Pitch Quest
Pitch Quest is a narrative-driven music education game that teaches melody, harmony, and rhythm through three mini-games, framed around a story of a girl inheriting an apartment and working toward a concert performance.
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About Musikkspill AS
Musikkspill AS develops engaging digital tools that make music theory and ear training enjoyable, effective, and motivating. By combining game-based learning with carefully designed practice, we help students build strong musical skills through frequent, meaningful repetition.
The Ask
Music theory is usually taught the way it's always been taught: notation on a board, scales repeated until they stick, a curriculum built around rules to memorize rather than a sound to chase. The clients wanted something different, a way to teach the same fundamentals- rhythm, ear training, harmony- without the class feeling like homework.
The Build
So instead of a curriculum with a game bolted on, we built a story with the curriculum hidden inside it. Every rhythm exercise, every ear-training moment, sits inside a place, a person, and a reason to keep playing, so the learning never announces itself as learning. What follows is that story, and the three challenges presented through games and levels.
The Story of Pitch Quest
It starts with a letter. Cadence never expected to hear from her uncle Elias again, and certainly not like this. He's gone now, and what he's left behind isn't a fortune; it's an address. An apartment. A town she's never set foot in.
A Town Waiting to Be Earned
The town is called Sonata Springs, and it doesn't take long for Cadence to realize her uncle didn't leave her an ordinary inheritance. The apartment is quiet, mostly empty, the kind of place that hints at a life once lived in it without actually holding onto any of it anymore. Whatever Elias earned, whatever he was proud of, it's gone now, and the walls stay bare until Cadence earns her own reasons to fill them. Down the street, a music store sells instruments worth saving up for, some common, some rare enough to feel earned. Further in, a practice room where a band starts coming together, one rehearsal at a time. And past all of it, tucked out of sight and wrapped in rumor, a haunted house nobody in town will explain.
At the center of it all stands the Royal Concert Hall, the town's proudest stage, reserved for the best Sonata Springs has ever produced, and, maybe, for her.
The Games
Jump platform
Melody, taught by singing and moving. Cadence leaps from platform to platform in time with a melody, matching pitch as she goes, each jump landing only if the note does. It's the game that teaches her to actually hear a tune before she can play one back.
Western Harmony Shootout
Harmony, taught with a standoff. Cadence sings to take aim, and hitting the right harmony is what feels like the snakes coming at her. Two or more notes have to work together here, not just land correctly on their own, which is the whole point; harmony is about how sounds sit next to each other, not how well any one of them lands alone.
Beat Runner
Rhythm, taught at a sprint. Cadence runs and clears hurdle after hurdle, timed to the beat, no singing here, just feel. Miss the timing, and she stumbles; keep it, and the run just feels like it's cutting through the exact pulse of the music behind it.
Not every decision starts with a brief.
Some start with a hallway.
The First Idea
A row of hall-of-fame portraits before the player ever reaches the receptionist, so the Royal Concert Hall feels like it matters before anyone explains why. High ceilings too, the kind you'd expect from a real concert venue, so the grandness isn't just implied; it's built into the room itself.
Keep it grand, but not maintained. Sonata Springs used to be somewhere. This is an old estate that's gone a few years without the renovations it needed.
The First Idea
A row of hall-of-fame portraits before the player ever reaches the receptionist, so the Royal Concert Hall feels like it matters before anyone explains why. High ceilings too, the kind you'd expect from a real concert venue, so the grandness isn't just implied; it's built into the room itself.
Keep it grand, but not maintained. Sonata Springs used to be somewhere. This is an old estate that's gone a few years without the renovations it needed.
The World Evolves
So the hall stays worn down through the whole story, and only starts coming back once Cadence discovers she's actually inherited it, a twist she doesn't see coming until after the final concert.
That's the stronger version. Gives the postgame an actual reason to exist.
The Final Evolution
Cadence contributes toward renovating the Royal Concert Hall step by step, slowly shedding its wear a stage at a time.
So she watches it happen, one phase at a time. That works.
What our client say
“We at Musikkspill would never have gotten to where we are today without Avinto. They've helped us deliver the beta version of our ear-training game, Pitch Quest, and have exceeded our expectations when it comes to both design and game design. We prototype the different components of our game ourselves, while Avinto's developers contribute both creatively and technically to make them engaging and functional. Since we at Musikkspill work under different conditions and a tight schedule, we've come to rely heavily on the local project management Avinto provides. The collaboration between the project managers in Nepal and Norway lets us follow up with the developers in parallel, ensuring a seamless process from start to finish.”
Trygve Rypestol
Manager, Musikkspill AS
