Role: Game Designer & Art Director
SiriusXM partnered with Tresensa to create a game ad to promote their Reverse The Verse channel.
In Reverse The Verse, famous musicians try the guess their own songs played backward in 10 seconds. SiriusXM was looking for a game to promote their Youtube channel.
Initial Concepts
After our brainstorming session, I created a number of concepts for Reverse The Verse varying from more conventional to a more out-of-box idea.
Game Concept 1: Fight The Artist
This concept was my favorite. In this game, the player listens to the reversed song "simultaneously" with the artist. Both the player & the artist are represented by a fighter.
The player starts at 100 hp (hit points) and as the seconds pass their strength decreases. When they guess successfully the fight begins.
The tap to match at the start is placed intentionally to enable the sound for the game.
The artist's fighter has a pre-determined hp and they attack first. Afterwards, the player attacks, and the fight is resolved.
On the top right, short snippets from Dua Lipa's video are shown to showcase her reactions.
This game is heavily inspired by Puzzle Fighters, where you need to play a puzzle game to fight your opponent. I love fighting games but I am not good at playing. Therefore the idea really appeals to me.
Game Concept 2: Artist vs. You
This game prompts that the user is playing a guessing game against the artist themselves.
They are shown the artist's guessing time in the beginning. Players try to guess the song faster than the artist.
For this concept, I added an extra countdown screen to create a sense of rush at the beginning. Additionally, initial engagement unmutes the game, which is especially necessary for a music game.
The sound waves behind the artist were to be animated to ensure even if the player starts without the sound, the screen would indicate that they should turn their sound on.
Once the player taps on the guess button, they are shown a screen with song names and they need to choose in 5 seconds. They are taken to a lose or win screen depending on their guesses.
Selected Concept Storyboards
The client picked the second concept and asked for visual iterations. They asked us to use the vinyl animation they had on their ident in a couple places. They also wanted to remove the colored shadows behind the text.
Another request was to swap the static artist image with the video they had on Youtube.
For the end screen, I did a couple of changes where the players get up to three stars based on their performance. Afterwards, they are taken to a screen where they are shown other artists who are on Reverse The Verse.
