City of Beats News

Heya, I’m back with another development update for City of Beats!

This month we’ve reached a major milestone - we’ve finished implementing the final boss encounter. And it’s a crazy one, we’re really firing on all cylinders here. This means that we can now play through the whole thing, from the start screen until (and including) the end credits sequence!

Of course, there’s still a lot to do - but now my probably favorite part of gamedev begins: Tweaking and iterating on the campaign so that it flows well from start to finish, and adding additional content where we feel like there’s still some variety and fun missing.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Balancing Run Duration[/h3]
After a bit of internal playtesting, we found that a full run through all 3 biomes & the final boss currently takes about 50-60min. This is quite a bit longer than I originally intended, considering that we know the game really well and are probably faster than the average player in their first few hours.

Ideally, I’d like the length to be around 40min, as having more but shorter runs results in an increased number of “big choices” and therefore more gameplay variety. Of course, if the runs are too short, those choices lose some of their weight and a successful run might not feel as rewarding, so we’ll have to find the perfect balance between the two. I’ll try to shorten the length and amount of combat encounters a bit and see how it goes. I’m already looking forward to the 15min speedruns. 😅

[h3]Summer Gaming Events[/h3]
In the past few months, we brought the game to a couple of gaming events, which really paid off on the marketing front. Between Gamescom, Tokyo Game Show and EGX London, we’ve gathered tons of wishlists, followers and feedback. 🥳

Check out this interview with Nick, which dives deeper into the origins of the game and highlights some of the decisions we made regarding the music/rhythm aspects!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Our latest trailer!

[h3]Adaptive Music[/h3]
Nick has also recently published two new interviews on his blog that are must-reads if you’re into adaptive music and music design in general:

1. Halo, and the birth of cinematic adaptive music (with Halo audio lead / composer Martin O’Donnell)
   
2. Dying Light 2, and the importance of music design (with Dying Light 2 composer Olivier Deriviere)
   

Have a great day & see you next time,
Kai

Hey everyone!
We want to start off this update with letting you all know that City of Beats is being featured at Gamescom at the Freedom Games booth! If you happen to be attending Gamescom in person, you can check it out at Hall 10, Stand F-002g. With us being at Gamescom, we've got a brand new updated trailer for you all to check out:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

The trailer isn't the only thing getting an update! We've also updated our demo. You can check it out now on our Steam page 👀

[h3]Patch Notes[/h3]

• the Lightning Bow is now the default weapon for the demo
  
• new mini-boss reward type: select a Trait Upgrade to add 5 levels to one of your traits until the end of the expedition
  
• combat reward nodes can now be destroyed to gain HP instead of the reward
  
• supercharging weapons now feels more powerful (new sounds, and an AoE Stun when activating supercharging the bow)
  
• updated 2D illustrations for our characters and events
  
• new sounds, e.g. mini-boss warp-in
  
• keyboard/mouse icons are now displayed in menu button prompts (instead of text-based indicators)
  
• slightly increased player's damage reduction in the demo
  
• update to the final UE4 version, bugfixes & polishing all around
  

Welcome back for our July update, which barely made it into July!

[h3]The Blazemaker[/h3]

In City of Beats, we want to make sure that every weapon feels unique, both in terms of gameplay as well as its soundscape and what it adds to the music. So, in the past month we’ve been working on another rather unexpected instrumental weapon: a flamethrower called Blazemaker.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Shooting flames with it adds an euphoric synth layer to the music, as was our idea right from the start. But it quickly became clear that something is missing: while our other weapons play a melody on each shot, the flamethrower just… continuously shoots flames. Our solution was to play the melody through our burning enemies: Enemy drones take fire damage each quarter beat, and this is what plays harmonic notes that create the melody. Therefore, make sure to keep them burning if you want the melody to keep going!
(In hindsight it might not have been the best idea to work on a flamethrower weapon during the heatwave here in Europe. Literal heat & sweat went into creating the Blazemaker. Might want to reschedule that Ice Beam weapon we had planned for Winter.)

[h3]Working on the Metagame[/h3]

Besides the Blazemaker, we’re also reworking and adding to the game’s metagame systems and persistent progression. If you’ve played the demo, you already know the trait system, where you can permanently improve your character stats.
In July, we’ve implemented the hovercar AI component system, which allows you to upgrade your hovercar’s software to gain out-of-combat advantages on your expeditions. Examples for this are unlocking new flight paths on the map or even re-rolling combat rewards if you’re not happy with the selection you were given. You can buy/upgrade these components in the hub and enable up to 3 of them at the same time.

