Hey there Feline Friends! 👋
In today's Steam post, Team17 sat down with Jumping Jazz Cat's development team at Le Catnip Collective to bring you a two-part Dev Blog Q&A! 🥳
In part one, we chatted with Arun, Le Catnip Collective's Co-Founder, Music Composer & Sound Designer, to speak about the game's Jazz references, music inspirations, sound effects, and how Arun's feeling in the build up to Jumping Jazz Cat's Steam launch!
Dev Log Q&A with Arun Sol
Do you have a favourite piece of music you’ve created for Jumping Jazz Cats?
"Lights Out was my favourite piece of music to create for Jumping Jazz Cats! It’s one of the ten fast-paced, jazz-inspired songs I wrote for the game.
Across the 10 songs, I took a fairly loose interpretation of the genre ‘jazz’. With Lights Out, for example, it’s a kind of acid jazz with a Mission Impossible-style melody. Beneath that melody, there is a thumping bass line repeating the root note of one chord. With so little variation in the chord structure, it was therefore important to add a lot of dynamics with the other instruments. To do this, I built up layers as if a DJ had sampled horn lines, a piano hook, a crazy clarinet riff, flutes, guitar, organ, and a crisp drum beat.
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Although all of the music in Jumping Jazz Cats was composed note-by-note using MIDI, I wanted this song to actually sound like it was made up of a bunch of samples. To enhance that ‘sampled’ feel, you’ll hear throughout the song the crackle of an old record player (it’s also one of the coolest vintage sounds that exists, in my opinion!)
But what really makes the music special in Jumping Jazz Cats is that, during the chorus, something exciting changes in the game. It was therefore important to have a distinct pre-chorus to indicate that ‘something is coming’. Signalling this in Lights Out is a horn-filled breakdown, with the rhythm dropping back to some swinging hi-hats.
The all-important chorus event then kicks in at the sound of a finger click, which sounds really similar to a light being turned off. After all, the song is called Lights Out! The screen goes dark, and the players can only see a small area around themselves unless they eat the carrots that appear. To match the ‘dark’ vibe, the instrumentation drops back to a muffled drum and bass, and the record crackle really stands out. Then, at the end of the chorus, you hear that finger click again, and the game returns to normal. The final chorus is extra long and crescendos to one last finger click to cue the lights, and the round is over.
As you can tell, I had a lot of fun with this one!"
What games or other media forms inspired the music of Jumping Jazz Cats?
"In the 2000s, I did a lot of Swing dance, and the music I danced to has stuck with me ever since. In fact, Dan (Le Catnip Collective's Director & Co-Founder) still does a lot of Swing dance here in Montreal where there’s a really happening scene!
But ‘Swing’ is like an umbrella term: there are all these other amazing styles pioneered by the Black jazz musicians and dancers of the first half of the 20th century. For example, there’s Balboa (a gorgeously cute style with small but blurrily fast foot movements), Lindy Hop (often danced to the big band classics, characterised by acrobatics, flashy swing-outs and incredibly cool breaks), Charleston (furious speed and fun flashiness), and Blues (very cool, very sexy, very slow).
The music of Jumping Jazz Cats is, at its heart, a tribute to Swing. I’m not actually a jazz musician, but in the 10 Song Events/gameplay songs (as well as a dozen more that play in the lobbies and menus), you’ll hear a lot of what inspires me about jazz: the organised chaos, the complexity and the catchiness, and the sheer joy of musical release."
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Alongside the music, you also worked on the sound effects for Jumping Jazz Cats. Could you talk us through your process for creating the sound effects for the party game?
"At first, I tried using sounds from a soundbank: these were useful as placeholders, but they usually lacked the stylised, handmade feel we wanted to achieve. So, I then settled on an approach where most of the sounds were either A) somehow made with a jazz instrument, B) done with a voice, or C) improvised with some random object in my apartment.
