Contextual Research Report
Similar Narratives
From the outset of this project it had been a concern I would struggle to find games of a similar theme. This is because in my opinion what I hope to create is particularly unique.
To a lesser extent than previously thought I was right, a slim few games utilise sound in the way I am looking to.
Here came One Hand Clapping to the rescue. Self-described as a “vocal 2D platformer” puzzles make use of the players’ microphone requiring the player to sing or hum to solve them.
Not quite the same as my project which will use sound to move the player character.
The puzzle element and importance of sound within One Hand Clapping is however along the same lines as my idea.
https://youtu.be/KFdUWxggz0U?si=Xn_GX-xNIVYSiEoI
Another difference to my game is the colour palette, it uses bright vibrant colours, while mine will be drawn with blacks, whites and greys.
Colours are not what visually draw my eye though. Personally I enjoy how musical and expressive the game appears. To prevent my game being dull I feel it’s essential I can capture the same feelings even with a limited amount of colours.
Reaching out for advice to the One Hand Clapping developers proved to be fruitful.
Soon after introducing myself and sending away my questions they responded.
What was the inspiration behind One Hand Clapping?
This question didn’t receive an answer but the dev has asked his college to respond to it.
What should be considered in a game where sound is a key focus?
“One key consideration for sound-based games is that you have a much more continuous input space than you would with a regular controller. So with OHC we did our best to design challenges that took advantage of that!” (Z, Bad Dream 2025)
This taught me that I must be very deliberate about what I make each key do. Unlike a keyboard, I have only 15 inputs, all of which must do different things. These inputs also must allow me to make good puzzles and be different enough to not feel redundant.
What do you wish you learnt earlier in your career?
"Something that took me a while to learn was how to fail fast. It's easy to get married to your ideas/prototypes and feel defensive about them. It's tough to recognize that something you created isn't working and scrap it, but the game will be better for that.” (Z, Bad Dream 2025)
In essence, the developer here is telling me I should be open-minded.
Additionally I learned I should think ahead when designing abilities and when to cut them out if they are not going to work as meaningful devices to make interesting puzzles.
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Limbo is considered to be a classic game; I felt it’s the best example of a greyscale colour palette in video games.
All the imagery in Limbo serves to create an eerie atmosphere. It’s an attribute I want to incorporate into my own game.
For the player I want them to feel lost and alone much like the character in Limbo does.
Furthermore, the sound usage is immaculate, there isn’t much sound but the limited amount used is hugely effective. No matter the sound in Limbo it does not go to waste and I want to bring this quality to my game.
https://youtu.be/Y4HSyVXKYz8?si=gq04xc0ePaYN05xA
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Crypt of the NecroDancer is yet another game providing inspiration for my project. Searching for gaming titles with the best audio design led me to Crypt of the NecroDancer.
It’s not entirely like my game in fact it’s far from it, with it being a rhythm dungeon crawler game. The rhythm aspect is what I like about it, the music links to the gameplay and that appeals to me.
Mechanically this is the most simple game, however likely the closest in equivalence to my project.
Scream GO Hero uses the players’ voice to have the character jump. Using this ability the player must negotiate their way to the next platform and keep going till the ninja falls and dies.
Scream Go Hero: Eighth Note Yasuhati (Ketchapp)
No Straight Roads I found via a magazine called Wireframe a very useful source of gaming knowledge.
There is not much I know about the game, I gather music plays a significant role in it’s creation though.
Wireframe interviewed the developers and one response caught my attention in particular.
Something I had never considered is how people from around the world may react differently to a musical game.
When asked: As you’ve taken it around the world, have the reactions to No Straight Roads been different in each country?
