The development of a music rhythm game with a higher level of playability

In this study, we investigate the factors influencing the playability of a music rhythm game, and then design a game with a higher level of playability. Three categories were used to investigate playability. They were functionality, structural, and audiovisual. Four popular games are used to carry out the comparison of playability. They include ‘Don't Tap The White Tile V2’, ‘Deemo’, ‘Cytus’, and ‘LiveLove’. The results of user satisfaction of the four compared games suggest ‘Cytus’ has a higher playability than the other three games in all three of the categories. In the comparison of ‘Cytus’ with the game "Anima" designed by the current writers, ‘Anima’ achieves better results than ‘Cytus’. In the satisfaction with function category, ‘Anima’ and ‘Cytus’ achieve 3.83 and 3.80, respectively, indicating little significant difference in results. For the structural category, It was found that players immerse themselves in "Anima" better than ‘Cytus’, the satisfactions were 3.93 and 3.65, respectively. For the audiovisual category, it was found that the cooperation of audio and video and the design of characters in ‘Anima’ were better than ‘Cytus’, the satisfactions were 4.44 and 3.90, respectively. This study, provides new rules for the design of music rhythm games with a higher playability and demonstrates how following these rules to develop a new game ‘Anima’ was able to obtain successful results.