Welcome to the REBROADCAST of our Next Fest Stream!
The Steam Next Festival is coming and we are thrilled to show you our new Backbeat Demo. Join our livestream to talk about different aspects of the game and production!
On the agenda
We'll start by giving you an introduction Backbeat, highlighting controls, mechanics, and gameplay in the demo. We'll also talk about the setting, characters and inspirations that went into building 1995 Hornsburg.
We'll also provide a glimpse into the full version with some of the more sophisticated mechanics and scoring that show up farther into the game. We're streaming live from our studio in Stockholm so this is your chance to ask us whatever's on your mind about the game.
Wishlist Backbeat and stay updated on important news and information leading up to launch! A single click is all it takes to dive into our world of funk, humor, nostalgia, and strategic puzzling madness!
The Steam Next Festival is coming and we are thrilled to show you our new Backbeat Demo. Join our livestream to talk about different aspects of the game and production!
On the agenda
We'll start by walking you through the game concept of Backbeat, and the evolution of our visual language starting with our first title, Hexagroove: Tactical DJ.. We'll then visit the rendering style, concept art, and locations of 1990s suburban Washington, D.C. Finally, we'll cover the characters and films that inspired our ensemble cast. To illustrate we'll use a number of levels and menu UI from the upcoming retail version of the game.
Wishlist Backbeat and stay updated on important news and information leading up to launch! A single click is all it takes to dive into our world of funk, humor, nostalgia, and strategic puzzling madness!
The Steam Next Festival is coming and we are thrilled to show you our new Backbeat Demo. Join our livestream to talk about different aspects of the game and production!
On the agenda
We'll start by talking about about the reasoning behind our games and what we want to create, including our award-winning title, Hexagroove: Tactical DJ.
Over twenty original music sandboxes have been assembled for our title, and each is a step along the road paved with the evolution of funk. We'll show off how musical variations are composited in several special "dojo" training levels, and how the music behind each puzzle solution is altered about the strategic choices you make with paths, power moves, and solos.
Finally, we'll give you a preview of some of the unlocks that exist in the retail version of the game. Instrument variations and realtime pedal effects allow you to push your funk even further in more creative directions.
Wishlist Backbeat and stay updated on important news and information leading up to launch! A single click is all it takes to dive into our world of funk, humor, nostalgia, and strategic puzzling madness!
The Steam Next Festival is coming and we are thrilled to show you our new Backbeat Demo. Join our livestream to talk about different aspects of the game and production!
On the agenda
We'll start by walking you through the game concept of Backbeat, and the evolution of our visual language starting with our first title, Hexagroove: Tactical DJ.. We'll then visit the rendering style, concept art, and locations of 1990s suburban Washington, D.C. Finally, we'll cover the characters and films that inspired our ensemble cast. To illustrate we'll use a number of levels and menu UI from the upcoming retail version of the game.
Wishlist Backbeat and stay updated on important news and information leading up to launch! A single click is all it takes to dive into our world of funk, humor, nostalgia, and strategic puzzling madness!
The Steam Next Festival is coming and we are thrilled to show you our new Backbeat Demo. Join our livestream to talk about different aspects of the game and production!
On the agenda
We'll start by walking you through the design concept of the games we create at Ichigoichie. We'll then touch music creation and how the rules of music are built into our game design. We'll then address the unique resource and constraints the player must manage deeper into the retail version of the game. To illustrate we'll use a number of special test levels showing off:
* premade character paths * "doors and keys" mechanics * stagger and align resources * solo and assist resources * cooldown-managed power moves
Wishlist Backbeat and stay updated on important news and information leading up to launch! A single click is all it takes to dive into our world of funk, humor, nostalgia, and strategic puzzling madness!
It has been more than a couple of months since our last dev blog, but that doesn't mean Backbeat hasn't been getting bigger and better! Since we last wrote in March, we've been doing a lot of polish and under the hood work to improve how Backbeat looks, sounds, and runs. But we'll save that for another post.
The last few months have been brutal in hitting the event scene. We travelled to Kyoto, Japan for BitSummit and were nominated for Best Sound Design! We also had interviews with IGN Japan, Rock Paper Shotgun, and went on the main stage to talk about the game.
