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Tapittytap the screen to Control a Tribe of Monkeys in Jungle Rumble A deep dive on the game design of Jungle Rumble: Freedom, Happiness, and Bananas I love rhythm games. I have always wanted to make one. I love slapping on bongos in Donkey Konga,...
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Tapittytap the screen to Control a Tribe of Monkeys in Jungle Rumble
A deep dive on the game design of Jungle Rumble: Freedom, Happiness, and Bananas

I love rhythm games. I have always wanted to make one. I love slapping on bongos in Donkey Konga, tapping the DS screen in Rhythm Heaven, and playing the plastic in Guitar Hero. But the follow-the-script thing irks me. They grade along a single axis of accuracy. As a designer, I like games where the player makes meaningful decisions. I like games where the player ponders tradeoffs between something quick yet weak and something slow yet strong. Why does playing with rhythm have to be one dimensional?

Rhythm Control

My design goal was a way to control a game with rhythm. Parroting the prewritten has been done with great style. I wanted the player to dum-ditty-dum to make something happen, and zum-zum-zum to make something else happen. I wanted every move to add a layer of craziness to the world in sync with the beat. I just had no idea what that meant.

What I really wanted was an interactive music video with the player fighting like Michael Jackson in Smooth Criminal through waves of grooving enemies.

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Jungle Rumble has updated on the App Store! What what? Joy of joys! It’s on the front page of the app store right now. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jungle-rumble-freedom-happiness/id816012589?mt=8&uo=4 So… what’s new? • New levels. New levels that...
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Jungle Rumble has updated on the App Store! What what? Joy of joys! It’s on the front page of the app store right now.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jungle-rumble-freedom-happiness/id816012589?mt=8&uo=4

So… what’s new?
• New levels. New levels that walk players through the more advanced mechanics.
• Skip to any played level when questing for gold medals. No need to start at the beginning of a stage.
• Super hi res. It now looks gorgeous and crisp on massive retina displays from the iPhone 6+ to the iPad Air 2.
• Revamped tutorial. What, you haven’t played yet? This one’s for you. 

Behind the Bongos: Donkey Konga Donkey Konga is a rhythm game where you play bongo drums with up to four people. Bongo drums. This delighted my spastic ADD inner child and my social outer party gamer. On screen, music notation scrolls by. The...
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Behind the Bongos: Donkey Konga

Donkey Konga is a rhythm game where you play bongo drums with up to four people. Bongo drums. This delighted my spastic ADD inner child and my social outer party gamer.

On screen, music notation scrolls by. The notation is pretty simple: left, right, both, or clap. Clap! You sit down with these bongos and bap away. Or, sit down with a friend and bap away. Or, sit down with four people and make sweet cacophony. The songs were silly. Rock Lobster? Yeah. Hungarian Dance. Classical? Yeah. Para los Rumberos? Wow. (Those who have heard me talk about the Puerto Rican plena and Jungle Rumble know that this is cool to me.)

It’s simple. It’s fun. It’s a blast with a crowd.

It’s also very much a traditional follow-the-script rhythm game. Hit the left bongo on time? You’re good. Forget to hit it? You’re not good. You’re graded on timing.

Comparisons to Guitar Hero and the “plastic instrument” genre are inevitable. However, the simplicity of a drum translates into a simple thing you bang on much better than a six string guitar simplifies into a plastic controller.

Donkey Konga was not really revolutionary, considering Drum Mania and Taiko Drum Masters (developed by the same team) had been around for quite a bit. But not being revolutionary doesn’t mean it wasn’t a blast. 

There’s one other huge problem here. It’s the same problem Jungle Rumble suffers from on Androids: audio latency. When you hit the drum there’s a noticable delay before the sound plays. It’s really too bad, but not possible to get around without specialized hardware. (Hmm… Disco Pixel specialized hardware?)