Hi, I am a developer working on an iphone game called "the well" the game is best described as a blend of guitar hero, audiosurf and an itunes visualizer. Its a casual game in which your choice of music is converted into a simple 3d enviroment, that you navigate to rack up points. The prototype is running now, and we will be in beta in the next week or two. I'll put some images/links up here in the next few days. I would love to hear what gamers want from music games.... ash meer www.cashmeermedia.com
i think a visualizer that turns our music into an interactive environment is definitely something sorely missing from the app store. so yeah, good timing. as a side note, has anybody here played vib ribbon? somebody should rip that off bring it to the iphone. cough
I love vib ribbon, it was a great game. It seemed obvious to us that an iphone/ipod game should use YOUR OWN music, since that is what you want to hear. The challenge was finding a way to access the musical data from the library, as apple's current SDK doesnt give you that access. We created a work around for that, which I think is pretty cool.
There is a mode in Space Invaders Infinity Gene that builds levels from songs, but unfortunately it does not do so by analyzing the audio. As for musical games, I really enjoy the music actually being interactive, and where the music morphs cleanly - earliest thing I can remember doing this was LucasArts' iMUSE. On the iPod/iPhone, I've recently played Bopple, which does a similar thing - as bubbles pop, they play music which both fits, and is in sync with the background music. The more bubbles popped at a time, the more complex the riff played. Other games on this platform that I felt offered a good music experience have been Lilt Line (which has static music) and Jounce (where you create your own.) I am looking forward to Astral, which has gameplay heavily tied into the background music. The platform has already had a great showing for music apps, I love Bebot to pieces, have spent many hours making strange noises with Jasuto and making loops with iSyn. You'll have to forgive me for plugging some of my favorite apps, but I think examples might be useful here. I'm looking forward to more news about this application!
I've posted a sneak preview movie of the alpha build. still some work to go, but I think its a really fun way to enjoy music in a veeeerry casual way. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro_oRTbBUFA
I embedded it for you. Most people around here don't like clicking links. EDIT: The game looks interesting, although it's hard to figure out what's going on. I'm sure that's due to it being such an early build.
Thanks so much for embedding it for me. In a very simple sense, its like tap tap or guitar hero, there are 5 columns, each one representing a certain frequency, your goal is to avoid the peaks, and while hitting as many of the 'prizes' (the note icons) as possible. You can change speed, direction, color and hopefully scale (still to be implemented). I had an interview today in Pocket Gamer dot biz. See it here: http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG%2EBiz/Cashmeer+news/feature.asp?c=15946
how do you plan to make anything interactive like a visualizer when you cannot access the music of ipod in a way needed to get that data?
Thats the secret ingredient! http://forums.toucharcade.com/images/smilies/wink.gif That is the challenge, which is why we are patenting our process. We hope it can become the basis for other music or audio based games.
Does that mean it involves a mac or pc? I buy music on my phone and don't have a computer at home. I know that's rare but this games looks like it had potential. Will I be able to play it?
The Well plays music from your iphone/ipod touch library You do not need to have the music on a desktop computer or have an internet connection to play your music library in "The Well" It will play any music from your iphone/ipod touch's library.
The Well is now available Hi Guys, you can now download my game AND visualizer, version 1.0, for just 2.99 on the App Store. Sorry, its not free, but I spent nearly a year on it, and I need to pay some bills... I would love to get as much feedback on the game as I can so I can improve it for the update, try it out, post your feedback! share it with your friends!
