Have you heard of the work of A.L. Pythian?*

Backstory

She was a relatively unknown architect from the 80s. None of her architectural compositions ever made it to fruition and as of today only a few maquettes have survived. Despite this, her influence has been large and understated.

I first heard of the work of Pythian while experiencing a gruel 8-year artist's block, not having written any music that brought joy. I thought of dropping music entirely, exploring other endeavors for a while. As a photographer at the Canadian Centre for Architecture I encountered one of her scale models, at first not understanding its importance until it clicked. The patterns in this building were of musical quality, not just inspirational but literal: It was built to a musical scale!

The irony that only her scale models survive is not lost on me. To counteract this, I have meticulously re-created "The Spires, They Sing" by A.L. Pythian (Foam board maquette, 1982) to the best of my amateurish 3D modelling abilities. For your enjoyment I have implemented a method of finding these musical patterns. *

Instructions

• [W] [A] [S] [D]  -  Walk around
• [SPACE]  -  Jump
• [SHIFT]  -  Sprint
• [RIGHT CLICK]  -  Open or close Harmonic Pattern Synthesizer
• [LEFT CLICK]  -  Enable or disable step

Look at the banner above this page to see an example of an harmonic pattern. Once you have recognized one in the architecture, enter it by enabling / disabling steps on your Harmonic Pattern Synthesizer and pressing Play to see if the harmony resonates with the building.

Developer Notes

Solo developed during 3 of the 4 days for GMTK 2024 using mostly Godot 4.3.

Ran out of time (as per usual) so some aspects of the game are not as polished as I'd like. In the end I added up adding more patterns just to increase the count, losing sight of their readability and fun. I'd rather have had less patterns that were more fun and natural to discover so players could finish the game then how it is now.

Had plans for two opening levels, one introducing the concept and another to test the player before reaching to this maquette, but alas, time, once more.

Still very pleased with the amount I got done and to test the concept. Any feedback for a post-jam version is welcome. Please note once more in case you missed it - The background story is fictional!

Known Bugs

• The glow for Spiky Artwork is not in the correct place.
• There is currently no code that checks if you are looking at a pattern or one is near, sometimes you might trigger patterns by accident you weren't even looking at.
• Some places have incoherent collision.
• Half of the patterns are obtuse to read and understand.

Credits

All assets made within the time period with the exception of the following:

Samples

• footstep marble.wav by Rico_Casazza
• Me And Morgan Chimes 01.wav by BobbyLee

Fonts

• White Storm by Woodcutter
• Hundred Signature by Fikryal Studio
• Shiny Retina by MJType
  

Photo

•  Inrichting rijksmuseum, 1932 by A.S. Schmidt-Degener
  

* All completely fictional, A.L. Pythian does not exist.