Relaxing Kawaii Music Cat Game
Key Notes
GENRE
Music game
ART STYLE
2D Cartoon
PLATFORMS
Android & IOS
Introduction
Duet Cats is an engaging mobile music game that combines adorable cats with rhythmic gameplay. The game aims to provide players with a delightful and immersive music experience while showcasing captivating feline characters. Duet Cats has garnered positive feedback and gained popularity among players since its release.
Challenges
Prior to Duet Cats, Magino embarked on the idea of Dancing Cars, a game that required users to control two cars in separate lanes with both hands and collide with objects placed on the road to earn points. These objects were synchronized with the musical elements of a song. However, despite relentless improvements from the team, Dancing Cars failed to engage users effectively. Through user research and valuable feedback from end users, the team identified several core reasons for this failure, including:
- User experience: The gameplay mechanics of “racing and colliding with objects” led users to impulsively push their thumbs forward, obstructing the main characters (the cars) and limiting their visibility. This resulted in a frustrating experience for users.
- Art concept: The game’s theme was misleading. The visual interface suggested a battle, car racing, and speed, while the actual gameplay mechanics did not align with this theme.
- Level design: Since the majority of users were kids and females, the difficulty level and the concept design of interactive music experience caused stress among users. The game aimed to deliver a highly interactive musical experience, with each hand responsible for a musical element in the song. However, this led to complicated gameplay that was not accessible to the wider user base.
Solutions
We still have strong belief in the control swerve 2 hands, we moved towards the solution of reconcepting gameplay, and Duet Cats was born with a new combination of Mechanic, Art, Level Design, and Music as well.
- User Experience: The game feel transitions from active action like Dancing Cars to passive action. The cats stand and wait for food to drop in order to catch it at the right moment. This reduces the need to constantly rush and attack objects, while also preventing finger sliding and obscuring the character.
- Art Concept: Since the target users are primarily kids and females, we aimed for a cute and positive art vibe.
- Duet mechanic & Level design: To showcase the duet performance, we often divide the lyrics for each cat/player. This simplifies the interaction with two fingers. Instead of constantly coordinating both fingers, each cat (finger) takes turns with their respective lyrics, and during the climax, both cats (fingers) play simultaneously.
- Trending factors: Another interesting element to increase the viral potential of this game concept is the incorporation of the Pop Cat meme and using songs covered in “meow” language inspired by Bongo Cat.
Conclusion
Duet Cats was a successful game that provided a unique interactive music experience, thanks to lessons learned from the failure of Dancing Cars. The game was designed to be accessible to the mass user. Duet Cats was a perfect example of how a failed project can lead to a successful one if the team learns from its mistakes and adapts its approach.