BIT.TRIP Beat and Audiosurf

BIT.TRIP beat beat is a downloadable game developed for the Nintendo Wii with a unique user interface. It uses 8-bit graphics in the foreground for a new take on the classic Pong style gameplay. It is a single player game where the user moves the paddle up and down to prevent rectangular "Pong balls" from reaching the left hand side of the screen. Rather than use a joystick to control the paddle, the player holds the Wiimote sideways and rotates it forwards or backwards to move the paddle up and down. The position of the paddle is determined by the degree of rotation of the Wiimote. What I find most interesting about the user interface is not what is done with the controls, but rather what is done with the graphics and audio. (The video below will start at 21:52 when you click play)

The game starts out in "Hyper" mode, which has a basic level of graphical effects and music. As each ball is deflected, a bar at the top of the screen fills up, and for each ball that is missed, a bar at the bottom of the screen fills up. If the bar at the top fills up, then the player progresses to "Mega" mode, which has more advanced synthesized music and additional graphical effects. If the bottom bar fills up, the player moves down from Mega to Hyper or from Hyper to Nether mode. In Nether mode, the music is completely stripped away except for sounds made with the Wiimote's speaker on a hit or miss, and the graphics become black and white in the style of the original Pong. This gives the player both a visual and audial cue about how they are performing based on the graphical and audial fidelity. Additionally, the sounds that are played are part of the music, so the only way to hear the complete song is to deflect every ball.

Another game that has an interesting graphical user interface is the game Audiosurf. The controls for the game are nothing out of the ordinary. The player moves a ship left or right in order to run into colored blocks in an attempt to make combinations of the the same color as the ship progresses forward on a track automatically. What makes this game interesting is that the tracks are procedurally generated based on the music selected to play in the background. The speed of the ship, which is based on the slope of the track, increases and decreases as the tempo of the song changes and the colors of the blocks are determined by the intensity of the music, with more blue blocks being generated during a more relaxed song, and more red blocks (which are worth more points) being generated during an intense song. A good example of a song with changing tempo and complexity is the song Chop Suey, by System of A Down as seen in the video below.

These games as well as many others made by independent developers are great examples of user interface design in an unconventional way. Even if the games themselves have typical control schemes, they allow you to interact with the music. Normally music is something you passively listen to, but these games give you ways to interact with the music other than simply listening to it.