Sound of the Rain

Sound of the Rain is a physics-based puzzle game in which the player's actions help create the music. In each puzzle, the player's goal is to guide a falling ball (the Droplet) so that it hits all of the special star blocks. The player also has control over an assortment of blocks in the level that they can move and rotate freely. Notes are played whenever the Droplet hits a block, and upon completion of the puzzle, all of the notes played in the level become a new layer of music within the song.

Sound of the Rain was developed for our Junior-level game project class. We wanted to make a simple, highly polished experience we could both be proud of at the end. We wanted to center our game's design on music, and music creation, but we also wanted to give the player a strong goal, so that they weren't just making music "for music's sake!" Accessibility, making the game so that anyone (including non-gamers) could easily pick up and play it, was also a strong goal of ours.We chose to theme our game after Rain because it is a naturally musical element of our world, known for making a broad range of sounds on its own, which allowed us a broad range of options for how we chose to emulate it. It is also something that most players, if not all, are already highly familiar with (especially if they're from the northwest), which would contribute to the accessibility of the game's concept. The four verses (of three puzzles each) thematically follow the progression of a thunderstorm, while the special block types we use are meant to bear characteristics of different phases a storm may go through.