Medle
Daily melody puzzle game
Inspired by Josh Wardle🪐’s word-guessing game “Wordle”, which became a hit 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, which led to the launch of this little game on the day the training ends.
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, feeling that there should not be a barrier to the natural language of humankind which everyone is soaked in. Whenever I see friends hold back, saying “I’m not qualified due to my illiteracy in music theory”, I get anxiously overwhelmed — there is no such thing as the need to learn that hard in order to speak! Thus 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 most important prospect of this game!
Gibberish
The game was shared in closed.social🪐 soon after its launch, where it received lots of good will as well as puzzle proposals. I was overjoyed that friends who nearly refrained from approaching the game as they “knew little about music” gradually feel more confident after a few days’ play. Later on, it gained a little popularity in the circle of friends and spread in WeChat Moments, received genuine compliments from friends around, and even saw a few forks with dedicated themes! It is such a joy to be enjoyed.
It does get bothering having to accumulate a bit of work every single day, but I am moved by puzzle proposals I receive and it is indeed 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 are still clumsy until now…
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!
Will go on having fun with all!
