ShooPrano
I've been toying with the idea of using voice on top of a classic controller setup to provide a more complete experience to the gamer. Well, the true idea came when I heard complaints from a lot of players about the rude attitude of some people over multiplayer games. Keep their mouth occupied and the problem will solve itself. So I made a prototype of a game where you actually need to sing/shout while playing to do stuff.
ShooPrano, a simple portmanteau on soprano and shooting game, requires the player to sing to power its avatar. Enemies and items in the game respond to a particular note ; the player will have to sing that corresponding note to interact with them. The whole game is using a lot of sound-based metaphors: white noise allows the user to erase sounds, creating a perfect shield for example.
Since the game is relying completely on music and sounds, it has been very challenging to create an engine where the enemies could generate music on the fly and respond to the user voice. As a result, creating the levels requires also some music skills (composition is also involved). To be honest, I am wondering about the potential of the gameplay here so I am asking for feedback and ideas.
The game is still a bit rough by moments (consider it the alpha version) but it contains a few rooms, A and D (you need to be able to sing those two notes then), a silence bomb and various enemies.
The game was coded in Java, I tested it under windows, mac and linux. The only thing you need to do is to select the right microphone input in the settings menu. You can get the package HERE. Unzip and execute ShooPrano.bat or ShooPrano.sh depending on your OS. You will need a pretty recent version of Java for the game to launch and a microphone.
Controls are so far WASD to move, mouse to aim and voice to select the note. You need to collect the note items before to be able to use the notes. Clicking while singing creates bullets of the corresponding note while just singing shields you from that particular note.
I would deeply appreciate any feedback! Enjoy!
Fri, 08 Oct 2010 08:07 Posted in Games
Tags experimental, game, gameplay, ShooPrano
If you liked this article you can add me to Twitter
2 comments »
-
By Nobody 09/10/2010 at 06h00
-
By Emrys 17/11/2010 at 17h47
C’est comme dans lanfeust où il faut chanter pour faire avancer le pétaure :D
I love this idea. From a design perspective only forcing the player to speak or sing certain words sounds very compelling. I haven’t played the game yet, as I’m not in an environment that will let me, but is sounds like you could almost tell the story through what is being said or sung. or you could go the Audiosurf route and let people upload their own songs to sing. Your idea has a lot of potential, and I look forward to seeing what you make of it.