Parents' Guide to Beatstar

This music-based game gives kids a chance to play along with popular songs from major artists. They'll start out with several in Beatstar and can unlock more as they play. The goal is to tap beats, represented as long and short rectangular shapes, as they enter a specific part of the screen. As a result, kids won't quite be tapping identically in time with the music at points -- but the game involves some rhythmic skill. The beats flow faster as they progress, which makes playing more challenging.

Many of the songs are current radio hits from musicians, and new ones are doled out at a decent pace as you play, which helps keeps things interesting. As the levels get higher, in addition to the beats' speed increasing, kids will encounter items marked with arrows that indicate which direction they need to be swiped in -- all of which can be challenging. If kids miss any of those items or other beats, they can use gems to keep going, but may run out of ones they've earned fairly quickly. While that can be frustrating, because it means they'll have to try to conquer the same song again or go back to another one from their list, they don't immediately get locked out of the game -- and they'll still earn points for incomplete rounds, which helps them advance toward getting more songs.

If that happens repeatedly -- slowing down kids' ability to add songs and forcing them to play the same half-dozen or so over and over again -- some of the game's fun factor could be lost. Its overall structure, though, seems to help keep moving things along without being too pushy about buying things. So unless kids, for some reason, can't finish tapping through all of the songs on their list, Beatstar shouldn't leave them wanting to sing a different tune.