The purpose of this mechanic is to make it so that you cannot beat a level:

• just mashing the keys non-stop, or
• pressing at every 90 degrees (every half beat)

But still allow the occasional accidental extra press.

It’s intended to be just strict enough to prevent intentionally trying to cheese a level.

Say you were trying to beat this level by just pressing every 90 degrees no matter how the level was. This would be your miss pattern. The overload mechanic would stop you before you got too far with this strategy.

How it Works

There is a hidden Overload meter that starts at 0, and increases when you miss. When it reaches 100, Overload happens!

• The overload meter decreases at a constant rate, by 40 every beat.
• Every miss increases the meter by 50.
• Once it reaches 100, Overload is triggered.
• So if you miss once every beat, it would eventually build up and trigger Overload.

Bugs

There was previously a bug where the BPM assumed by the meter only uses the starting BPM. This has now been fixed in version 2.8.0, released in August 2024.