BP Game

Design & Build by Radiumphonic Lab

Ogilvy Digital Labs approach Radium to discuss creating a fun interactive experience for their client BP to tour globally at events and trade shows. They had originally been inspired by the giant sized piano keyboard in the movie “Big” and ask us to help them come up with something with a similar level of user engagement and involvement.

We evolve an idea for a “Guitar Hero” flavoured experience, using car engine sound sources and a giant, person sized keyboard rig. The player hits pedals on a floor board just like driving a car, in time with music, to play the lead melody of a well known song – with the sound of a car engine! The timing is cued by animated car engines travelling down a race track on the screen. When the cars hit the finish line the corresponding pedal must be pressed. If a player misses the cue the car engine sound chokes and stops. Points are given depending on the precision of timing.

Solid planning will be critical for the success of the project, as many diverse elements must be managed to create the game within a restricted timeframe. We create a calendar to schedule the procurement of materials and book time for the inhouse development needed to generate the software, hardware, and creative assets required

Software: We write bespoke software that will interlink and govern the graphics, game control and operation, and audio/visual playback
Hardware: We create schematics for the interface design and build for stainless steel pedalboard, controllers, game panel buttons, and purpose built microprocessors to receive commands from the software, and contract a small engineering workshop in south London to build the hardware to our specifications
Creative Assets: We create the sound of the “Singing Engine” by making a number of live engine recordings from which we select suitable samples to manipulate with the bespoke algorithm we’ve written which “morphs” the samples into a musical, playable sound without losing the original mechanical grit of the engine. Our Radium Audio creative team then records the selected music tracks, with instrumental arrangements layered to work to best advantage around the engine sounds and in within the software and hardware infrastructure of the game.

The end result is an immersive user experience installation, labelled by our client as “the funniest thing we’ve ever done”, which is currently proving very popular as it tours the world with various BP trade events