Metronome is slated for the Xbox 360. It is current being described as a "unique third person adventure game where sound is your weapon. " We got an opportunity to talk with Team Tarsier about Metronome. Here is the QA.

Delilah: Before discussing the game, could you please introduce your self and
collaborate on your role in metronome's development?

My name is Andreas Johnsson and I'm the project leader and lead programmer for The City of Metronome. Per (lead artist) and Björn (arist, game designer, level builder) are the two guys that struggles with the game play, feeling etc. of the game.

Delilah: Give our readers a brief history of Team Tarsier. What other games have the
Team Tarsier worked on?

Team Tarsier was basically formed about 18 months ago when a bunch of talanted coders, artists and designers with similar views on gaming decided it was time to try and make something new. So The City of Metronome is our first project together, in the beginning of 2005 we started the actual work on the Metronome prototype which was to be ready at E3.

Delilah: What technologies does Team Tarsier use? (XNA, Modeling, Animation, texture mapping, 3D, etc?) Have you licensed any Third party engines?

For the prototype we have been using the Reality Engine, an engine that is
actually so kickass that Epic Games decided to buy it a couple of months
ago. It features all kinds of cool next gen stuff such as HDR rendering, per
pixel occlusion, PRT lighting, it has a great wysiwyg editor and the novodex physics engine to do all kinds of crazy physics stuff. [Björn]

The engine is fully dx9 and will be moved to xna in a not too distant
future, all our 3D and 2D work is done with Maya and Photoshop.

Delilah: Metronome has a dark, yet mystic look to it. It is reminiscent of Dark City
and American McGee's Alice, yet it has subtle differences in its art style.
Can you elaborate on this and give us an overview of the story and
background?

I would like to think that we have found a look that is definitely our own,
but of course there are lots of influences from classic noir movies,
japanese animation and horror movies etc. The way things are designed
ofcourse goes hand in hand with the storyline, there is a reason that the
city and its characters have come to look like they do, this all comes to
light as the story progresses.

Delilah: What are the kinds of characters and/or enemies will see and meet in the
game?

The city is filled with various strange and interesting characters living
their "normal" (in a Metronome sense :) day to day life, you will meet all
kinds of characters from rich businessmen to shady smugglers and corrupt
police investigators. The main enemies that you will fight are the scouts,
which come in many different versions depending on what their task in the
city is.

Delilah: Using sound will be a key factor and it is certainly an innovative feature
of the game. Can you be more specific on its uses and how this will
manipulate gameplay.

Well, it will hopefully cause you to view the gameworld a bit differently since you will allways be on the lookout for cool ways to create noise. Noise is good since it is needed to fight effectivley. Melodious sounds are also great to find since they are very usefull when controlling Metrognomes. Then you have the actual "meaning" of sounds themselves (speech, alarms, telephones etc.) which can be recorded and used when solving problems and interacting with characters.

Delilah: It seems that the whole metronome world is very key attribute to the game.
How big is this world? (Approximate gameplay hours)

We're aiming for about 10-15 hours of gameplay.

Delilah: O.K. that is typical for an action game. How far has metronome come along? What state are you at in terms of development and what's left to be done?

The City of Metronome as of now is just a prototype to show publishers how the game would look like and what kinds of gameplay elements that will exist. So more or less the whole game is still to be done ;)

Delilah: How has it been working with Microsoft and the Xbox 360 hardware itself?

We haven't had a chance to work with a devkit containing actual Xbox 360
hardware yet.

Delilah: If you could describe Metronome in one sentence what will it that sentence
be?

I know you are supposed to have an elevator pitch ready, but I could not
possibly try to sum up all the cool stuff Metronome has going for it in just
one sentence, unless ofcourse it would be one long gigantic run on sentence that didnt make much sense, like this one is starting to turn out now ;)

Delilah: Describe a scenario of the gameplay.

We recently got some new nda stuff in place so i cant go into much detail
about stuff that is not nailed yet. But I can tell you that the ability to
record and tweak sound to fool and confuse people combined with all the
stuff you can do with the Metrogonmes and gadgets gives lots of cool
possibilities for fun problem solving, combine this with a intuitive and
unusual combatsystem and stuff should be very entertaining to say the least.

Delilah: Release date?

I'm afraid that as long as we don't have a publisher there won't be a
release date :)

Delilah: With all of the attributes mentioned we are sure that you will find a publisher soon! The industry could really use a breath of fresh air in the creative department so, Metronome is greatly welcome! As gamers we look forward to playing your game and we wish Tarsier the best. Thanks, Mr. Johnsson, for your time.

For more information about Metronome check out: http://www.tarsier.se/metronome/overview.htm