What if Frédéric Chopin–the Polish, classical composer from the 1800s–came back to life today? Do you think he’d take the time to school neo synth-head DJs in the art of intonation and smoke some of that “good-good” with a Jamaican named Rob on a beach? Apparently the crazy folk over at Forever Entertainment thought so when putting together the basis for their new iOS music game Frederic: Resurrection of Music.
I’ll admit; I grew tired of the music genre of games, but that wasn’t before I spent 200+ hours smashing colorful fretboards to some great tunes. It was destined to happen. Once the commodity of feeling like a guitar legend faded, we were left with such mini-game like design. I have a dream of reinventing the genre one day; melding together the devices that make music so special to many of us, and tying that together with a story – pumping as much thought and soul into that as into the songs that underline it. No, Frederic isn’t a dream come true for me–far from it–but it’s a prototype of where the genre needs to go to get my attention in the future.
What Frederic was missing was a budget; the game is a story-driven, well polished “piano hero”-esque game for iPad. The lack of voice actors makes the game feel like 3 dudes are telling me a total acid-trip bedtime story. As far as the campiness of the story itself, that comes down to taste. Regardless, the idea I’m trying to invoke here is how well this formula works for music games, especially ones on touch tablets.
Come to think of it, PaRappa the Rapper kind of had the idea. The problem for a lot of people is going to be the “watching video to gameplay” ratio, which again comes down to each gamer’s taste. Not for nothing, why not incorporate adventure game tropes into the whole thing? I like testing my musical prowess, and doing that with a story to drive me through the game is even better. I found myself sitting down to play Frederic: Resurrection of Music start to finish and remembering why I loved those good old music games, wishing the genre would have evolved instead of going into extinction. A penny down a wishing well for the future of the genre.
