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Homepage
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Note Gameplay
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Chord Gameplay
Inspiration
Suika Symphony was inspired by Shaan's lack of musical talent, as compared to his three musical genius hackathon mates. A random conversation involving some basic music terminology revealed the considerable knowledge gap prevalent between those that play an instrument and those that don't. We had the realization that a game could perfectly target this, providing a fun, interactive way to learn basic music theory. Our game is inspired by the ultra-famous "watermelon game" (suika in Japanese), which has been taking the world by storm.
What it does
Simple to understand and play, our twist on this game has two game modes: one for rhythm and one for pitch.
The rhythm game involves combining alike musical notes (ie to quarter notes) to generate larger notes (a half note) in the ultimate goal of creating the glorious whole rest. This game teaches the symbols that are used for different musical periods of time, and allows users to develop basing sheet music reading skills. With the addition of audio, users get an idea of how long these notes last, providing a sense of rhythm.
The pitch mode utilizes the same alike-node-combination game mechanism, but instead of combining similar length notes, you combine pitches that match together to form chords (ie ac#e). This game builds a sense of pitch and harmony within the user through auditory input as well, allowing beginners to form basic chords and understand how the notes complement each other. With these game modes, any non-music oriented person can passively learn the music skills necessary to start their journey into music theory.
How we built it
Suika Symphony was built using Unity with custom Adobe-created visuals. We utilized the Physics2D engine to handle collisions and WebGL to host our application online.
How we used Github Creatively In making this game, Github played a major role in facilitating our fast-paced development. Initially, we worked together to create a minimum viable product, then split off into different branches to continually add new functionality. Working on different features all at once, Git allowed us to seamlessly integrate our code as we developed chord mode, rhythm mode, and pre/post game scenes all at once. Things got tricky with all the members of our team having no experience with game development and Unity, but with Github, we were able to all dive into different niches and successfully integrate our code to create a functional application.
Challenges we ran into
Our foremost challenge was that this was all of our group members' first experience with game development. None of us had ever used Unity before, and as a result, the learning curve was very steep. It was hard to find specific instruction online in how to build and adapt our game to match the functionalities we wanted, and most of our time was spent learning how the basics of Unity and how to apply general concepts to fit within the scope of our game.
A major point of our game was also its visuals, which provided a challenge in creating as well. Adobe was tough to work with at such a large scale, and the high quality visuals we created were difficult to design from scratch.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are very proud that we created a working game with all of our functionalities, which can be played online by anyone at the link below. This is thanks to Github pages, which hosts a WebGL build of our unity app.
We're also very proud that we got the game to work by both mouse and keys, allowing cross compatibility with mobile phones and computers.
What we learned
We learned an INSANE amount this weekend. Starting with absolutely 0 knowledge of web development, we're walking out of MHacks with a completed game and the knowledge necessary to do it again. We've gone through the entire development process, from ideation to framework selection, to coding, debugging, version control, and finally building and running. This was the first large-scale project all of us have worked on, and as such, it was a massive learning process full of failures. We're so glad we ended with a success in that Suika Symphony is a working project, and are very thankful to MHacks for giving us this incredible opportunity.
What's next for Suika Symphony
The next steps for Suika Symphony is getting it published on the google play store. We've developed a functional, educational game that we think can really help people, and want to get it out there in the world for people to use.
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