Description

This game is a narrative rhythm game, where the main character is trying to get back to their loved one as the end of the world is happening. This game was developed during the first year of my master degree at Uppsala Univrsity in Sweden.

In the game, there is a mix between side scrolling movement sections where we use environmental storytelling to explain what is happening to the player, and rhythm sections where the player has to survive for a certain amount of time to advance to the next section.

There is no written text in the whole game, but rather some words that can be heard in the songs that play. The reason for this is that we wanted to place emphasis on the environments and images to explain story elements to the player. Likewise, we created a situation where the only words that the player encounters are within the lyrics of the song. Our aim was to bring the player to pay more attention to them, as they are key to the understanding of the story and the motivation of the characters.

For the rhythm section, we found some games from which we drew inspiration, but we also wanted to create something new that felt different. Because this is also a narrative game, the difficulty of the rhythm sections could not be as complex as a traditional rhythm game. Some of the game’s players might not be regular rhythm games players and may have a lower tolerance for this type of difficulty. With that is mind we had to take into account the different skill levels that would be playing the game. We also wanted to add something to the gameplay of the rhythm sections as we found that just having beats to match would be of limited interest as it is not the only

focus of the game.

With this in mind we came up with a mechanic that would help for both aspects. We devised ghost (blue) notes that are present at the same time as the standard (red) ones. These are additional notes that the player can hit to gain more life points that from the red ones and they do not take away life when missed unlike the red ones. However, to be able to hit the blue notes the player has to hold down a button to enter “Foresight mode”; in this mode

they are no longer able to hit the red notes. We thought that this mechanic would create a good risk and reward system where you can increase the difficulty by going for extra notes, yet these blue notes do not penalize the

players that choose not to interact with them.

A central dimension of the environmental storytelling that I

mentioned earlier is the color palette of the game. The main palette alternates between three main colors, white, red and grey. Grey represents the world, white represents the destruction/void, and red represents humanity and the main character. Finally, for certain elements of the game we use blue. This color is use quite sparingly as it represents the main character’s loved one. Most of the elements that have that color represent that character trying to communicate something to the main character.

The music is a very important aspect of the game, in part

because it’s a rhythm game but also because the music is used to tie the story and game play together. All the music was created and performed by my friend/director. The lyrics have a very important position in the story as they are used to explain the story to the player but are also part of the story itself. The music is being played and sung by the loved to the main character to give them strength.