The City of Metronome (Game)

The City of Metronome

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A seemingly-cancelled puzzle-platformer adventure featuring a distinguished art direction and sound-based gameplay.

Overview

First shown at E3 2005, City of Metronome gained attention for its odd, quirky art style, and unusual adventure-oriented gameplay, which implemented puzzles designed around the idea of recording and using sounds in the environment to progress.

After the initial showing, things went silent. Then-recently set up Swedish developer Tarsier Studios (Company) received additional funding periodically, only for the game to be put on indefinite hold in 2007. In an interview with Destructoid, designer Björn Sunesson stated that production had stagnated, in large part due to the game being seen by publishers as too risky. The project was revitalized after winning a 2.5 million-Danish krone round of funding from the Nordic Game Program, and a tentative release window of Summer 2011 was given, which was eventually missed.

After the game was put on hold, Tarsier Studios was hired to port Rag Doll Kung Fu (Game) to the PlayStation 3 (Platform) as Rag Doll Kung Fu: Fists of Plastic. This relationship with Media Molecule led them to help develop DLC for LittleBigPlanet (Game), as well as assisting on later LittleBigPlanet (Franchise) titles.

In a 2021 interview with EuroGamer, Tarsier co-founders Sunesson and Andreas Johnsson suggested that City of Metronome never came together due to Tarsier's lack of clarity on how its pieces would work, individually and as a whole. Additionally, Sunesson suggested that while Tarsier potentially could have brought the game together at the time, they likely couldn't nowadays, with more realistic expectations for development. Despite the developmental turbulence of Metronome, Tarsier eventually found success with the Little Nightmares (Franchise) series.

The initial concept for City of Metronome is presented below.

What's it all about then?

This world-building machine is not ruled by things like logic.

The game is set against the backdrop of the titular city of Metronome, a peculiar city consisting of haphazardly placed buildings in masses, winding alleyways, skewed rooftops, and huge steam engines.

In the city, citizens' daily lives are dictated by the Corporation, a single bureaucratic entity that owns all the city's land, infrastructure, and industry. This came to be because the company managed to uncover the secret of a wondrous machine capable of creating ideas and designs for world-building. Possessing this knowledge the Corporation set out to construct their own version of this machine. With the machine finished the requirement for maintenance arose, the machine and newly constructed areas needed a workforce to make sure everything was running smoothly. And what better way to employ some workers than to kidnap children, suck out their souls and put them to work?

The protagonist, a young man training to become a steam-train engineer, begins to question the Corporation and the city it controls after meeting a girl aboard a train. Together, the two set off on a quest to unravel the Corporation's mysterious, probably evil plans.

How's it all work then?

Metronome's puzzle system revolves around creating, recording, modifying and using environmental sounds. All sounds generated in the environment can be recorded with an apparatus the player character carries around on his back. This includes player-caused noises such as books falling over, rocks flying through windows, or an NPC's angry shout after repeated irritation.

Recording the sound of quirky.

After recording a sound, players would have been able to change its pitch and frequency to produce modifications of it. Different types of sounds, be they loud and aggressive, or high pitched and quiet would have different effects on different things. For instance, one type of enemy might react badly to loud, destructive noises, making such sounds effective against them. Other practical uses might be using a specific sound at a specific time to confuse or distract a citizen, recording a citizen's voice to get past a voice-activated lock, or playing relaxing sounds to cause NPCs to relax.

Who are these people?

The city is inhabited by odd, outlandish citizens who perform their chores day and night.

Metrognomes

Children who have had their souls taken away from them. They roam the city like mindless zombies, performing menial tasks. The player can tell them what to do by playing soothing, melodious sounds to them, even if those instructions are to toss themselves into a grinder.

Scouts

A less friendly type who effectively form Metronome's police force. Powered and animated solely by the souls stolen from metrognomes, a scout doesn't necessarily have to be human, but can take the form of any humanoid invention. Despite their more aggressive nature, they scare easy, and loud noises would have startled them off.

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