Grab your staff, pray your fingers are sufficiently nimble, and prepare to use your mastery of both magic and music to sear, flay, and otherwise destroy monstrous creatures and disturb ancient secrets.


Cadenzia is my stab at greatness, or at the very least, pretty goodness. A top down exploration game in the spirit of the original Legend of Zelda, Cadenzia distinguishes itself by being that rarest of creatures, a violent educational game. As you explore, you gain access to music intervals, chords, scales, and other components of music theory, all of which, when executed properly, cast powerful spells. This isn't window dressing or background fluff - you really can't play Cadenzia without interacting constantly with a bunch of music theory and guitar stuff, any more than you can play the Legend of Zelda without learning how the bow works.

I am currently hard at work on the Flash version of Cadenzia. I expect it to be finished sometime in 2009.

In the summer of 2008, I gave a presentation at the Games+Learning+Society conference showing the shiny PC version of Cadenzia (the release date of which is still to be determined). If you find Cadenzia intriguing, you can learn more by watching this presentation here. My presentation begins 52 minutes into the video; I walk through Cadenzia at the 1 hour 6 minute mark. Due to the recording format, the game is only shown as a slide show in the recording, although it was being played live at the conference. My presentation in general gives, I think, a good overview of my theories about games and learning.