Medle

Link to the game!

Inspired by Josh Wardle’s word-guessing game “Wordle”, which went viral at the beginning of 2022, I analysed the feasibility of a melody puzzle game during the winter training period of the wind band and conducted internal playtests, leading to the launch of this little game on the concluding day of the training.

One year after launch, puzzles started to recycle throughout each year, drawing a conclusion to the game’s operational work.

Motivation

The original vision is that everyone, regardless of experience, can explore, experience and create music up-close in the puzzles.

I’ve been solidly against the meritocracy in the art of music. Sonic expression is an instinctual impulse of humans, and there should not be a barrier to the natural language of humankind which everyone is soaked in. Whenever I see people near me hold back their thoughts on music due to “lack of music theory knowledge” or “lack of ability to understand music”, I get anxiously overwhelmed — art is for everyone to appreciate and reflect on, and there is no such thing as a “correct” interpretation! The current artistic discourse, particularly in the more abstract fields like music, poetry, and dance, seems to have fostered the misconception that there are some profound secret codes behind it all, making people worry that as “uninformed laypeople”, their own perspectives are invalid. To a large extent, Medle is a determined attempt to dispel this myth.

Aside from educational value, the process of guessing itself is like the composition and interpretation of music, being a trial-and-error process among infinite possibilities. What kind of aural and emotional experience will the chemical reactions between sounds yield? I hope that the puzzle game will lead more players to explore this question in their very own way, introducing them to this colourful world and inviting them to have fun in it. This is probably the biggest aspiration of this game!

Gibberish

The game was posted to closed.social (a campus online community) soon after its launch, where it received lots of attention as well as enthusiastic responses to puzzle proposals. I also got to see that friends who nearly refrained from approaching the game as they “knew little about music” gradually feel more confident after a few days’ play. It was so fulfilling to see my initial aspiration realized! Later on, the game gained a wave of popularity in the circle of students and spread in WeChat Moments, received genuine compliments from friends around, and even saw a few forks with dedicated themes! It is such a magical and fortunate experience to really see my ideas stirring up such ripples among people on a larger scale.

It does get bothering having to accumulate a bit of work every single day, but the touch from every genuine interest and well-prepared puzzle proposal is fully worth the work. It is also delightful to have a steady reason to get immersed in music! I have seriously thought about inviting more friends to co-operate the game, but it was always delayed due to my procrastination. During the summer vacation I made an online message board for receiving puzzle proposals, but it never went live due to my perfectionism for interface design. The ways of submitting them have been mixed and messy still clumsy all along…

Operational accidents are certainly not uncommon. Missing the puzzle timeline, being blocked by firewalls, etc. Medle now lives on a cloud distributed around the world and should be less vulnerable!

Looking forward to creating and having more fun with everyone!