Good evening. I am currently developing a game based on you being a God of Metal and controlling a band seeking to defend a land called Bandemonium. You will be facing an Overlord who will send minions to your Stage. You will, using a band and their instruments, gather Song Power, build songs, and use those songs to defeat enemies via deck-building. It...works. My issue is that I’m trying to make the instruments feel more like instruments. As it stands, thematically, if it wasn’t for building a song, the instruments could be a shotgun or a car. Something that deals damage. I am looking for suggestions on making these instruments feel like you are building up the music, gathering the power of the chords, and unleashing it in a blast of frequency and decibels. I hope that makes sense. Thank you for your time.
Instruments
This is just something off the top of my head at the moment, probably could come up with a better suggestion later on. I was just thinking maybe there could be four directions the instrument could be positioned in that each represent a certain note or melody. Or maybe something like you play the instrument in one of those four directions and depending on the side there is different text that is puzzled together into a sentence of an effect with other instruments. Maybe that one would be a bit difficult to format though. Just some random thoughts of how to implement instruments.
Hi. This is a difficult one to try to answer without knowing more about the game. Basically - how do you play it? :)
As mentioned, we don't know how the game is played, but one way to make the song feel more like a song and the instruments to feel more like instruments is to lean on music's jargon.
A song has an Intro, one or more (Verse, Chorus) pairs, an optional Bridge or Solo, a final (Verse, Chorus) pair, and an Outro.
A single instrument can usually only fill one role as either Melody or Rhythm (though there are exceptions like keyboards where each hand is effectively a separate instrument). There's no reason you can't have multiple instruments pile into a role.
Instruments also have registers like Treble, Bass, etc.
Most band members play one instrument at a time, except the drummer and keyboardist (Does Metal even have keyboardists? Not an expert on the genre.)
Example 1: Maybe the Bass Guitar has a special ability when it's playing a Melody role, but since just about every song mandates at least one Bass instrument in the Rhythm role, your band would need at least two Bass-register instruments to use that ability.
Example 2: Electric Guitar has a special ability in the Melody role of a Solo section, but it has some kind of endurance cost/requirement on the band member.
Just spitballin' in the absence of any real details on the game.
I like the idea of the game. My husband would go gaga over this idea.
That being said, have you considered researching games with similar ideas, such as Brutal Legend by Doublefine (yes, I know it's a video game and this is a board game, but you could get some great ideas on how you'd like to proceed).
Hope I've helped at least....a little.
I really appreciate the comments and, while I am new to this forum, I am looking for a way to post the rules/files for testing. Once I do, I will post an update here and then you can feel free to check it out. I am working on the new version of it, so that will take me about a week or so to get it ready. Thank you again.