Day of the Devs: RockBeasts Preview – The Soundtrack of Management

RockBeasts is a style of RPG you don’t see very often. Instead of swords and magic, it’s setlists, battered amps, and artists who are falling apart. The game drops you into a gritty, fictional 1990s where the air smells like smoke and spilled beer and the amps probably haven’t been tuned since last summer. You are not the frontperson. You are the manager. That alone makes things interesting. You book terrible venues because you’re not ready for the good ones, you get worn gear that sort of works, you break up fights between band members, and you try to stop a week of bad choices from ruining everything.

The band is made up of personalities who are perhaps symbolic of our society: volatile, burned, brilliant, and impatient. The story wants those messy relationships to be the point, to show how ego, fear, talent, and exhaustion push against each other until something breaks or something honest happens. There are many characters and locations, which sounds exciting, but big numbers don’t mean much unless each moment actually lands. For me, the scenes that matter will be the tiny, raw ones, like a shouted confession in a cramped green room, a bassist throwing down their instrument in anger, or even the rewarding moment after a perfect show. 

Gameplay centers around planning tours, picking songs that fit a room and a mood, balancing a tight budget, and trying to keep people fed and sleeping. You’re juggling relationships as much as finances, and the road takes its toll. It’s a bold move, but bold systems can also fall flat if they’re shallow or grindy, or if the story feels pasted on. The best versions of this idea let the gameplay create those raw, human moments instead of letting excess get in the way. RockBeasts is clearly trying to find that balance, and I hope it does.

From what we’ve seen so far, this is not a pretty world. The game does not shy away from things like substance abuse, burnout, exploitation, and the weird, bitter jokes people tell to get through it. It’s meant to feel grimy and morally messy, because that’s where these stories live.

At its core, this is a management RPG about keeping a band from collapsing while hoping they eventually reach greatness. You’re holding them together with intuition, patience, and a handful of checks that could bounce at any moment. The story comes from Jakub Szamałek, who worked on The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, and the voice cast pulls talent from big games you’ve heard of. I’m excited to see if RockBeasts can hit the notes it’s reaching for. 

RockBeasts is planned for a 2026 release on PlayStation 5, PC via Steam, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 1 & 2. Learn more on the game’s official website. In the meantime, have a look at the screenshots below to see more.

RockBeasts Screenshots