Ballad of Shame

Ballad of Shame is a rhythm-action game prototype, envisioned as a future dungeon crawler with roguelite elements (inspired by Cript of the Necrodancer). The core concept merges rhythmic combat and movement with Italian folklore, drawing inspiration from the tale of Guerin Meschino and the legends of the Sibillini mountains. This prototype was made for (and thanks to) ItaloCurso2025 game jam.

– Team members:
Game Designer & Programmer - mayDave (me)
Game Artist - Nora
Composer - Ice Tea
Writer - Infini7o
– Duration: 3 weeks
– Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux

Ballad of Shame itch.io page

As the sole programmer and co-designer on this small team, the entire technical architecture and gameplay implementation was my main focus for the jam demo: building a solid, extensible foundation that could support the game’s unique fusion of genres. The hardest challenge was designing and coding the rhythm mechanics, cause they require a robust and flexible system that accurately parses musical tracks (from the game audio asset), depending on the current BPM. Visual feedback, animations and enemy AI behaviour must be always coherent and synchronized to the timing system.

In my opinion, the most interesting part was to work with and coordinate different professional figures. Art, music and narrative must follow the same path: Nora’s beautiful, hand-drawn art style, inspired by medieval manuscripts and the diegetic UI element; Ice Tea’s folk inspired original soundtrack was not just background music, it was the core gamplay foundation for the player experience.