SoundWave

A 2D rhythm-based platformer where you must jump in time with the music to overcome obstacles.

Team Size: 3

Dev Time: 4 Months

My Contributions

Try the game for yourself! Playable in browser on itch.io

team-quest.itch.io/soundwave 

Retrospective

Concept

This game is based on a smaller project developed by a group of 3 for the Global Game Jam 2017, which lasted 48 hours. The theme of the Jam was "Waves", and our concept incorporated it in multiple ways. The idea was a 2D platformer where platforms and obstacles moved in time with the music, so you had to time your jumps with the music to progress. This version also included a second AI-controlled character that the player could command to move and jump by waving at them. The same team would later remake the game. 

The remake turned out quite different from the original in certain ways, so if you'd like to see the original for context, you can check out the trailer here.

A screenshot from the original Game Jam version of 'SoundWave'.

Moving To The Beat

For each music track, the game would take it's BPM and make a looping timer, so each time the timer ended was synced with the beat of the song. Using this, we send out a signal on each beat to any object that requires it, allowing us to have objects that automatically do things on the beat, and ensuring that all moving elements in the game are in sync with each other. This was used not only for moving and rotating platforms, but also for smaller details such as the animations on background elements and even the playable character, who bops up and down to the beat when not moving.

The music that was used for the original game was copyright-free music, as we didn't have time to make any during the game jam. We considered making custom music for the full version, but as none of the team knew how to do it, we decided it was too long a time commitment to learn how to do for the initial time-frame we had in mind for the project, so we kept the same soundtrack.

Art-Style

As no one on the team specializes in art, the original game used basic shapes and solid colors for the environments, and pixel-art for the playable characters, as these were easy to accomplish under the short time restraint.  The characters being music notes was done not only because it fits the theming of the game, but also because it allowed for very simple animation, as they do no require a walk-cycle.

When remaking the game, we did what we could to make the game more visually interesting, with color gradients, lighting effects, extra background details, and patterns on the environments, but mostly retained the simple aesthetic. We also decided that the pixel-art style used for the characters, while fine on it's own, did not match this new style, so I re-designed them to match the rest of the game's art.


The initial re-designs of the playable characters, including the second character that was cut from the game.

Challenges

The platforming controller in the original game was rather buggy, having been made in 2 days, so we decided to start from scratch. It was during this process that we realized the difficulty of creating a platforming character that can accurately follow your movements and commands, and eventually, the idea of the AI controlled character was scrapped, as we decided that it would be too difficult to develop for a larger project. This did mean that the concept for the game would change drastically, as certain mechanics and puzzles designs would no longer work, so we had to re-consider much of how the game would be structured. On the bright side, this change gave us more time to ensure the quality of other complicated systems, such as the platforming controller and the rhythm tracker.

Playability and Polish

One thing we noticed about the game when testing was that, because certain objects had rather long movement patterns, it was difficult to know how and when an object was going to move unless you sat still and memorized it's pattern first, which made the game feel unnecessarily slow and difficult. To fix this, I added a light effect to moving objects which would flash on the beat before they moved, making it possible to predict their movement without memorizing the pattern. We also added a line renderer on objects that move across long distances to show their path.

Another addition I made was the mechanic of collecting keys to open doors, which did not feature in the original game. In the process of making the levels, I felt many of them were starting to feel similar and that perhaps the core mechanic on it's own may not be enough to hold up an entire game, especially since the other core mechanic had been removed by this point. To remedy this, I added collectable keys, which could themselves move to the beat like the platforms do. The design I used for the keys is a play-on-words, as it's based on a musical symbol called a Treble Clef, which denotes the key in which music is played, in fact the word "Clef" is french for "Key". 

Team Management

As a team, our largest issue was time-management. Since we had a small team, most of whom are employed, we didn't have many opportunities to get together and make progress, which resulted in a project that we had initially planned to spend a month on taking closer to 3 or 4 months. We identified this issue part-way through and tackled it in a few ways, firstly by organizing a more consistent time-table to work in, as opposed to the less formal approach we had previously, and secondly by doing solo work on the project whenever we had the time, rather than only working on it when the whole team was together.

Conclusion

Looking back on the project, I'm satisfied with having been able to improve upon the original game for the most part. I was disappointed that the original concept was scaled down with the removal of the AI-controlled follower mechanic, and that various other major ideas were rejected along the way, however these decisions were necessary sacrifices to stay within our scope and finally get the project done.