“At the Tokyo Game Show, we had users who really loved indie games. At Paris Games Week, we had more children playing the game, which was really interesting - we were next to Fortnite, so all the kids were there, and we attracted them over. At Taipei Game Show… I guess the game has an Asian flavour in a way, because of the art, and also the voice as well, so they loved those aspects of the game. PAX East was mostly about how awesome the music is, and how humorous it is. So it’s interesting how they all perceive the game differently. But it’s mostly been all positive.” (H, Wan 2019)
Reading this answer has really made me want to investigate how my game is received by people from a variety of nations and cultures. Luckily for me I have a friend group filled with people from an array of countries. During my experimentation I will make sure I take advantage of this by gauging their responses/feedback.
Theories/Techniques
Starting off my theories/techniques I will begin with planning techniques. Going into production for my project it’s imperative I have detailed and extensive planning, it will make everything so much easier and not doing it has been a mistake I have lived to regret previously.
Researching into game development planning techniques took me to beat charts. These drew my attention immediately, I am not a personal fan of drawing up level blueprints. Reason being is to me they are too inflexible. I find them cumbersome.
Beat Charts
Essentially from what I have read in this book. beat charts list all the ingredients contained within a level to make the final recipe. In my opinion this gives me an overview of my levels, it should then be a breeze to evaluate what I need to change and then to change it.
Mentioned in the bullet points is all the things to be included in a beat chart. (R, Scott 2010)
“The beat chart is a handy-dandy tool that can not only help you develop the content of your GDD, but also provides a “map” of the structure of your game; this is extremely important when examining the gameplay progression.” (R, Scott 2010)
Using the chart, I am laying a stable foundation for what I have to do later on. In this way I am preventing future delays that would occur by having to conjure up solutions or ideas on the fly, since the framework is already in place.
Defining Genre
Next up with planning techniques I wanted to look at online journals, for a more technical perspective on planning in game development.
“The first major step of the conceptualization is to define the genre for the game. Vuorela [2007] explains that the relation of genre to all game types is not always clear. Genre gives the player that imaginative framework for possibly absurd actions, concluding that genre should first and foremost support empathizing. Each game has a genre even if it is sometimes hard to define what exactly it is. Adams [2009] tells that game’s gameplay defines its genre and games can have very identical settings in the end and yet they can belong to different genres.” (L, Eero 2017)
According to this online journal, defining the genre of my game is hugely important. If I had to place my game into a specific genre I would probably consider the game as a musical-platformer. I feel it is useful to establish the genre of my game so the player is clear on what my game is, and so they can be more attracted to the prospect of playing it.
Puzzle Design Planning
Puzzles are of colossal importance in my game, they are a key feature of the gameplay and will occupy the vast majority of my players time. Consequently I wanted to research into methods of puzzle design planning, so I am at least slightly less puzzled in their creation. Ensuring the players encounter a difficult challenge.
Foraging the internet, I happened upon Lorenzo James’ online journal and I must say it did not help. Unfortunately nothing I could find really broke it down in the way that I wanted. Here’s a honest attempt at understanding the journal:
“Players have three ability types: Jump, Shoot and Grab. There are four variations of each ability type that can be assigned to the player. The planner generates a puzzle based on the ability types assigned to the player. Puzzles are made out of multiple obstacles, obstacles have the same four variations as player abilities,” (J, Lorenzo 2021)
What I believe that is meant by this is that the abilities of the player inform the solution to the puzzles and the puzzles should match the abilities. Since I don’t truly understand the journal I may be foolishly reading between the lines.
Custom Controller/Player Generated Sound
One of the most ambitious aspects of my project is the inputs via xylophone controller allowing for the character to be controlled through sound, instead of more conventional controls like controllers and keyboards.
Conceiving my project I imagined the hardest part would be the xylophone controller. Instead it’s rather easier than I initially thought. At first from the outset I was worried I would need to garner some degree of knowledge in electronics to enact my vision. I had zero clue of how I would make my idea come to life.
Thankfully I stumbled up Makey Makey.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/279920496?h=e8f76eb62a
Makey Makey gives you a simple to use kit, which allows the user to connect any item they wish to a computer. It's not at all complex, requiring a connection of Alligator Clips to the object of choice and then to the Makey Makey board. After which the board needs to be usb connected to the PC.
