Host or Join from there for co-op. See Co-op. |
| Ship | A hub with three tabs: Loadout (decal presets, afterburner colours, equipped charge skill and support clone), Upgrade (every class row, not just your active one) and Gallery (the community showcase of decorated ships). See Cosmetics. |
| Galactic War | The shared community war over the three planets. See Galactic War. |
| Shop | Premium ships, charge skills, Reinforcement Clones, decals — plus a Gold tab on Android. |
| Host Music | Point the game at a folder of MP3s (desktop host only). See Rhythm. |
| Account | Three tabs. Data renames you, shows your lifetime Defeated count and playtime, transfers your account and resets your progress; Bestiary is the creature dex; Achievements holds the daily bonus and 55 gold-paying challenges. See Account & Saves. |
| Settings | Audio / Video / Gameplay / Notification tabs. See Controls & Settings. |
Unlock milestones
| Wave | What changes |
|---|---|
| 3 | Circling enemies (fireflies) start mixing into the spawn. |
| 5 | First boss. Assist balls start raining on boss waves. The rhythm mini-game turns on — a cyan “♪ Beat Enabled ♪” line appears under the wave banner. |
| 6 | First band-buff vote. From here every wave ending in 1 or 6 opens one. |
| 7 | Reinforcement Clone becomes summonable, if you have one equipped. |
| 10 | Cloud checkpoint. Seabits start appearing in normal waves. |
| 11+ | Wizzles appear twice per five-wave band, buffing enemies they touch. |
| 35 | Buzzby and its keycap word puzzle. |
| 50 | Every boss gains a ranged gun. The volley grows by one bullet per 10 waves up to six at wave 100. |
| 100 | The finale boss for your planet. Beat it to win the run and unlock its ship. |
Common mistakes
- Ignoring the balls. Assist, buff and gold balls all bounce for a limited time and vanish uncollected. A gold ball can be worth more than the whole wave.
- Letting a boss run its timer down. Boss gold scales with how much of its dive timer is still left when it dies. A boss killed just before it plunges pays almost nothing.
- Not spending the Charge Skill. The cyan bar under your ship blinks fast when it is full. Click your ship to spend it — a full meter sitting there does nothing.
- Voting greedily. Band buffs stack for the whole run and can be net negative. Read both lines: green helps you, red costs you.
- Skipping too far ahead. Starting mid-band means no band-buff vote until the next boundary, and enemy HP scales linearly with the wave number.