I remember starting on Chime way back when. It was called Cascade then and still only tiny, but you could tell there were big things ahead for the little rascal – something about the way its shiny blocks sparkled in the light and the soft patter of its first musical notes. We were all very proud.

It was my first project for the newly-formed Lab – the mysterious and magical place where imagination and sparkly pixie dust combine to replace the normal laws of nature – so it was very exciting. The concept had been dreamt up by Ciaran Walsh, the audio director, and it had got to a point where it was ready to be given a run out.

I used to be a programmer a long time ago, so I offered to do both code and design. It was like a dream come true – the chance to take a game and craft it however I wanted, without boundaries, without rules, just me and the young Cascade against the world. It was going to be beautiful. Unfortunately, I didn’t reckon with one thing – I’m the worst programmer in the world. This put a bit of dampener on things.

Luckily, everyone at Zoё’s jolly nice, so with lots of help, I finally managed to get Cascade on to a PSP. There were loads of great ideas bouncing about amongst everyone, and it was really fun coming up with different ways of exploring how the sounds could be played with to make music and how we’d tie it all up within a fantastic puzzle game.

Back then we had the player surrounding blocks and trying to make their way from one end of the screen to the other, with some evil virus blocks adding extra spice. It actually played really well, and sounded darn cool too, but it was very rough around the edges, like a cute little fairy in a barbed wire boiler suit. What it needed was lots more funky ideas thrown at it and lots more play time.

Unfortunately my wibbly coding skills meant that I’d spent too long on making it work, and not long enough on trying things out. It was time to let Cascade fly the nest, to pass the baton to other folk who’d take it onwards and upwards, into realms never before discovered…

Next time on Designer Blog…

• An exciting glimpse into the past – the creative maelstrom that transformed the young Cascade into the full-blown Chime
• Making Chime into the highly polished humdinger of a game it is today (give it a go and see if you agree!) – the trials we faced and the design decisions we took on the fun-packed road to completion

Mike Movel – Lead Designer