Project Title: Vaelum
Project Vision: The product will be for hardcore gamers that enjoy tightly constructed, fast paced, heavily skill-based gameplay. As well as classic rhythm game fans who find the current structure of rhythm games to be stale and over-saturated. Vaelum is a rhythm game that offers a new gameplay alternative to the genre, in which the player must balance precision, timing and information processing. It does this with gameplay that involves pressing the correct key to highlight the right colour as well as controlling the cursor to click on the notes as they are about to fade. This gives the game more complexity than most rhythm games and will provide an interesting study as to how much complexity makes a game too obtuse to play.
What is Vaelum: Vaelum is a rhythm game that offers a new gameplay alternative to the genre, in which the player must balance precision, timing and information processing. The gameplay consists of clicking on notes around the screen to the rhythm of a song, but the player must be highlighting the correct colour to hit the note. This gives the game more complexity than most rhythm games and will provide an interesting study as to how much complexity makes a rhythm game too obtuse to play. Vaelum also offers a performance ranking system, ranging from ‘Bronze’ to ‘Vaelescent’ to keep players competitive.
Approach: Unity made the development of Vaelum a swift process, as over several months the individual mechanics slowly fell into place with no problems. After the inception of the core gameplay, additional features were introduced to make the game more engaging and add replayability. The inclusion of gameplay modifiers allowed players to alter the accessibility and difficulty of the game to their liking - as players can increase the speed of a song, make all notes the same, or turn the experience into a memory exercise.
Supervisor: Marius Varga