Rhythmcremental



Turowski, PA ORCID: 0000-0002-9471-5183 and Hutchinson, Simon
(2018) Rhythmcremental. [Composition]

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Abstract

Rhythmcremental is a standalone musical game created in the popular game engine Unity. In this game, player manipulate an incrementally evolving drum machine to gain more features and create their own looping musical patterns. At the start, players simply click the “Click” box to make a sound and gain points. Points are then used to buy items which can be dragged from the inventory on the left of the screen into the grid on the right. Items in the grid add more points as they are triggered sequentially. Rhythmcremental investigates the notion of game as performance, drawing inspiration from the mechanics of so-called "clicker" games like Cookie Clicker and rhythm games like Guitar Hero. It features rhythmic pattern matching (clicking in time increases the point multiplier), incremental progression (more items become available over time) and statistical analysis, yet departs from these games in that it is more concerned with musical authorship—i.e. the creation of unique patterns and arrangements. Accessibility was a primary design consideration in the creation of Rhythmcremental. The controls are very simple (click and drag) and thus easily accessed by wide range of ability/familiarity with video games. While there is ultimately an extremely large field of musical possibilities, the materials are arranged so that consonant melodic/harmonic relationships can be generated without requiring an understanding of the underlying musical theory. It is freely available in multiple formats, including HTML5 (web browser), Android, and iOS versions. Additionally, unique codes are generated for all musical patterns to facilitate saving and sharing. Rhythmcremental was performed by Simon Hutchinson for the seventh annual North American Conference on Video Game Music at Ithaca College on June 13-14, 2020. A video of this performance is available at: https://youtu.be/aig5VtW2W1Y

Item Type: Composition
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 12 Jun 2019 15:03
Last Modified: 17 Oct 2023 17:45
Open Access URL: https://batta.itch.io/rhythmcremental
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URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3045548