Musaic Box

I’m Alexander Porechnov, original idea author, game designer, programmer and musician of this game. To be honest, I was rather a “jack-of-all-trades”, because I should perform some artist work (animation and visual FX), producing, project management…

I suppose that I’m still a child :). All my life I’m trying to make games from everything. There were some kind of tasks named “creative dues” in my school. So, if my task was to make “keyboard typing trainer” then I’ve done it as a mini-game. There wasn’t allowed to play games in computer class-room, but I started creating my own game as homework. So, scholars in a class-room said to teacher “we are beta-testers!”, and he allowed them to play my game during the session :).

Up to 2003, I programmed business software. So, I wrote unique mini-puzzle game and inserted it as Easter Egg for corporate time-tracking tools. All the employees were happy!

And in early 2003, I was hired by K-D LAB and participated in creating Perimeter, a real-time strategy game based on terraforming. Now I’m working with Kranx Productions. Making games is my profession now :).

I have a music degree in piano. And I’ve played with midi-sequencer a lot and once upon a time, I was looking at my screen with full of channels - the idea of breaking this screenshot into pieces like a jigsaw puzzle came to me.

I can't say I was inspired by a specific game. I have played “Lumines”, “Meteos”, but I suppose “Musaic Box” is first logic puzzle game with music as a real part of the gameplay, player should both "hear and think".

In a middle of production I have had to rewrite code of sound part, which was programmed in playable demo, because of gaps become audible between pieces.

Some players call “Musaic Box” as a “casual sampler”, so in other words, I didn’t found sound middleware for making precise sampler without low-level programming unfortunately.

I used bars' splitting into odd and even notes in several songs, but focus testing revealed that this is a good idea only for "The Entertainer" and "Für Elise." Other tunes with this presentation were extremely hard and not fun at all. It was the only time I redesigned finished puzzles.

There was only one issue in game design - I used bars' splitting into odd and even notes in several songs, but focus-test revealed that this is a good idea only for «Entertainer» and «Fur Elise». Other tunes in this presentation were extremely hard and not funny at all. It was the only time I redesigned finished puzzles. However, thus was created «Buffalo Gals» song level with its unique task.

Nothing. “Musaic Box” was completed according to plan, with a very creative mood. However, it was too hard to take so many roles by one person and, in further projects, I hope to avoid at least project management and spend all my time on more creative tasks.

I created the playable demo by myself in two months. The final game was made in 10 months.

Here screenshot of first created melody puzzle in this demo and how it looks in final game now:

First of all I was searching for a midi-sequencer with scripting abilities, because I was supposing a huge work on splitting tracks by bars. I’ve found one and then wrote a sophisticated script. But in production I was splitting tracks by hand, because it was faster.

I used skeletal animations for puppet-musicians in music box windows, so I coded a plug-in for a 3D-Max and animated the musicians myself.

I suppose many people want to compose their own songs, and the gameplay of “Musaic Box” is a process in which people can imagine them as composers. When I gave the demo to my friends, I found that after some time, they forgot the goal and just arranged their own combinations with enthusiasm. So, I put an additional "creations" mode into final game, something like sampler, and now players can produce very funny combinations. Some player said “I have had so much fun, so many smiles at familiar melodies…”, so I think well-known tunes are part of fun too. And… music is big part of our life, so I don’t surprised when read "Each time I solved a puzzle, I would do a little happy dance in my chair while the music played" or “I have chronic pain… my pain level actually decreased to my amazement! Hurrah for this game and may there be many, many more!”.

I observed some psychological converse effect: first focus-tester, which has a musical background, exclaimed: “OMG, it is polyphony! I’m not a Mozart!”. Other players (without musical background) just started to solve without doubts. And both have solved puzzles with ease :).

To compose music suitable for creating puzzles, I devised a task for musicians (Vadim Chaliy and me) that sound like: “You should compose a combinatorial music. Music is very repetitive and you should tend to compose as many different bars as you can. And you should compose your own original second voice for every melody if you can”. But, to be honest, it wasn't possible in all cases.

So, some melodies appeared to me as aren’t suitable for creating interesting puzzles, for example because of many identical bars. But after some experiments - weakness becomes an advantage - puzzles from such tunes had found their own design, where “many pieces transpositions sounds good, but only one fits the music stand form”.

As a result there are several different mini-tasks among 27 melodies. For example, task to arrange tune without original sample. Player should find and place a few pieces using geometrical considerations first, then hear the beginning of the tune from already arranged pieces.

Another example, I presented a second voice (not a lead melody) as original sample for «Buffalo Gals». Result was more challenging.

Next, there is a single piano instrument track in «Entertainer», so challenge is like simple putting together splitted tape there. But I've obtained one more channel by splitting every bar into odd and even notes.

In addition, have to say that music dictated geometrical forms in most cases.

I have several new ideas how to create gameplay with music - we have successfully prototyped one of them, and it will be one of the mini-games in our next title.