Harmony Train

Harmony Train is a game about the geeky side of music theory. Through a hybrid puzzle/deck-building game, Harmony Train allows the player to explore music theory using their ears, eyes, and intuition. 

Frank Zappa once said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture. If so, then long written tutorials will only get in the way of player learning, so as much of the game as possible is left for the player to explore for themselves through experimentation and a gradual introduction to new and more complicated concepts. 

Harmony Train will teach the fundamentals of chord progressions, guiding the player toward discoveries of tonic, pre-dominant, and dominant chord functions. It also has the capacity to teach about secondary dominants, key changes, and the circle of fifths, depending on the experience level of the player. 

This game does not serve as a substitute to a traditional music education, but is rather a supplement or precursor to a more traditional teaching program. It does not get lost in vocabulary and definitions, whose explanations are not well suited to an interactive environment. These things are better learned in a traditional environment, and it is encouraged that players are exposed to both methods of learning for best results.

This demo is a vertical slice of the core card game mechanics. It shows the card game with several pre-made decks. In the final game the player would slowly be given cards and allowed to build these decks themselves. Since many of the long term gameplay loops like the shop and multiple runs are not here, this just serves as a demonstration of the gameplay and rule set, and as proof that some of the more challenging technical problems are feasible.

Controls:

Desktop: use the left mouse button to click on cards, hover over cards to hear their respective chords

Mobile: Tap cards to interact with them.