The Design Behind Musaic Box, 2009 IGF Finalist

Alexander, from Kranx Productions, talks about the design behind Musaic Box

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/musaic-box-podcast.mp3

Or listen to it here…

[wp_youtube]LGsp5YiG2ag[/wp_youtube]

Show Notes:
Interviewer: I’m here at the IGF Main Competition and with me today is a special guest. How about you introduce yourself?

Alexander: I’m Alexander Porechnov. I’m working in KranX Productions. This is a Russian company, game developer company, but I’m living in the Ukraine and the plan is to open our second office in central Russia.

Interviewer: What game did you make?

Alexander: I made Musaic Box. This is a music logic puzzle colored by hide an object game play. I am sure this is an unique game play, music game play because there are several logic games who use music as a… but not music. Only my game logic music is a part of game play.

Interviewer: But there’s no hidden object music games out there.

Alexander: When I registered with IGF…

Interviewer: Oh, really.

Alexander: If you turn off your speakers you can’t plan this game, really. It’s a game you should think and hear together.

Interviewer: Sure. How many months did it take to prototype the game?

Alexander: Two months for prototype and I made it myself only, the art and the coding and music and design, all.

Interviewer: When you developed this, what inspired the game idea? What inspired the game idea?

Alexander: When I was looking at the screen of MIDI Sequence 2, I had seen a picture of the tricks, music tricks, one by one from top to down with every musical instrument, I mean, and I was thinking it was easy. You drew this picture, jigsaw puzzle games so I broke this picture into pieces and asked Blair to create a melody as a picture in the jigsaw puzzle, but there were several problems. I was starting to think about how to create music, especially the puzzle because everyone can play this puzzle.

So, after some experiments and some beta for the music so every music for this game should be for media player, but not every tune can be suitable for creating a good puzzle so some of those tunes I had to compose a second voice to create more each tune, to create more interest in puzzle process.

Interviewer: What were some of the design challenges that you faced as you developed the game? Any other challenges? I know you mentioned some of the issues right now with the music. Was there anything else that you ran into?

Alexander: Almost all tunes were created and goes to the game, but some of them have many iterations. I tried to create a puzzle and give to musician and tried to compose myself. Thus, 27 tunes and not all have the same task for the player. Some of them have original sample, for example. Some of the tunes sold by old and even [?], for example. So, I spent a lot of time to debate good learning curve for difficult music process.

Interviewer: Sure. Your game won on the Excellence in Design. Why do you think it won the Excellence in Design?

Alexander: Actually, I was thinking about the award because so many really greatly designed games here but the people were extremely happy from this game. So many people really can play this game from the beginning so this is an original concept. I think this is cause for this award. I was very surprised from this. This is very fun.

Interviewer: When you submitted it, you said that you didn’t have the hidden object part of it in the game.

Alexander: No, this is a hiding object and needed for casual players because some players can be afraid from the known original music game played. This is like KMJ who is usual. I know many peoples have hook where players start to play usual game, find an object – oops, music puzzle, interesting, easy and after some time a player can’t leave the computer until the player has finished the game or called it a night or so.

Interviewer: So, the hidden object aspect was used as a hook so you can attract more casual players.

Alexander: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Interviewer: Where can people find more about the game itself, and what’s in store for the future of your studio and future projects?

Alexander: Now that this game is available on bigfishgames.com, casual portals, on direct2drive and other portals, in-house all the Russian. We haven’t a special website for this game but on these portals here you can find this game. Try it out, look at the screenshots. Now, we are working on our next title, not sequel, not music but this other original idea from me.

Interviewer: When are they coming out? When will the new ones come out?

Alexander: I don’t know. They’re planning eight months just for production.

Interviewer: Sounds good. Thank you very much.