Devlog 81 - Clematis
Published: November 1, 2025
Another bonus level, huzzah! I'm really excited to show this one off since I'm a big fan of how the track came out -- lots of energy, and fills in a niche that isn't quite covered by any of the existing tracks. As I continue to churn out bonus tracks here and there, I've been thinking more about trying to inject some more variety in the type of songs that I add to Rhythm Quest. I've already added some drum and bass music, classical songs, and even a track inspired by synthwave sounds, but I could probably have some fun exploring other genres, too. Stay tuned for the upcoming Gregoriant chant level? Haha, just kidding...
Here's the video of "Clematis", with its normal mode chart. The song is quite fast at 180BPM, and the chart is pretty dense and challenging!
Charting Notes
At this point I have pretty established patterns for how I like to chart my songs in Rhythm Quest. As I noted above, this song is quite difficult, reaching well above 300 effective inputs per minute at some points. You can tell from the obstacle counts that I tend to chart harder songs primarily with air jumps, flight paths, and flying enemies...
One notable aspect of the chart design is that this is one of the rare occasions where I actually drafted up the entire music track first and then charted it afterwards. For the main levels in worlds 1-6 it was important that I sequence the music according to the specific gameplay mechanics that I wanted to highlight, but for these bonus tracks (especially the more difficult ones) it's more okay for me to just let myself run free with my melodic and rhythmic content and worry about the charting afterwards. That's especially true for songs at a higher tempo as at that speed I generally don't compose using syncopated rhythms that would be difficult to chart anyways.
There were some segments where there was a lot of emphasis on offbeats and I had to spend some time reworking them until I came up with something that felt "intuitive" to read. I have some general rules of thumb that I try to follow as I'm charting, but this is the kind of thing that's tough to really check without just doing some trial and error to see if a section flows well or not.
Something that I ended up changing my mind on while doing the charting for this song was the charting of flight paths with flying enemies in the middle of them. I have an especially common pattern where I use a one-beat flight path with a flying enemy on the offbeat since it's an intuitive and satisfying "grouping" of inputs to parse.
Previously I actually favored keeping these flight patterns horizontally flat, so that everything is in one line, but I've backtracked on that decision and I think I'm instead going to lean toward adding ramped height changes to these flight paths, as the vertical position of the enemy can then help you parse out where in the beat it's placed in relation to the beginning and end. This was already something you could distinguish based on the fact that the enemy was a red one instead of a green one, but I think the additional visual clarity can potentially be good here.
Music Design
As I mentioned earlier, I've been trying to think about greater diversity in the (bonus) tracks I create for Rhythm Quest. To that end, I've been referencing some other rhythm game tracks to give me ideas of what kinds of sounds I could be exploring. For Clematis, the intro section is pretty heavily inspired by Sota Fujimori - Phlox, even going so far as to use the same chords (the flower-related name of the track is a nod to this inspiration). I also used a faster tempo, as I feel like most of the existing Rhythm Quest tunes are more in the realm of 120BPM.
Like the song I was inspired by, I wanted the drums in this section to be sparse, but feature some quick hi-hat and percussion fills for rhythmic interest. Since there's not a ton of density going on in the soundscape, I dialed up the reverb to add extra "spaciousness" to the sound:
Going into the chorus drop, there's a chorded "supersaw" synth which opens up using a lowpass filter, and then the main bassline filters in using a highpass filter. It's a pretty tried-and-true technique of holding back the low frequencies until the downbeat, at which point you can open everything up and kick into a full sound.
The chorus is really full and energetic...I really like this song, haha. Here's that whole section -- note the changeups in the drum rhythm that coordinate with the lead melody, as well as the "mini drop" / beat freeze (is there a name for this?) halfway through where everything cuts out except for a big impact sound. Toward the very end I use a phaser effect for some added spice in the transition out of the chorus.
The snare sound here and the drums in general are more full when compared to the intro. As noted before, there are some rhythmic changeups dictated by the melody, and I also layer in some of my favorite triangle-wave based tom drums, though they're a bit understated because there is so much else that needs to be heard in this section.
The main "meat" of the sound here is provided by the thick supersaw chord synth, and then a thick bassline layer that plays mostly with the same rhythm. (There's also an extra mid-bass pulse wave layer thrown in for good measure to fill things out) The sidechain "pumping" against the kick drum is pretty aggressive here...it sounds almost overdone out of context, but when you listen to it with all of the other sounds going on, it's not so bad and helps give room for everything else to breathe and balance.
The delicious icing on top here is the sparkly echoed arp sounds that fill out the soundspace. There's a few different layers going on here, including a dialed-back version of the riff from the beginning of the song, but the main element here is the bell-like sound (a patch based on FM synthesis) that washes over everything with a nice sparkly reverb (courtesy of Valhalla Supermassive).
I still need to chart out the easy and hard versions of this chart (maybe I'll dial back the normal one a bit depending on how those turn out), but for now I'm happy to have another cool song added into the game. I'm almost nearing the point where I'll have just as many bonus tracks as normal ones, but I have no real gripes about that! In some aspects, you could consider the "main" levels to be the "extended tutorial" that guides you through all of the mechanics in the game as well as how to parse different canonical charting patterns, which will then equip you to tackle all of these bonus songs...