Doom piano is a curious project that combines music with pixelated bloodshed. Simply put, the creators have taken a piano – which they bought for £30 – and wired up each key to control a certain aspect of Doom, be it back, forward, left, right, or fire.
Doom piano was first conceived during the Arcade Game Jam at the Virgin Media Game Space. While it was first dismissed as a too-ambitious idea, creators Ricky Hagget and David Hayward set to work creating the musical mayhem.
“During the build we had the basic prototype running after about 12 hours of dismantling, planning, soldering, taping and gluing. It needed more work to get into a playable state, so a lot more work went into it, including recompiling Doom from source to work with such short key presses. Every single one of the 85 hammers inside the piano, while remaining functional, has been modified to also work as switches. We didn’t think that’d be possible in the time we had, but in about 36 hours we had it in a fully working state.”
Since its creation and unveiling at the Virgin Media Game Space, it has become something of viral hit, fetching over 86,000 views on YouTube. David Hayward also commented on the importance of game jams, which are events during which people try to create games in a short space of time.
“Arcade jams and custom machines are partly about designers breaking away from nostalgia to invent something new, but also about the experience you’re giving players. When you build something that’s specific to a location or event, you can do really special things aren’t possible at home and change a player’s relationship with the game and that’s what we did here.”
You can see a video of Doom Piano in action below.
Are you heading to the Eurogamer Expo? Will you be giving this a try? Let us know what you think in the comments below.