Rose: For someone who has never heard of your game, how would you describe it without using the usual genre labels?
Quirky, Funny, Dancy with a touch of dark. It's the kind of game that we hope will stay with you even after you put it down: first because it catches you with our beautiful 2d art and our amazing soundtrack, then because it will take you through an emotional journey thanks to its profound narrative.
And maybe thirst-inducing, based off our TikTok comments
Rose: Where did the idea for this game come from?
Initially it was just a sort of extended game jam. 3 months for a prototype, working very part-time. We were pitching ideas for something simple and we came up with a tower defense game with a rhythm component. But the more we explored the gameplay, the more I realized we focused on the rhythm part and not on the tower defense part. I made the call, instead of doing two games, why not just… make a rhythm game? Then everything happened as we collectively pitched ideas of things we wanted to make. I sat down with our writer to come up with the general themes of the narrative, and its spine. Our artist proposed a couple of concepts for a Jester, and the mouse version was the one we adopted. Someone had randomly thrown the idea of bardcore music; our composer was initially apprehensive but I believe he fell in love with it quickly.
Rose: What makes your game different from other games in the same space?
I don't know any other rhythm game that uses bardcore music!
But also, with a completely unique cast, most rhythm games don't really bother with any kind of story. Our art has been described as unique, and we have taken an approach I personally haven't seen before for the gameplay: notes spawning on both edges of the screen, converging to the center.
Rose: Was there anything you had to cut that you still secretly wish you could put back?
There will be a time where we'll have to make those decisions, but we are still a few months away from release. If we had time, we'd want more levels, more story, full voice acting (instead of limited), and full customization/skins for the main character, maybe with even different playable characters. We're almost certainly going to have to cut that last one.
Rose: What is something players probably won't realize took an absurd amount of work?
The custom charting tools, which allow you to import any song you want into the game. Animation is always one of the most time consuming endeavors, especially since we do frame-by-frame. Difficulty tuning, too. Honestly, almost every part of game dev is very difficult, I can't overstate how hard everyone has been working on this.
Rose: What is the weirdest bug you've encountered that you almost wanted to keep?
It's not so much a bug as a shortcut we took. Earlier in development, the animations would only have one direction. I proposed flipping the Jester's sprite depending on which side the notes you're hitting are coming from. It took us a long time to clock it but because the Jester's outfit colors aren't the same on his left and right side, it flips the colors, when it shouldn't. One of our two programmers developed a shader to fix it this week, but the original color flip made its way into the trailer we just released.
Rose: Is there a particular emotion you wanted players to walk away with from your game?
Happy to have played, sad it's over, eager for the sequel or spinoff, heh.
Rose: What's one piece of advice you wish you'd had before starting?
Boring answer but, none. I'm a big believer in the butterfly effect, and the production on this game has been the smoothest
I've ever seen on any team, I wouldn't change a thing.
Rose: Five years from now, what do you hope people remember about this game?
“Do you remember Crown & Applause 1? Yeah it's funny how they were a tiny indie team but now on Crown & Applause 4
they've become this worldwide phenomenon. Crazy story” Jokes aside, just the amount of artistic and technical talent that
went into it.
Rose: Why should someone reading/watching this go play your
game today?
Because they have good taste :)
Rose: Finally, the question we ask every developer: After everything you’ve told us, can you officially confirm that your game is, in fact, probably a game? Why should we believe you?
You don't have to believe me, you can see it for yourself.
Check out Crown & Applause on Steam and follow Threeclipse on
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