I’ve been hunkered down for the last couple of years, professionally speaking, not taking on any new audio work. Instead, I’ve been focused on a completely new endeavor: designing and directing my first game, BAND MATES.
At its core, BAND MATES is a collaborative music-making game. Think Rock Band’s “playing in a band” experience combined with GarageBand’s music-making capabilities.
BAND MATES was born out of a desire to interact with music creation in a way that felt playful, yet engaging. I wanted something that gave me enough creative control, but at the same time felt effortless. I didn’t want it to feel like work.
So I began to prototype some basic ideas. I didn’t have enough coding skills to program the game myself, but I knew I needed to build enough to get a real programmer excited about the project and join it.
Eventually, I was able to team up with Gabriel Koenig (Jettomero, Tux & Fanny). His combined expertise of game development and music technology made him an ideal collaborator. So we got to work. We spent the next 18 months prototyping and experimenting with all sorts of music systems. The results are a fun and novel way to interact with music, not to mention play a game.
We’re still early in development, but here’s an overview of our music-making features:
BAND MATES doesn’t stop at music creation, though. What really brings the whole experience together is playing with friends and making your own bands. Composing the music, the fashion, the identity… This is what will make BAND MATES memorable and meaningful to players.
You don’t need to know anything about music to play and compose your own songs in BAND MATES — that’s the beauty of it. That said, if you do have a musical background, then you can dive deeper into the systems and create some really awesome stuff. BAND MATES has something for everyone interested in music, no matter the level of expertise.
In the next blog post, I’ll go over our Design Pillars, and how they guide every design decision in the game.
See you soon,
Ed