No sooner than we got back from the sweltering summer heat of Kyoto, we packed our bags and headed to Cologne, Germany to exhibit at Gamescom and share our progress with Europe. This was a great experience as well and we got some good feedback to help adjust the level design of the demo slightly.
And now it's less than a week until we head back to Japan to show our title at the Tokyo Game Show in Makuhari, where we've been selected from one of 78 games from around the world as a featured indie.
There are more events coming in October but we'll leave off for now as there are more story scenes to adjust and perfect.
Join the conversation!
Do you have an idea for a dev blog topic? Curious about the team and story of Backbeat? Comment on this post or tweet at us, we'd love to hear your thoughts.
Stay cool and funky! -- The Backbeat team at Ichigoichie
More great news this week as we are happy to announce that we have just reached our alpha milestone so we are now feature complete! To celebrate, we have added some extra content to the demo so now is a great time to come get another taste of Backbeat before our release later this year.
New content
The full version of Backbeat has forty levels that progressively introduce four musical resources, twenty themes, special power moves, and point-based tricks. A lot of the unique mechanics in Backbeat are spread out slowly so the player is not overwhelmed at the start. To help give you a tiny taste of some of the time management challenges, we've added an additional level to the free demo where the player may learn about the keys/doors mechanic which requires synchronization of the four characters' timelines. A new character, the saxophonist Chaz, showcases the mechanic.
Audio polish
Starting in this version we have added chatter sounds to the dialogue engine so when characters are talking you can get a deeper sense of their personality. The four members of Backbeat each have their own instrument timbre, and NPCs are unified with softened woodblock when they speak. An new musical theme is also included in the expansion level.
Usability tweaks
We have a number of features designed to help the player when breaking conditions occur in the game. When a musical resource or turns have been depleted, the character triggering the conflict will appear and specify exactly why play cannot continue. This is especially important when a timeline break is about to occur.
We also adjusted several levels in the tutorial slightly to improve visibility of obstacles.
More to come!
All levels in the full version of Backbeat are now complete! In the next month we will be working on adding the unlockable instrument and audio effect customizations, graphical polish, and performance optimizations. We're looking forward to sharing more with you in April's dev blog.
More from you!
Some of these improvements came directly from suggestions made by superfans like you! Do you have another idea for an improvement to make the funky story of Powerslyde even better? Drop us a comment below or shout at us on social media.
Stay cool and funky! -- The Backbeat team at Ichigoichie
It's been a couple of months since our last dev blog but that is how deep our noses have been to the grindstone. We are just a couple sprints away from the alpha version of our strategic puzzler Backbeat, and we have tons of content to prove it!
There are now forty levels in Backbeat! Our master designers Andy and Magnus have spent the last several months building final designs for all 20 of the mainline story levels which teach the mechanics of the game and take you through the dreamed of Watts and bandmates, as well as twenty more "remix" levels which are fun side quests used to unlock sweet musical gear, enhance your puzzling skills, and raise your band title to the limit. All that remains is one secret... well, we'll just stop there and you'll have to look forward to a big surprise when we launch.
Forty levels is a lot of places to visit and stories to tell, and this is where our set dressing and story team shine. David and Andreja have been decorating every club, gas station, and mall, meticulously recreating the feel of 1990s suburban USA. The lights, colors, and layout all evoke soft feelings of nostalgia from yesteryear. At the beginning and end of each level, a story segment plays where you get to know more about the citizens of Hornsburg, done up in classic 32-bit cutscene style.
On the other side of the office our UX and QA rep Simon sits concocting the next round's user test form. Puzzle games are hard to design because everyone sees a challenge in different ways, and through iteration and UI refinement we try to open up the accessibility a little more so everyone can enjoy. Each level is first created in a blockout partially dressed by the lead designer. Afterwards the directors and QA team try it out and provide feedback. After a second and sometimes third round of design adjustment, we prepare the level for user testing, studying how long each player takes to clear the level, where they get stuck, and which mechanics are not being communicated sufficiently. This leads us to a list of action points some of which we incorporate either by adding additional help UI and visual clarity to the game elements, or sometimes even adjusting the levels themselves.