Flabbergasted is the word I would use to describe my reaction to this information. The project was about me turning a xylophone into a controller, but I didn’t consider the true applications of what I was trying to do.
Armed with the Makey Makey kit I can turn anything into a controller allowing my controls to be highly customisable. Even a blind person could play my game due to the flexibility of the controls.
LOD Audio
5 Amazing Game Audio Mechanics to Inspire Your Sound Design
Audio being a key point in my game, I was grateful when I found this gem of a video.
LOD Audio or level of detail audio is where the further away you are from the sound maker the lower the quality of the sound. On the surface, this would seem an unwanted, negative and undesirable effect.
Until you consider how sound works in real life however, as you move further away from something creating a sound the clearness and clarity you have of that sound decreases.
As explained in the video in Fortnite, when the gun is being used close to the player the sound is easily distinguished and can be clearly picked apart from another weapon. Once further away the weapons volume decreases, along with the quality decreasing resulting in a less distinguishable sound which enhances realism.
Animation
Animation has been a struggle for me ever since I first began pixel art. Hence me wishing to learn more about the medium of animation within pixel art.
Using this video on YouTube I gained a better understanding of how to draw continuous frames and organise my animation specifically in Aseprite.
“you can tag your animations if I highlight these two frames, right-click new tag, so let's give it a name, I'll call it wiggle and it'll go from frame one. To frame two you can change the colour of the tag. I guess I'll just do it red” (Saultoons, 2021)
First glancing at the animation in Aseprite I imagined it as a lot more difficult than it was. I had no inclination that organisation of my animation frames was quite so simple to do. I’ll certainly being using this in my project.
Aseprite Animation Tutorial (Pixel Art)
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Pixel Art Rotoscope Animations
Rotoscoping is something that caught my eye immediately. I see it as a potential way to lessen my workload and hasten the rate I can produce work.
The animation works by tracing over a video to copy the movements from a real life example of the action. An example like the one found in the video of a man swinging a sword
How to Create Pixel Art Rotoscope Animations
“I finally decided to take the time and try rotoscoping which is a technique where you take footage of actual you trace over them in some medium frame by frame the process is actually really simple” (TheBuffED, 2020)
Really I do think it can be of huge benefit to my project, cutting down production time is extremely important to meeting my deadlines.
Real Life
Songbird as the title suggests is heavily inspired by songbirds, which are known for their distinctive songs that many around the globe adore.
On the Songbird Survival website it reads:
“Songbirds have a highly developed voice box that means they can sing beautiful and complex songs.” (S, Survival)
“You can hear songbirds and their songs most clearly in the morning. This is called the Dawn Chorus.” (S, Survival)
Something about the “Dawn Chorus” really sings to me and I am not quite sure how but I know I want to implement it somehow upon learning of it.
A book I found about songbirds mentions how songbirds can sing a great many number of songs.
“The brown thrasher, a plain-looking bird that lives in the eastern half of the United States, sings about 2,000 song types.” (Johnson, Sylvia 2001)
This tells me the songs for the songbird character in my game needs a large amount of variation to give as much depth to the character as a real songbird.
Conclusion
I feel this research report has been productive unlike the ones I have completed before.
Additionally I feel I can do more and intend to play the games I listed in similar narratives documented in my research through Twitch, along with attempting to ask questions to more professionals in the game industry.
After this I feel more confident moving forward especially with animation which I believe I have a better understanding of.
Bibliography
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/250147288.pdf
https://pure.tue.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/194138045/plansig_2021_paper_5.pdf
https://youtu.be/BxDcwXq4rH8?si=td2chL_cLIZYyasa
https://youtu.be/B0enS9BJne4?si=3MCkHwT2vptZT-uh
https://youtu.be/t8TBBx4ASfs?si=XDIL5jvm6-F8sXto
https://archive.org/details/Wireframe12/page/n5/mode/2up
https://www.songbird-survival.org.uk/learn-and-discover/about-songbirds
https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Songbirds/ucCHCNkDEdsC?hl=en&gbpv=1