WIP screen of the hovercar upgrade menu

[h3]The Pursuit of Flow State[/h3]

Last but not least, there’s a new blog post from Nick where he explains the techniques we’re using to get the player into a “state of flow” in City of Beats.
Check it out here!

Thanks for reading & see ya next time!
Kai

Hi again! This month’s issue will be a short one, but I wanted to keep the monthly update rhythm going, so here we go:

After finishing the Sunken District’s epic boss fight, we directly jumped into the development of Chapter 3 (which we’ll preview at a later date). Not gonna lie, in terms of gameplay, this proved to be the most difficult one so far to develop.

This being the third chapter, it’s gotten more difficult to find new ideas for enemy types that are unique, work with the music, and are easy to understand/read. We prototyped tons of different enemies, only to later scratch them because they weren’t any fun or too similar to those that came before. Luckily, the ones we’ve stuck with are great, and some of them are among my favorites of the whole game.

It’s pretty cool that - now that we’re done with chapter 3 - the game can be played from the start right up to the final boss encounter (which will be so huge it’ll take place in its own biome/mini-chapter)! But before we’re getting to that, there’s a new weapon as well as some meta-game features to implement. :)



[h3]Banjo-Kazooie and the end of MIDI based soundtracks[/h3]
Our composer Nick has started to write a series of blog posts about games that use rhythm and music in interesting ways. I wanted to highlight his latest post about Banjo-Kazooie and how it tailored the music to its current game state & environment: https://www.nicholassinger.com/blog/banjo-kazooie-and-the-era-of-n64-midi

We’re using this technique (often called “vertical layering” nowadays) in our hub area: the hub’s music track changes based on where you are, and different layers fade in & out. For example, when you get closer to an NPC, their “theme” is added to the overall background music, or if you’re walking up to your hovercar, the drums will kick in.



If there’s something specific you’d like us to write about in these updates, you want to give demo/playtest feedback or if you just want to hang out and talk games & music, join our small community on Discord!

See ya next month & have a great day,
Kai

Hello there, it’s Kai from Torched Hill. It’s been a while since our last update and a lot has happened in the meantime - so let’s do a quick recap!

[h2]One Year on Steam[/h2]

In April last year we put up our store page on Steam to start collecting wishlists and doing playtests to get feedback on the game’s alpha. We’ve now crossed 10.000 wishlists, which is a big milestone for us 🥳 The feedback we got through playtests and the public demo from you folks was incredibly helpful and encouraging.

Towards the end of the year, not only did we get game development funding from our state, but also signed with the awesome indie publisher Freedom Games - ensuring that we’ll be able to release the game in 2023 with the scope that we’ve intended right from the start.

[h2]The Sunken District[/h2]

Based on your feedback we got from the chapter 1 playtests, we refined the core gameplay until we got to a point where we had a solid base to build upon. Once that was done, work on chapter 2 started.



Chapter 2 takes place in the Sunken District of the city, where the ocean waves nearly reach the rooftops you’re fighting on. It introduces acid-themed enemies and the “acid” condition that you’ll really want to avoid. Of course there’ll also be some really cool boss encounters that sync up super well with Nick’s music, of which he has composed an insane amount for this chapter (I think it’s like an hour or so, without counting the dynamic parts).



Check out this preview track for the Sunken District: https://soundcloud.com/nicholassingercomposer/city-of-beats-chapter-2

And in case you’re wondering how extreme the rainstorms can get in this part of the city: Yes.

[h2]What's next?[/h2]

Chapter 2 is mostly finished, so our internal builds can now be played from the start of Chapter 1 all the way to the Sunken District’s chapter boss, which (imo) is the most epic encounter so far. What’s still missing is lots of visual polish like environment assets, VFX, that kind of stuff.

In April, we’ve already started working on Chapter 3, which will be revealed at a future date. Same goes for weapon 3 - so stay tuned for upcoming development updates! I’m planning to do these posts every month or two, and be more transparent in terms of what the current development state is.

[h2]Newsletter[/h2]

By the way, if you want to stay up to date on City of Beats' development and want to get future development updates sent directly to your inbox, we have this cool newsletter you can subscribe to: news.torchedhill.com


Have a great day,
Kai