T-Drum Origins

T-Drum originally began as a master’s dissertation on musical interaction in games, ‘Playing as Musicking: An exploration of ergodic musicking through gameplay’. T-Drum is the culmination of the research on how to create a game / musical instrument hybrid, that plays music through gameplay actions, while mantaining the high degree of control and creative freedom required for musical performance.

Originally the research was focused on music making games for live performances. Given that live performances created several pain points for musical interaction through gameplay. And that the study revealed considerable interest in a music making game that could have full range of creative freedom and high degree of control, by both gamers and musicians. T-Drum is born to embody the concept of a game that can play as an instrument through its game actions, fully embracing both of it's facets, as a ludic game and as a music making intrument. 

In-Depth

T-Drum plays like a super charged version of the 1984 classic, featuring a new board, a planning phase, new pieces, multiple board sets in one run, vertical challenges to go along the classic line clearing challenge and a brand new progression system.

Placing pieces, clearing horizontal lines and matching the blue bar challenges let you score points and compete to be the ultimate T-Drum scoring champion. The higher the challenge the greater the reward, just like the original. But be careful as you score the game gets faster and challenges harder to clear.

Score enough points to unlock augments, which let you customize your play style! Want to score fast? Choose an instant score upgrade. Value over time? Pick one of our score multipliers! Augments can  also change the pieces you play with, or the rhythms the game produces, and even change the sounds you play with. Augments let you customize each run to play your own way and create a different experience each time.

The player moves from board to board, unlocking new sounds and escaping defeat by starting over on a clear board. Starting fresh let’s you catch your breath, but leaves all of your game play-boosting augments behind, so you’ll have to build them back up. Don't worry, you can always move back to a previous board later on.

Beyond a game T-drum is a music making tool, a digital instrument that plays through its gameplay.

Each column is tied to a specific audio sample, placing squares on that column makes the sample play on loop. As the column gets filled the audio repeats more frequently, so you can plan and set up audio loops of different sounds through how many squares you place in each column. And, if you think something is not fitting the current composition you can just mute that column to get rid of that one sound.
It’s not just loops, play a single instance of a sound like a key on a piano by quickly unmuting and muting again on your desired column by clicking the UI or the number keys 1 through 7.

Furthermore, T-Drum lets you load your own samples so you can experiment and make the music you want. If you make a real banger you can record it from inside the game, a mp3 and a visual info file will be stored. So, you can listen to your song later, take it out of the game to use on audio editing software, or even load into a visualizer to turn into a synesthetic experience. The recording system lets you selectively record only certain boards so you can isolate specific parts or combine all boards.
Furthermore, through augments you can modulate sound, rhythmic sets associated to the column levels, apply reverberation effects to sounds within a board and change volume on certain beats to produce emphasis, letting you variate your sound while you play and expanding the possibilities of each audio set.

T-Drum is a puzzle game for music making but it is also an experimental exploration game to play with music. Give it a try, explore, create and have fun! 

About the Game

T-Drum is a musical puzzle game that creates music as you play, combining  the feel of classic puzzle games like Tetris with the music making potential of the TR-808 drum machine.

Reimagining the 1984 classic, with a new board, new pieces, new challenges, more strategic planning time and mechanics that augment and  change how you play.

T-Drum allows you to compose as you score points, letting you set up audio loops, modulate sounds and capture your player expression just like an instrument.