The Path to Interactive Music

Hi, my name is Juan Reyes (@MiniBeatBoy) and I’m a game programmer, industrial designer and musician and I’ve been running a game development studio Cocodrilo Dog since 2011 along with my partner Marge Torres (@marge_torres), a lawyer, game designer and tech lover.

I have believed for a long time that music can be an interactive experience and specially I think that it can be enjoyed inside video games. I grew up when the people used to purchase physical CDs in physical stores with physical money and then you could spend all your afternoon listening to it in a non-interrupted session accompanied with beautiful artwork and lyrics from the album’s books. Now I feel that part of that has been lost. I wouldn’t know what part of it exactly, but I think it is something between the immersive experience, the visual aspect and the capacity of the listener to focus a 100% in the experience.

In Cocodrilo Dog we have been working in music games since the beginning and every new project we create my belief becomes stronger. As  game designers, we want to create a game format where you can connect deeply with the music. A game that is a result of the music and not the music as something that is secondary. But at the same time we don’t want a game explicitly themed for musicians, like the games that have plastic instruments and are about being rockstars. We want to create characters, stories and action, and mix them with music mechanics like rhythm, tone, composition, etc.

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