The songs I used in testing
The first floor
A completed tower- the camera pans out and spins after the song is done
Set to Shadow of the Day, by Linkin Park
I came up with the idea for Beat Builder on a road trip with a friend in January of 2021. We were discussing the similarity between hip hop beats and video game music- both exist to provide a musical backdrop for the artist/player to work on top of. Our take was to have the player literally build a tower to a beat.
The game was built for Android, with the intention of releasing audio packs and skins as paid in-app purchases. In it, you'd construct a hexagonal tower by swiping down to drop a wall, then left and right to move to the next one. There were three different types of wall that the player could choose between, each with different properties and providing score bonuses. So, maximizing your score in a given level would provide players with a technical challenge and a creative one.
I abandoned the project in spring of 2021 because of some serious technical issues around sound/beat synchronization and in-app purchases. Between those two frustrations and an increasingly busy life, I decided to let it go. When I took another look at the project, I was able to resolve the timing issues using Unreal's Quartz. Unfortunately, it doesn't change the fact that the game just isn't fun. It's too easy to spam walls and just pray they hit the beat, and there's only a single optimal floor configuration. It's an interesting idea that unfortunately doesn't work in practice.
That said, I did have a lot of fun with developing this. I was able to put Beat Builder on the Google Play Store, privately, and share it with a few friends. I learned how to use a gesture based interface in Unreal, and I learned a bit of how gaming on Android works. In all, Beat Builder is a fun portfolio piece and not much else.