soundgarden
Return to the island(s) 🏝️
After a few weeks of summer break, I am continuing the development of Soundgarden. I have expanded the concept to include two more islands: One island is meant for the examination and presentation of gameplay interactions that are facilitated through and led by sound and music. The other island is meant to present various ways of interacting with and manipulating sound and music. Over the next months, I will be working on the former. Meanwhile, I will also be conducting research into the various interactions led by sound in existing games. This investigation should yield an overview of what has been done in this context and should allow to extrapolate designs of the sound-led gameplay interactions on the new island.
Moving to the beat 🕺
An initial investigation into games led by sound has yielded that the vast majority of such games utilize rhythm as a guiding gameplay element: Usually this involves pressing a key and/or performing a certain action with the right timing that is synchronized with the music. This mechanism occurs in rhythm games like Guitar Hero or Dance Dance Revolution but has also been featured in genre hybrids like Crypt of the Necrodancer or Metronomicon, that combine RPG mechanics with these timed actions.
Derived from this insight, I have begun to implement rhythm-based gameplay into Soundgarden. My first approach involves a grid-based path that is drawn in sync with a rhythm generator which dictates all sound-led interactions on the island.
Active cells can be walked on, while the player will fall through transparent and inactive cells. On every downbeat, the next usable cell in the grid becomes active, while the previous cell becomes deactivated. On subsequent beats, future active cells are shown to indicate the path for the player. I find the current implementation to be very straightforward, and possibly too close to existing adaptations of rhythm-based gameplay but it’s a start! How could variations of this gameplay look like? Perhaps I could combine multiple rhythm grids into a sequence of rhythmic obstacles for the player to overcome. This would allow for adding polyrhythms by having the rhythm grids run at different measures. I could also flip the effects of the grid: Instead of becoming walkable, cells could allow the player to pass through them. Here, I could place multiple grids above each other, with the goal for the player to time their fall through all of the grids by observing the changes propagated by the rhythm and waiting until holes in the grids align vertically.
As I’m thinking about polyrhythms, I wonder if such gameplay could be helpful in music education, teaching about different rhythms, and generally increasing awareness of rhythmic variety. For example, most people will probably find it easy to clap a 4/4- or 3/4 measure. However, what about more difficult time intervals, such as 5/4, 23/4, …? The rhythm grid must be traversed in sync with the given rhythm. As the player learns to traverse the rhythm grid, they might end up internalizing the rhythm to some extent, especially when it is juxtaposed with a familiar measure such as 4/4. On that note, I should check if there are any educational music games out there.
Moving beyond the beat ✨
Okay, so most music games are rhythm games, but what about other aspects of music? For instance, there is pitch and timbre. What information do these aspects of music hold that we can use gameplay-wise? When it comes to pitch, we can vary it. Individual pitches, spaced out in time create a melody. Melodies can be interpreted by the listener. There could be ascending or descending melodies, which could signify some movement. Maybe the player is climbing a mountain, maybe they’re descending into a valley - or maybe, instead of accompanying the player’s movement, the melody could be an indicator of what the player has to do. In the game Antichamber, one of the first riddles the player encounters is a staircase that seems to go on forever (think the endless stairs in Super Mario 64). Only if the player changes their direction of movement on the staircase into the opposite direction, they will be able to leave the staircase towards a new area. Now, what if we have ascending or descending melodies that would signify to the player which way to go? Maybe the player could be directed through a magical staircase like then one in Antichamber with music: go up, up, down, up, down, down, up, and then you’re through! Timbre, on the other hand, is what can, for example, make a difference between a soft sound (e.g., flute) and a harsh sound (e.g., overdriven electric guitar). We know intuitively, and research confirms this, that different timbres are perceived differently emotion-wise. Very harsh timbres sound more energetic and perhaps even aggressive, whereas soft timbres are more relaxing, soothing, and possibly more sad. To find out how this could be used gameplay-wise, let’s turn to this well-known example of Kiki (left) and Bouba (right).
So how can this be made into a game design? Most people intuitively associate the sharper timbre of pronouncing Kiki with the edgy shape on the left, and the softer pronounced Bouba with the round shape on the right. This means that it’s likely there is an intuitive mapping of certain sounds to visuals. We could take advantage of this by, for example, having a puzzle where the player has to match shapes and sounds. Similar to the previous idea using melody, there could be a labyrinth with passageways marked by symbols, with the player having to use the passage where a symbol matches the timbre of a given sound. We could also expand the rhythm grid design by employing timbre. Sometimes, a cell that is to be activated could actually be a trap that the player should not step on. This could be indicated by adjusting the timbre of the rhythmic sound, changing to something harsh if a cell will become a trap.
Beyond rhythm, melody, and timbre, there are of course more aspects of sound and music to be explored in designing gameplay, for example, spatialization, which I’m sure I will return to in a future post.
Until then, I will implement some variations on the rhythm grid that employ melody and timbre.