Crescendo is a 2D combat action game, where you conduct a musical world around you through your actions. Travel through an eerie fairy tale world that is teeming with music and battle the monstrous personifications of an orchestra.

This game is available for FREE on itch!

This game was created by a team of 22 over the course of a year, developed completely remotely, with 15-30 minutes of gameplay depending on your success against the enemies! It was also selected to be shown at USC Games Expo 2021!

I was the Lead Designer for this project, and my primary contributions to the team was through Combat Design as well as Documentation. One of the main design constraints and design problems is that this game is centered around its music. So every boss needed to be timed specifically to music, but our team specifically didn’t want this game to be a rhythm game, so the player’s input could enter at any point, but it still had to sound pleasant.

Our design solution to this problem took inspiration from Peter and the Wolf, where each actor on screen has a musical “voice”, each playing the same song, but weaving in and out as the different actors performed certain actions.

I designed and iterated on all three boss fights in the game from the greybox stage to completion. Our combat needed to be slower and more methodical in order to give time for playtesters to identify that a new instrument voice was weaved into the sound.

I also managed and updated the design documentation that was used to communicate between team departments to maintain a similar vision. Click here to view a sample of this design documentation. The diagrams were made by the other designer on Crescendo – Carys Gooi.