- At the start of this project, my main idea was to make a game based on exploration. The player would sing to move about a world, collecting coins to give a goal to the game, but mainly just exploring the environment through singing.
- As I iteratively worked with a musician to play test the game, I became aware there was too much freedom in this when given only visual inspiration. The player didn't feel inspired to sing more notes, and there needed to be more interaction with the world around them.
- With my playtester being a gamer as well as a musician, the project became a lot more like a traditional game, adding challenges with harmony copying or platforming. I feel like the project could have gone in 2 different directions: this more gamified experience that I went down or a more artistic experience. With my skillset and interests, I was more inclined to go down the game route, but I can envision a version of Dynamic Landscapes that is more fitting to its name and what I was originally imagining.
- If going down the more artistic exploration of an environment route, I would have needed 3D modelling skills and a more artistic brain. I can imagine a game where the point is just to walk about this large artistic environment, where the objects are reacting to your sound in many different ways to explore, maybe adding achievements that you unlock (such as those random achievements you get on steam for knocking or a door) by finding new areas or interacting with objects as a goal. I feel like with this game you could have a musician going into it knowing they are there to sing a piece and use the environment as a score to play with, but with the more gamified route I took, I needed it to be that the player ended up singing a piece through playing a game, not necessarily actively choosing to sing.
- I feel the project in its current state needs much more work and development before it can be seen as a digital score. Feedback from my musician shows that it doesn't feel like you are singing when playing this game, more that you are just making noise. They mentioned a need for rhythm and more incentive to change the notes. I had attempted to achieve this by adding the backing music beat and followers with harmonies, but there's no need for the player to listen to this as their goal is just to move about using the length of notes.
- I believe there is potential here, it could become a way to help a player learn to harmonise using the followers, giving more interaction when you sing harmoniously with them or match their harmony. Going down the more gamified route, I feel there needs to be more materials leading the player to their song. With the game objective of finding the NPCs and completing the challenges, the player is more focused on that rather than what they are singing. With the controls being in the state they are currently in, there is no need to actually sing music, making the result an almost monotone rhythm of long and short notes.
- I would like the result of playing this game to be the player finding a song in the melodies they have sung. For them to be able to remember parts and patterns they can take inspiration from, or listen back to what they have sung and pick out particular sections that they enjoyed. For this to happen, there needs to be more interaction to make them naturally sing more melodically. Maybe the past-mentioned exploration of a world that is interacting back at you with exploration achievements could still be added to this along with the game mechanics, or maybe there needs to be more complex controls using pitch again (but in a less frustrating way than the old turning system) and dynamics added to the game.
- I enjoyed the addition of the extra challenge of quiet in the second level, it added a completely different feel to the game even though the same base mechanics and goals were there. I think this could be developed further by adding new mechanics to each level, slowly building up what the player can do, both to stop the game from getting boring (I always prefer games where you keep unlocking abilities such as a Metroidvania or the mechanics keep changing like in games like "It Takes Two" as it keeps the play interesting and new challenges automatically come up through the change in mechanics). The creepy forest level ended up being too much of a twist in direction between levels, though only adding 1 new challenge (keeping quiet) completely altering the genre of the game through the mood shift. I would need to add some levels building up to this so it isn't so juxtaposing, in that I could add more mechanics to build the challenge. Also by slowly building up more movement/general mechanics, it makes it less overloading on the player. I was worried about making the controls too complex and hard to take in, but this can be fixed by letting the player get used to one added mechanic at a time, like a game adding in new abilities and different uses for buttons on the controller as the player levels up.
- Lastly, I feel like VR was a good choice of mode for this project, though it did introduce its difficulties with things such as the microphone dampening, I think it was a great medium to work with. The fact the game was all around the player made it a lot more immersive, and especially if I add more interesting interactions with the world. It makes the player feel enveloped in the environment - helping create a state of total immersion in the game - and be less self-conscious about singing and more sub-consciously inspired by the materials around them.
Conclusion
Through my iterative design process, using another musician to test my project, the project was able to turn in a different direction from how I'd first imagined. This process helped stop my tunnel vision, work out mechanics that just plain didn't work, and add a new perspective and new ideas to the game. I believe there is potential for this project to become a well-rounded digital score, though it needs more interaction and added mechanics to help the player begin to sing rather than just make noise. The project currently is a good groundwork for a digital score to be created, and I'd love to develop it further to reach its true potential.
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