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BPM Boy designer Tony Barnes discusses music and sick beats

The man behind BPM Boy talks about its various influences, as well as what it means to be a person of color in game development.

Ozzie Mejia

April 19, 2023 4:00 PM

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There are many things the staff at Shacknews love in their video games. Among them are cool music and sick beats. We recently came across a game called BPM Boy, which is a physics-based platformer in the vein of classics like Marble Madness and Super Monkey Ball, and given a musical motif. To learn more, we spoke with game designer Tony Barnes.

Barnes speaks about the Marble Madness influence and building the title with player interactions in mind. Barnes also put together over two hours of music through RetroNinja's Dynamic Music & Sound Regulator (DMSR) system and discusses how the music was quick to integrate itself into what he had built into the game mechanically. Players can expect to see everything in the world react to the game's music and its beats, specifically. If the players don't get too lost in the rhythm of the music, BPM Boy also features multiple routes and numerous secrets to explore.

There's no word on when BPM Boy will release, but look for it to come to PC via Steam. For more videos like this, be sure to subscribe to Shacknews and GamerHubTV on YouTube.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?