Some of the UI improvements we've added in the past few sprints including the "keys and doors" UI, a zoom out feature, and the dithering of interior walls. A big part of Backbeat is using the environment to unblock certain characters' paths, or conversely blocking guards or enemies from reaching goals. This is done through an interaction solo with a special item we call a "key", which will affect some other obstacle collectively referred to as "doors". Keys are marked up with outlines on the objects, and a floating triangle on top. Corresponding doors bare a circle of the same color. This is useful when a puzzle involves multiple keys and doors in the same map.
Interior walls initially were made transparent with dithering in a small section when characters were directly behind them, but this wasn't sufficient to see all possible paths and understand what movement is possible, so we modified the rendering code to set all interior and southern facing walls semi transparent with dithering during gameplay.
Finally, after all this experience improvement, we of course need a few jokes to keep things light. Some of our favorite 90s brands are parodied in Backbeat and our lead artist Andreja has done a wonderful job incorporating them into our design aesthetic.
Later this month we'll be at GDC in San Francisco with the alpha version of Backbeat, some swag, and a very exciting announcement! We hope to see you there on the expo floor.
Join the conversation!
Do you have an idea for a dev blog topic? Curious about the team and story of Backbeat? Comment on this post or tweet at us, we'd love to hear your thoughts.
Stay cool and funky! -- The Backbeat team at Ichigoichie
Happy New Year! The game design team at Ichigoichie is building new levels left and right, and refining new super moves for the members of Powerslyde. Meanwhile, the scenario team is adjusting the dialogue and help system before sending the story off to Japan for localization. Watts and the rest of us wish you the best in 2022!
We have no dev blog this month as things are quite intense, but we do have a tiny demo update that will help some players.
Usability tweaks
We have a number of features designed to help the player when breaking conditions occur in the game. When a musical resource or turns have been depleted, Watts will appear and specify exactly why play cannot continue.
We've also improved playback and guard rendering to make things a little easier to see. Paths for guards are now drawn so you can predict their movements, and all paths and collision areas are hid during the victory level playback.
More to come!
Fifteen of the main story levels in Backbeat are complete! In the next month we will be working on finishing the rest and starting the remix levels which fill out the single player campaign. Additional features like audio customization and stats in My Backbeat are on the way and we're looking forward to sharing more with you in February's dev blog.
More from you!
Some of these improvements came directly from suggestions made by superfans like you! Do you have another idea for an improvement to make the funky story of Powerslyde even better? Drop us a comment below or shout at us on social media.
Stay cool and funky! -- The Backbeat team at Ichigoichie
November's dev blog comes about a week late due to some nasty colds decimating the Stockholm population, but now we are plugging on and adding more features for the the full game.
When the members of our band Powerslyde are relaxing, they go where anyone else in the 90s would think to unwind: the mall of course! The Hornsburg Towne Mall is the scene of events both epic and comical in our game, so our environment artist Andreja worked hard to build "the mall with it all". The in-world brands have yet to appear, but we'll save that treat for later.
Also this month we are working out the kinks and logic bugs for the four power moves you unlock later in the game. Having the ability to break through a wall, slide past guards like Pete Townshend, or blow away enemies with an epic sax toot increases the complexity and number of solutions possible in the more advanced levels of the game. We did a pass of visual effects to begin with, and are now putting together audio clips with our composer before integrating them into some grey box levels.
Speaking of our composer the fabulous Pete Fraser, he is now set up with the tools needed to create some of the vanity unlocks that allow musical customization of the game. Behold the mighty AKAI Electronic Wind Instrument (EWI)! This will be used to produce a sultry synth sax that Chaz can obtain after a significant amount of puzzle solving aplomb from the player.
Finally, we have put together all the assets for the two alternate portrait styles which are optional in the game. The "sleek" and "speech bubble" styles give the character portraits new cutouts, backgrounds, and colors to allow you to set up your own narrative experience. We're adding this feature as a homage to one of our favorite 16-bit action RPGs, Secret of Mana.
If you are in the Stockholm area, we'd love to see you! We are schedule to do a beta test of some of the levels from the full game at Indie Game Dungeon next Wednesday the 15th. Attendance is free so hit us up on social media for more info if you'd like to drop by.
Join the conversation!
Do you have an idea for a dev blog topic? Curious about the team and story of Backbeat? Comment on this post or tweet at us, we'd love to hear your thoughts.
Stay cool and funky! -- The Backbeat team at Ichigoichie
