Finding the Blues, the game 2 assignment by Paul T. Rubritz.
I wanted to make a sound-based puzzle game. I also wanted to incorporate some clips of me playing guitar.
I started off with some elements of my first game, The Negative Zone, as a base. I decided early that my game would revolve around the player having to find the correct order of pieces of a song by dragging their mouse cursor around, so that to win they would have to get the song to play correctly. I added item dropping functionality (done by clicking the mouse) to my base game, because it's essential for a player to make it through the game, since at the start of the game it's only natural for a piece to be picked up out of order. For the actual song itself, I recorded myself playing acoustic guitar. I made the song so it would be able to be split up into (nearly) equal parts pretty easily. To test their progress along the way, I made it so that when a player picks up a song piece, all the pieces they have collected so far are played in order. When a player completes the game, the collected notes change colors and the person is able to listen to the completed song. If a player collects all the pieces but they are in the wrong order, the cursor is turned red as a further indication that they did not complete the song correctly.
Being able to put together a song in a puzzle-like fashion seemed like an interesting idea. The pieces of the song are represented by awesome music notes, too.
The game turned out to be pretty much exactly what I was aiming for. The song I recorded on guitar worked perfectly for the purposes of this game. I was concerned that the player might have trouble finding out the correct order, but there ended up being just enough difficulty to feel like a good puzzle game.
And although they are really simple, I am pleased by the visuals of this game. It's pretty satisfying to complete the song and see the collected notes change colors in victory.