Selve is a music adventure in first person where you use an 8-note instrument that you can customize and use to perform one of the two Mulong rituals, the Mul mud ritual or play one of the sacred melodies.
Selve is built in Unity and is my most important personal project to date. I've held various roles in it: game design, 2d and 3d art, VFX and SFX, I wrote the story, as well as all the programming for the various systems that make up the game, including programming a virtual instrument!
An interesting design problem:
The goal of the game is to communicate a deep story about identity and creative exploration in music.
When talking about music video games, people often think of rhythm games. However, these mechanics don't allow for great creative expression; they rather test reflexes or even visual acuity.
After a process of experimentation, I was able to find a system that delivers in terms of its expressive capacity. In short, the system allows players to use a colored Piano to freely play a melody, and the effects of this melody are based on its characteristics: pitch, speed, and direction.
To show and simplify these complex concepts I created a narrative connection. In this world there are magical creatures made of a material that reacts to the melodies you play, then, I use the shape and color of the creatures' bodies to show the different melodic characteristics. This way, the player doesn't need to worry about the technical elements of playing a melody, but can instead rely on their intuition and the visual cues provided by the creature's body.
When the player freely plays a melody, the creature reacts by changing its color, shape, and the speed of the waves on its body. These characteristics depend, in the same order, on the pitch, direction, and speed of the melody.
At some point, the game evaluated more features in the melodies, but to simplify the game for those without deep musical knowledge, I reduced them to just those three.
I have several examples of design challenges like this. If you're interested in learning more about Selve, don't hesitate to contact me. The game is currently in development but you can visit the Steam page to stay up to date.
