Podcast Reflection – Cytus and Music

Cytus is the game I used to play during my high school year. It was an old game, but I still remember the fantasy and pleasure it brought me. When I introduced this game to Niky, she showed much interest to it so we quickly agreed and started to work on this rhythm game.
The game itself is really intriguing, but it is also a really hard game that requires us to immediately tap on multiple notes in a really complicated way. It demands a considerable amount of time to excel and play through the game with few mistakes. Therefore we assigned our roles as experienced player(Me) and novice player(Niky). By introducing the game to the “novice player”, and teaching her how to play the game well, we dug deeper into its plot and implications through experiencing and having fun. This is also the purpose of our podcast: To make an interesting podcast episode that attracts audience to actively learn the essence of the game. We tried to make a tempting opening by editing a prologue and adding dynamic music into our episode. There is also a part where Niky improvised and shared her first response to the quick tapping and the confusing patterns. By doing so we hope the audience could gain a better understanding of how the game works and relates to its main plot. Another goal is to show the audience how music and game together provide a complete effect for players. It is true that the well-composed songs are a highlight in Cytus, but simply talking about the music will stray from the subject. In order to avoid that, we analyzed the combination of the two in Cytus by mentioning Ian Bogost’s opinions in his book HOW TO DO THINGS WITH VIDEO GAMES. The points mentioned in the book also serve as a good summary for our whole podcast.
During the recording and editing work, I came across various challenges. One is that 10 minutes are not enough for us to fully present our thoughts. I have already cut a lot from our original version but we are still a bit over time. I noticed that I had to speak faster next time. Also, though voice acting is one of my interests and I have dubbed a variety of different characters, I found out that podcasting is totally different from voice acting. The tone and speed of dubbing don’t apply to the latter. This is an entire new field for me to explore and I look forward to gaining more experience.
Overall, I learned a lot through making this episode. Podcast, besides written analysis, provides us with a better picture through diverse mediums of how things work. When we turn on the radio, we can hear discussion, music and sound effect, helping us better imagine the scene than we do when reading a purely written analysis. Analyzing a game through the form of podcasting is a great way to teach and achieve the learning outcome of this course.