If a song could…
While playing „Love of my Life“ in concert, you can choose the next line that is being sung and which instruments will play. Depending on your choices, it will be something similar to „Love of my life“, a mixture of many different songs or an enormous amount of noise.
Main features:
– a music game, all mechanics are centered around the music
– Decision based gameplay, the players decisions are the main interactions but have huge effect on the music.
– A casual feeling, playthrough is short, mechanics are easy
Target group: a casual game for people who just like to see what happens
How the game works
Imagine a loved one who left you will be watching your concert.
What do you say to him?
Will you stick to the sheet or will you give the song your personal interpretation?
Will you be angry or sad? Will you break down?
Or are you just too distracted by all the instruments that are at your disposal?
Do you even care what he thinks?
The game is short and casual to play, the player can choose the next line that is being sung and which instruments are currently playing. It’s intended to be played multiple times to explore the different possibilities and endings.
It’s aimed at people who like to see what happens, casual players who like a more „narrative“ experience and people who like „narrative“ games seeking for a break filler.
The prototype is created for PC, but I can imagine that it would also make a good mobile or tablet game.
I created a prototype for the game. A gameplay video can be found here:
How I implemented the mechanics
The centre of the game mechanics is a huge choice tree. Each tree part has a piece of text and an audio file connected to it, as well as references to the possible following parts and the ones that are on screen at the same time. A major challenge as a programmer was to handle this huge tree and have everything pointed at the correct place. To achieve an overview all tree parts are numbered with a unique ID that is the same for the corresponding Unity GameObject as well as the sound file.
For my prototype I composed and implemented one possible way of playing the game. But I tried to set up a program structure that makes it possible to add new elements to the decision tree easily.
Sound programming is made in FMOD which I specialize in.
Screenshot of the song in FMOD, the song is made out of many small snippets. The white numbers indicate the tree part the sound belongs too
The music features elements of:
Queen – Love of my Life
Ben Babbitt – Too Late to Love You
Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody
I created everything in the project.
The only premade Asset I used is the Unity Standard Assets FPS Controller.