Descriptions
A classic “music groovebox” in game form — a multiplayer music-making game.
BAND MATES is what you get when you combine music-making grooveboxes, video games and friends — a classic music groovebox in game form. Explore quick musical jams or fully fleshed-out songs, solo or with friends. Share your music with friends and remix songs together online.
BAND MATES is what you get when you combine music-making grooveboxes, video games and friends: a musical sandbox with self-directed gameplay, where anyone can make real music with no prior skill and still have genuine authorship over the result.
Pick it up and start jamming in seconds. Record a tune, then tweak it till it sounds just right. Everyone in a session shares one root, mode, tempo and swing — adding swing makes a jam feel groovier, and genres like hip hop and reggae use lots of it. Nobody can be off-key or out of time — what that leaves is the interesting part: choosing where the song goes.
There are two ways to play it, and they are different instruments rather than different bindings. On a controller, chords sit on a wheel and are shown as colours, so note names never appear. On keyboard and mouse, a separate system presents a piano instead. Underneath is a full groovebox: a 16-step sequencer you can extend and edit note by note, up to five tracks per instrument, effects and mixing.
Multiplayer was not bolted on afterwards. Up to four players, one per band member: local couch co-op on one machine, online in a friends-only lobby where each machine renders its own audio so players hear each other play live, or asynchronously — running into a bit of writer’s block, send your tune over to a friend as a collab and see what they come up with. A single song can carry up to four editors.
The aim is to remove as many barriers as possible from the act of playing music with friends.
Screenshots
The band
Design pillars
Accessible
Music is not, by default, an accessible pursuit. It takes years of lessons, expensive instruments, and hours of practice. The main objective of BAND MATES is to take all of that away.
Social
Multiplayer is a core system, not a bolt-on. Local and online, live and asynchronous.
Expressive
Expression and creativity as a means of fun and connection.
What players say
"I've never been able to play instruments, and this game makes me feel like I am."
— Playtester, GDC
The developer
Eduardo Ortiz Frau — Game Director and Lead Designer, and the whole of Groovebox Games' development team.
He trained as a musician first: classical composition at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico, then audio engineering at Full Sail University, followed by years in recording studios and playing in bands. He found indie games in 2010 and spent the decade doing sound design for them — 25+ years in audio production and 15+ in games, with multiple IGF nominations for Excellence in Audio.
His credits include The Stanley Parable, What Remains of Edith Finch, Everything and Gorogoa — all four named in Polygon's 100 Best Games of the Decade.
BAND MATES is the first project he has directed. It comes from a decade of making sound for other people's games and then wanting to make his own — and from something he wrote in 2022 that still holds: "Without anyone to share what I created with, what motivation did I really have to create it in the first place?" Sharing is the point of this game, not a feature bolted to it.
