A Musical Playground of Beautiful Puzzles
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A Musical Playground of Beautiful Puzzles
About this project
UPDATE 25/03/2015: "Noodlestarter!"
We didn't get enough funds for a successful Kickstarter, but we're coming out strong with Plan B. Long story short: the support and exposure of this past month has been inspiring, and we'll continue development on Cadence as a smaller, tighter project funded by pre-ordering from our Noodlestarter page -- secure this project's future by feeding us noodles!
Your first moments together with Cadence will be about exploring the simple mechanics which lie at the heart of the game. By making connections between nodes, you create pathways in an effort to solve puzzles. Solutions are correct once they form a loop or cycle that can continue forever.
Whilst playing Cadence, one of the things you will notice is the simple elegance. Minimalist design cues and finely-crafted controls banish distractions and allow you to lose yourself. The rules start out simple, but as you’re drawn deeper a wonderfully complex set of possibilities emerges. You'll soon realise that problem solving can lead to entirely novel outcomes, allowing simple scenarios to yield multiple solutions.
If you're a Youtuber or press (no matter how small) you can request a copy of the game by emailing info@madewithmonsterlove.com
The gameplay in Cadence is already incredibly rewarding, but when combined with sound it creates one of the most astounding qualities of the game. Every element in the game generates a tone, so by solving puzzles in novel ways you're essentially building music!
Cadence wants you to have as much fun as possible with the sound you create. We've borrowed heavily from electronic music -- in fact, synthesizers are baked right into the game. This means that you can effortlessly shape and manipulate the sound while it’s playing. Drums and bass also enter into the mix, rounding out the options available to you.
We've poured a huge amount of effort into making a great game, and while we’re not quite there yet, we're proud of the results so far. It's the best of Peter’s vast sound and programming knowledge, and Rodain’s experience with making great puzzles (as with his last game, Desktop Dungeons). But the whole time we've been working on the project, there’s been an ambitious question gnawing away at us.
With all the elements in Cadence, might it be possible for us to build an entirely new way of making music? Could Cadence be a creative tool that anyone can use -- novice or maestro?
As a first step, we need to make it possible for you to create your own levels and compositions using Cadence. And of course, creating anything means that there needs to be an easy way for you to share that with the rest of the community ...
Beyond this, we've got several ideas on how to include more music theory and production without losing the intuitive appeal of Cadence. And as for what sounds and synthesizers might eventually find their way into the game, that really depends on how involved you want to be!
By participating in the Beta you’re helping us make Cadence the experience you want it to be. Seeing what you make will help us figure where to focus our efforts and discover how deep this rabbit hole goes. We thoroughly look forward to being part of a spirited community of creators, and being inspired in ways that we never could have imagined.
Breakdown of funds:
Peter spent half a decade as a studio-rat recording music and working with sound gear. He then accidentally fell in love with programming, and has since spent his time making games and other digital things, ultimately founding indie studio Made With Monster Love.
Rodain joined the crew in 2014 to judge Peter and loom over his shoulder while incessantly asking questions about music theory. Rodain has background in game design, having created the IGF award-winning Desktop Dungeons.
White screen print on charcoal grey fabric. Please note the final product might be slightly different front what appears in the image.
The design of the poster has not been finalised yet, but we've commissioned the ultra-talented Jeanne Fourie to help us out. It's going to be awesome, but if you're still wondering you can see samples of her work here and here.
Risks and challenges
Making a simple game is a complicated task, especially in the case of Cadence, where there are so many moving parts. And as with anything of sufficient complexity, the biggest risk is that the game will simply take longer than we anticipate. It's almost certain that there will be unknown pitfalls and gotchas that we only discover once they've already made themselves known, and these are very difficult to account for even though we make provisions for them. We've been wrong before on how long Cadence would take, not to mention the fact we are but two humans working on this.
However, we've been working on Cadence for a long time now. This means that the pool of unknown variables is much smaller than it used to be. We have an intimate knowledge of where the pitfalls might lurk, a clear vision for the game we think Cadence should be, and most importantly an idea of the path we need to take to get us there. This makes us confident that even if the worst happens (what if we DON'T have a complete game by the end of our Kickstarter funds?), we'll be in a very healthy place to start with early access and continue earning the money necessary to get us across the finish line and make Cadence a reality.
Learn about accountability on KickstarterFAQ
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The iOS beta tier includes beta testing of the game as we develop it, an App Store download code when the game is completed, as well as the PC and OS X versions of the game as per the regular beta tier. There are however some important things to consider as a member of the iOS beta program. Right now the iPad build looks and feels great, but it’s important to us that it sounds great as well. Because Cadence generates all its sound on the CPU, this is a serious challenge on constrained mobile devices.
For this reason -- given a lone coder tasked with all the sound tech and still programming the rest of the game -- our focus is going to be mainly dedicated to the PC version to begin with. This means that at times the iOS version might be an awkward experience, and that some devices might simply never be supported. It is also likely the launch of the iPad version will follow a period of time after the PC/OS X release.
- The iPad 1 definitely won't be supported
- The iPad 2 cpu chip is getting very long in the tooth, so we’re not sure this will be possible either, but we intend to try our best.
- iPhones, iPods and all the rest? Small screens mean that we would have to significantly rethink the design and interaction of Cadence. But the new large screen iPhones, like the iPhone 6+, should be a great fit for Cadence. Apple however doesn’t provide any easy ways for us to target only these devices, so for now we would prefer to not make any promises we don’t know we can keep. -
If you want any the rewards up the the audiophile level, simply amend your pledge to include the difference.
If you’re looking for anything at the Audiophile tier or above, choose your desired reward and send us a message. We’ll add you to the list. ;)
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So we’re huge fans of open source. In fact, the audio technology at the heart of Cadence is open source (namely libpd, the embedded version of Pure Data), and we’re actively committed to contributing any improvements we make back to the core repos.
But even though we’re using Unity and Pure Data, which theoretically support both Linux/Android, our experience with porting Cadence to iOS has shown us that each new platform adds a significant amount of technical burden. It’s just the reality of trying to get complicated pieces of technology working in tandem.
So that leaves us in a difficult position. Right now, as indie developers looking to be as lean and efficient as possible, it just makes better sense to concentrate on the platforms we know we can support well. Linux support is something we’d dearly love to have, but really that depends on us having a successful game on Windows and Mac first.
Android also comes with additional issues all of its own. Frankly the thought of trying to achieve a high performance audio on the fragmented environment that is Android terrifies us. Never say never, but right now Android isn’t on the road map for us, and probably won’t be until we’ve successfully launched on all other platforms.
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Truth is, until we sink our teeth into the beta program it’s going to be hard for us to give a definitive answer on system requirements. But really, Cadence should be a good experience on any relatively modern computer with a graphics card. As a rule of thumb, if you can play other indie games on your computer, then you should be able to play Cadence. ;)
(See the iOS questions for more info on iPad support and requirements)
Rewards
Funding period
- (30 days)