Jazz instruments are great because they have the ability to capture the cartoony silliness we were looking for. For example, with the air-dive, I used a slide whistle. To give bouncy surfaces their ‘bounce’, I used a very high note plucked on a double-bass. For the tornado boosters, I used a bass trombone slide. For the cat loaf power-up (where you get to fly) a fluttering bass trombone sounds surprisingly like a prop plane! And for the footsteps on wooden surfaces, you can tell it’s just me tapping the body of an acoustic guitar with my finger tips!
Sometimes, an effective approach was to make up sounds with my voice and then play around with effects like pitch and equalizer. For example, listen to the sound of going into and out of a nap, and you’ll realise it’s just my voice modified a bit. The catnip power-up is mostly just me doing a tongue-rolling purr. Nap in the sun and you’ll hear me doing a 3-part harmony in meows (much harder than you might think - I had to sing it extra slow so that, when I pitched it up a lot, it played at the right speed). And the hound dogs? You guessed it: it’s me barking into my microphone!
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But my favourite use of voice is that of my daughter’s. She was 5 years old when I started working on Jumping Jazz Cats - and you can hear her cute meows by using the emote buttons (you’ll also hear her meow in our studio Le Catnip Collective’s animated logo!). Listen closely to the Lion’s Roar and you’ll hear it’s a mix of her roaring and a sample of a real lion with me growling underneath. The bee in the mini-game Cat Tree Capture is another sound featuring her voice. But, at the time, she was missing all of her front teeth, so it didn’t sound bee-ish enough. I added in a real bee sound, and I wrote a flute part playing something like Flight of the Bumblebee, et voilà!
Finally, as all sound designers know, sometimes you just end up raiding the kitchen or other rooms in your home to find things to make sounds with. For example, with the scratching posts (you scratch them to change teams), I originally tried recording the sound of Velcro being ripped apart. Eventually, I settled on the sound of poppers on one of my daughter’s old onesies being unbuttoned (credit to my wife for this one!)"
Describe your emotions and how you are feeling in the lead-up to the launch!
"It’s a strange feeling!
As the co-founder of a tiny studio - we have 2 artists, 2 programmers, Dan as the director, and me doing sound design and admin - we each end up wearing many hats, and a lot weighs on our shoulders. I won’t lie: it has been stressful at times. To launch a game after almost 3 years of working on it, to have all of those hours and weeks and months and years… all leading to one single day… it’s nerve-wracking, to say the least!
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But for all the hard work and stress, making this game has been the most rewarding musical experience of my life.
Music is important to any game. But I am particularly proud that the music gets to be a gameplay feature in Jumping Jazz Cats. I am privileged to have worked on it with Dan, a friend of some 25 years. And I’m super proud of the wonderful and brilliant up-and-coming devs we have found in our local Quebec community. It’s a real thrill to be shipping our first game!
We also have the great fortune of being backed by Team17. They have so much publishing experience and expertise in the party-game genre (anyone heard of Overcooked?!) In the lead up to release, it’s a huge relief to have their support with the business end of things like QA, localisation, marketing etc.
Lastly, I will say that having thousands and thousands of people around the world playing our demo during Steam Next Fest was incredibly exciting! The feedback on the demo was really positive, and it felt validating of our crazy decision to make a jazzy game about jumping cats. We just hope that players will love the full game even more when it comes out on 10 April 2025!"
Jumping Jazz Cats launches on April 10th! 😻
We'd like to say a huge thank you to you for supporting Jumping Jazz Cats! We've loved seeing your feedback, suggestions and excitement during Steam Next Fest and in the build up to launch- not far off now 👀😺
We hope you enjoyed this Dev Blog Q&A with Arun around the music and sound of Jumping Jazz Cats! Next up, we'll be chatting with Dan, Le Catnip Collective's Director & Co-Founder to discuss Jumping Jazz Cats' origins, gaming inspirations, the party game's cat animations, and the upcoming launch on Steam! 💜
Wishlist Jumping Jazz Cats today! 👇😼
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1951780/Jumping_Jazz_Cats/
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