My music game is finally here!

Hey guys!

So my interactive experience which I teased the concept of about a month ago is now live!

We decided to name it 'Horizon', after one of my first ever tracks and is fitting name for the theme of the game. The end product is a procedurally generated, endless driving game with visuals that react to my music. You can shuffle through fourteen of my tracks, each with their own colours, time of day and other rhythmic elements which react to the tempo and rhythm.

I believe it's a really cool way to listen to my music, and a more engaging experience than pressing shuffle on iTunes. With the development time given to the team involved (a huge thanks to everyone on the project - names and roles listed in the itch.io link), it's an awesome product and definitely something that could even be used in the future for other uses within my brand like stage visuals!

Not only was my first time interacting with a team of game designers and animators, but also the first time I've had something created for or to accompany my music - so this whole experience has been really interesting and rewarding.

Project Reflection

Because the whole project in terms of the processes and team environment was quite a different dynamic to that of working with film or other audio people; I'd like to discuss what went well and what didn't, how I found the overall project and some things I should be considering for the future.

Firstly, my main interactions was with the team of three designers:

Design/Production management: Ismail Ghadban

Design: Matthew Davies

Design/Programming: Noah Seymour

These guys I found were really great to work with, easy to bounce ideas back & forth with and just very switched on in general. My first meeting with them focused on getting a central idea down on paper and began working on building the art style and aesthetic I wanted to achieve.

The initial main focus of the game was for it to be a visual product made for the release of 'Feel It' a new track of mine which I finished for the project. Following the completion of that, if we had time I suggested we should add a shuffle mode at the end of the track so you could start listening to all of my music within a separate game mode. The communication was really strong between myself and the designers in person and via discord, we had multiple regular updates each week however there was a lapse in these previous couple weeks where I wasn't kept in the loop as much.

I believe this in conjunction with myself never meeting or directly communicating with the animators who jumped on board lead to the project sidestepping a bit from it's original intentions. I think in hindsight I should have taken a little more control in terms of shaping its direction via the ongoing communication over the weeks, rather than primarily discussing what I want in its initial stages. I'll admit since I felt quite out of my depth with games development, I took a bit of a back seat and let them do their thing. At the same time, I should have been let know what changes were being made to the agreed scope and if there are any difficulties so we could re-assess the plan and focus on what we could achieve well. There are a number of things which didn't make it into the game, and possible issues with the animation team/programmer due to the only animations present are colour changes on objects in sync to the tempo, a pulse which goes through the car, it's wheels and the time of day.

Initially I was told there were three animators working on the project, however there's only two listed on the credits and it seems quite stripped back from the scope. The focus on 'Feel It' as a 'story mode' using the stems from the track I supplied, along with a main menu and an option to choose between the Feel It story or Shuffle mode has vanished also. We wanted to have different/separate objects being affected by the melody, rhythm and chords using my stems as waveform information. However, it looks like there was a final rush in the last week of development to get something finished; which has resulted in 'Horizon' blending into one mode where the tracks have presets that determines the colour changes of the terrain objects on the left and right of the car, the position of the sun, it's colour palette and whether the car's headlights are on or off - all based on the tempo of the track.

-

I think overall it's a really cool product, especially when it's something that was only made in a month! Whilst the designers were a great bunch of guys to work with; in the future I need to be more assertive with it's direction and maintaining that any communication related to the project is relayed back to me.

Have a play and let me know what you think of it! Hit the 'play on itch.io' button above, grab a download or use the web player!

Lachy :)