Smashing Buttons

For our final project, we intend to create a rhythm game that utilizes the keyboard keys DFHJ to smash buttons as they come down as sick music plays in the background. We are both very passionate about music so we wanted to implement it into our project as much as we could. We decided on three songs, all having the same grunge vibe to them: Pierce the Veil’s “Hold on ‘Til May”, Sum 41’s “Fat Lip,” and the White Stripes’s “Fell in Love With a Girl.” While many rhythm games rely on arrow keys for their mechanics, we decided to overload the players visual senses by adding a bunch of chaos elements like minions, moving keys, lasers, chat and squishies. These elements are added to the game as both the song progresses and player score goes up in order to progress gameplay. The chaos elements make our project unique and different from other rhythm games like Guitar Hero, Fortnite Festival, and Dance Dance Revolution, and while those were our biggest inspirations, we didn’t want to copy them. The color scheme we picked for this game aligns with our goals of making the game feel retro yet modern, and we also wanted the aesthetics to match the vibe of the songs. We had to consider different things such as typeface, buttons and layout (UI design). Our game opens up on the Start Screen, then, it takes you to a song selection screen, then the actual game, and finally an end screen that details your performance. Our experience left us with two main takeaways: game design is hard, and you never stick to your original plan. We are very proud of our final project and we hope you enjoy it as much as we do.