Dodo Re Mi FAQ

In case you haven't heard... Dodo Re Mi is the brand new music game coming to The Jackbox Party Pack 10 this fall! It's our first ever music game, and we can't wait to share it with you.

When we announced this game on social media and shared the trailer on YouTube, we received all sorts of fan comments about the game. How will it work? Will there be issues when playing on a stream? Everything you've asked is something this game team has been taking into consideration in the months they've spent developing it.

We asked Dodo Re Mi's Assistant Director/Lead Engineer, Michael Siciliano, to share some insight and ease your qualms.

What makes this game different from other rhythm games?

Dodo Re Mi is a game about the magic of making music. You (and if you want, up to eight other people) aren’t just tapping along to a song, you’re performing the music and creating a totally unique arrangement of the piece you select. You can pick from up to seven different parts to play for each song with a variety of instruments for each part. As you play, your device will emit the audio of your instrument in real time. When the song is over, you can share your performance with the world so that everyone can hear your hilarious all-gong rendition of Row, Row, Row Your Boat.

Is this going to be like Zeeple Dome?

No. In Zeeple Dome, players are responding to things happening on the game screen in real time on their devices. Dodo Re Mi never asks this of the player. Instead, players are responding on their devices to things happening on their devices. Your attention is never split between the game screen and your device.

How have you addressed latency issues?

At the beginning of each song you play in Dodo Re Mi, players sync their device with the game by tapping along to an animation. In doing so, regardless of how much latency there is between the game application and a player's device, the player will be in sync with the music and animations they experience coming from the game. After the song is over, the game combines every player's input in order to produce a single, synced-up performance of the song.

If you pause the game while you're playing a song, the sync up process repeats after you unpause in order to get everyone synced up again. When a re-sync occurs there is a brief lead-in to allow players some time to prepare for any notes that were coming up when the game was paused.

How will this work for streamers playing with an audience?

This game works quite well in a streaming environment. There aren't player-generated-content concerns (outside of player names, check the games settings for help with this). As described above, even large latencies are accounted for in the sync process.

Audience is fully supported as well! Up to 10,000 people can join the audience and pick an instrument and beatmap to play. Just like the players, the audience must appease a hungry plant or befall a terrible fate. The audience plays along to the song, but their performance is not present in the final synced-up version.

Dodo Re Mi allows for players to drop in and out between every song. If you're a streamer trying to control exactly who joins your game, you should use the Passworded Room setting. Between Passworded Rooms, Max Players, Require Twitch Login, and Player Name Filtering, Dodo Re Mi is as safe an option as any for streamers.

Technical note: if you're playing on stream and want to make sure every single note from every player makes it into the song, try to keep your stream latency to 10 seconds or less. If it's longer, that's okay, it just means some notes at the end of a song may not make it to the game.

How will it work for people playing using a PC (mouse/keyboard) as a controller rather than a phone?

The controls for the game are very similar between phones and PCs. For your phone, you’ll tap notes as they animate down your screen. For PC, you’ll tap keys on your keyboard instead. You can also click notes with your mouse if that’s preferred, though some songs get a little fast for that! We've been playing the game during all of development on desktop browsers as well as phones and worked hard to make the game feel great regardless of how you’re playing!