Original Global Game Jam 2013 Prototype Gameplay
Melodefense is a musical iteration to a classic tower defense game in which you make music by defending your base from enemies approaching from linear columns. Player towers can shoot but enemies can only attack when they get near the towers. Every tower has a specific music loop of an instrument attached to it. In this version we have 6 towers and 6 loops: Kick, Snare, Hi-hat, Bass, Arpeggio, Chords. Placing a new tower triggers the music loop attached to that tower type. Music loops are made of 16 beat patterns and towers shoot according to these pattern. Placing towers of different types adds music loops over already playing ones.
In addition to these, a step sequencer continuously scans the battle arena that is also divided into 16 parts. When the scanner detects an enemy, it plays the specific synthesizer note set for each column. This results in randomly generated melody lines shifting slowly in time. This way an interactive music is composed depending on the gameplay. Actually, Melodefense is a music toy that allows you to make music by playing a tower defense game.
Currently, you gain points in time. You can buy towers with these points and enemies reaching the last line gives a penalty that cost you some points. You win if you can pass all the waves, you loose if you run out of points. This is not a fundamental setup but one that was working fine for the game jam.
In the first prototype, there was no limit on the number of towers of the same type. Adding a second tower type that is already on the battle arena does not trigger another music loop (because the loop of that tower type has already triggered). Correspondingly, the music loop of a tower type stops playing only when an enemy destroys all towers of that type. The problem was, in this version all six loops are triggered after some point and music becomes the same constant loop repeating for every gameplay and every player. But we want different music to be generated for different gameplays and different players.
No Duplicate Towers Version
Melodefense – GGJ 2013 Prototype (no duplicate towers version)
We made another version which allows placing only one tower of each type. We also altered the game balance so that keeping all six towers alive became harder. This way loosing a tower means immediately loosing the music loop atached to that type. This allows the player to achieve exciting music with more ups and downs with interesting combinations of loops, and variety for every gameplay even with same sounds and patterns.
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Cheers!
Guney.
