Unrelated to the contest, if you want to read a bit about the game I’m developing…

TempoTonic is a 4-key PC rhythm game being developed by Trumpet63.

It’s not about music. The best rhythm game should not be decided by which one has the most songs, or the most well-known artists. Instead, I think the interesting thing to do is build a set of songs and stepfiles that any rhythm game can use, no royalties or permissions required, and to explicitly allow commercial use.

It’s not about visuals. What the player sees on screen needs to tell them what to do as efficiently as possible. Mod charts are the opposite of that. I’m not interested in finding nice-looking ways to confuse or overwhelm the player.

It’s not about gimmicks. Adding another lane or a new kind of gesture is not going to fundamentally change what a rhythm game is. And yet, rhythm games are an unsolved problem, even the simple ones. It’s best to solve the simpler version of the problem first, and then maybe infer how to solve more complex cases later.

It’s about skill. I want to see how quickly and accurately humans can press buttons. I want to understand it, describe it, quantify it, and predict it better than anyone has before.

It’s about the journey of getting better. It’s too hard to get into rhythm games. There’s too much jargon, too little structure, and very little potential for storytelling. I want to make a game that helps the player set clear, interesting goals, and I want those goals to be easily understandable by a casual viewer.