The Challenge

How does one approach research and design for marrying two different game genres with different player needs?

This is the problem I had to solve for Dissonance, a rhythm tower defense game where players build and empower instrumental towers, building up their defense and their sound.

The Risk

Typical rhythm games provide challenges of physical skill, speed, and rhythmic accuracy. Tower defense on the other hand promotes strategic, more methodical gameplay.

The biggest risk in taking on this challenge was ending up with a gameplay system that supported only one audience’s needs or neither. The game risked being a tower defense game with minor rhythm elements, or too challenging for tower defense players. In either case, we would fail to engage our intended audiences.

So how did other rhythm tower defense developers address this problem? Unfortunately, they hadn’t yet. At the time of Dissonance's concept and for 4 years prior, there were no commercially release rhythm tower defense titles.

Initial Approach - Version 1.0

When approaching this design, I made a list of intentions, constraints, and considerations to help define our needs for the system. This was followed by research of our touchstones:

Using music and tower defense games as references for visual and gameplay elements, mechanics, concepts, and UX, I began compiling a list of components that could be leveraged for our own systems, and areas of overlap between them. To determine what was relevant, I compared my ideas against the intentions, constraints, design pillars, existing systems, and scope that I had outlined prior.

I initially designed a system that allowed players to:
- Perform inputs on-beat to apply unique buffs to all towers firing at the same time.
- Build towers on beat for bonuses to their damage output.
- Increase a multiplier to fill a fever bar that could be activated when full to buff all towers temporarily.

This was intended to reward skilled players who could learn tower attack patterns and perform consecutive inputs while also lowering the skill floor and strain for less experienced players. However, it didn’t adequately address our needs for multiple levels of challenge and payoff. Moreover, the system was too complex.

Feedback - Version 1.0

Testers mentioned that their focus was on the grid cursor and not the beat indicator. This made it difficult to buff towers globally because attention was drawn away from the beat indicator at the top of the screen. 

A developer from Behaviour Interactive said he imagined being able to perform tower solos like Star Power in Guitar Hero. This made me reconsider some ideas I had previously disregarded. One of those ideas was being able to buff towers individually by hovering over them and playing along to their attacks.

I began looking closer at examples of players playing rhythm games to identify what they enjoyed and identified new requirements for our solution.

These requirements were:

• Shorter, easier inputs for consistent progression.

• Longer and/or harder input sequences for challenge & mastery.

• Payoff & power ups that reward continual player engagement, deliver feelings of empowerment and satisfaction, and can be used easily but also strategically. 

  • To break up gameplay and hook players, there should be small and big moments of payoff.

• Varying levels of challenge that players can engage with at their own pace but reward them proportionally which motivates trial, skill development, and mastery.

The Revision - Version 2.0

Version 2.0 introduced the ability to buff towers individually by playing along with their attack rhythms. There were 3 unique buffs which could be used to defend towers, strengthen them, or provide better lane coverage.

This solution was intended to address needs for strategic depth and scalable challenge.

However, in testing, many players noted that the game was too easy and disengaged with the mechanics halfway through any given level. This made it difficult to gauge the effectiveness of the new system which put considerable pressure on our team as we approached the end of development.

So I asked myself; what are some ways I could adjust the difficulty of the gameplay while keeping the mechanics accessible and exciting for players… while keeping a low scope?