Made With Monster Love — a team of developers with a very awesome name — recently pitched their concept for Cadence, a game about forming a circuit that can loop indefinitely. Although more quirks and catches will be added over time — as one might expect of such a game — it’s not the circuit creating properties that make Cadence unique, but rather the way that it sounds. Each node — every line length — and every different widget in Cadence will determine the music made when your circuit is finally activated, and the developers have promised that their puzzles will all have multiple solutions.
The game’s goal was to recapture how much fun the developer had playing with music in real time using an acoustic instrument, rather than being bogged down fiddling with an endless array of knobs — sliders — and settings. Already they’ve been surprised by the novel solutions people often come up with, and the resulting melodies that sprang forth as a result, whenever they’ve demonstrated Cadence. Naturally, with a game built around people finding their own solutions — and thus creating music in the process — Made With Monster Love also has plans for people to be able to make and upload their own puzzles.
However, in order to keep working on their game — set to be released on PCs, Macs, and iPads — they currently need their £25,000 Kickstarter to be successful (of which over £3,600 has been secured). Specifically they need this money in order to further tweak and refine their game engine, as at its very heart is a custom music synthesizer that Made With Monster Love has been building from absolute scratch. Additionally they’ll also need to ensure that their internal puzzle development tools are user friendly enough for anyone to easily pick up, so that no one gets left out on Cadence’s puzzle designing fun.
Currently, for a pledge of just £10, you may both help out and secure your own launch day copy of Cadence on the PC/Mac; whereas a pledge of £20 will instead secure you beta-access to Cadence on the iPad. Meanwhile — for those even more dedicated to real time dynamic musical puzzles — further rewards include: Cadence posters, the official backer T-shirt, and obsidian sculpture of a Cadence puzzle, and much-much more! However: those interested in Made With Monster Love’s vision must be sure to chip in their donations before March 26th ultimately rolls around, or else Cadence will never gets its chance to perform up on stage.