Cacophony

Cacophony is a grid-based puzzle game taking place in a music box. Each room has a unique puzzle that can be started from multiple directions, changing the challenge depending on how you navigate. Solve puzzles by pointing your Harmony Beam at every spirit at once. Explore and unlock the final door to complete the game.

This was the second prototype I got to work on as a producer during my 2024 rapid-prototyping class. For Plasma Fusion, my previous prototype, I was willing to sacrifice the personal preferences of my team to create a game that I felt was strong. With this prototype, I took the opposite approach, building a game around what skills members of my team felt like learning or strengthening. Somehow that ended up being a... grid-based puzzle game, which isn't too far from something I would probably make in my own time.

Cacophony's main mechanic is a "harmony beam" that you shoot in the direction you face. This will freeze any ingame "spirit" that you look at. By freezing every spirit, that room becomes complete, and you are able to navigate freely. The idea was to make puzzles that have a different approach depending on the direction you enter a room, giving players a unique replayable experience, or a unique experience to their fellow player.

This concept ended up falling short, since the flexible puzzle design just ended up making many of the puzzles feel flat. Unique mechanics would often go unused because of where you entered a room. Sometimes you'd complete a puzzle and still feel confused! The way to complete the game was also odd. You were meant to explore and find buttons to push that opened a door. We wanted some cool final puzzle, but did not have the time.

Really, this wasn't that bad. A prototype was meant to be a mixed bag like this. We must've done something right, because next semester, a capstone team chose to make a full game out of Cacophony! It's called "In Harmony," and you can (and should) play it here: https://crowded-kitchen.itch.io/in-harmony. Note that I was not involved with this project.

Here's the great team I worked with:
- Gavin Jackson
- Micah Hernandez
- Nabil Tagba
- Nate Mitchell
- Ryan Swanson
- Trinity Hutson
- Cleo Nixon-Johnson
- Travis Wade