The Little Chicken Game Company recently released their virtual reality (VR) music title – Track Lab – in which players get the chance to experiment with music. A hybrid of rhythm and puzzle videogame, the title allows for users to create their own music in a way that is accessible and doesn’t require any past knowledge of music theory or music creation.
Choosing from a wide range of different musical beats and samples, players use the motion controllers to pick up a selected note and place it on the timed grid. As the rhythm of the track ‘pulses’ through the grid and hits the samples, their make their assigned sound and form the structure of the track. By adding more to the gird, players can assemble more complete and complex tracks which can cover a range of styles and genres. All of this without the need to learn how to play a single instrument.
The gameplay video below showcases a number of different elements within the title. This includes some of the puzzles that require players to complete a track in order to progress along with the free form track creation. All of this is presented in a unique VR setting that immerses the player within the music as it floats all around them and neon lights flashing all around. If there was ever a title that made players feel like a DJ, this is the one.
VRFocus’ Staff Writer Rebecca Hills-Duty reviewed Track Lab saying: “…Track Lab is a well-crafted experience. It looks good, sounds even better and is wonderfully intuitive, even for people with no prior knowledge of music creation. Its definitely worth your time if you are interested in music or puzzle games. Its a good VR title, but the ability to share your music would push it over from ‘good’ to ‘great’.”
Track Lab is available now for purchase on PlayStation VR and you can enjoy the gameplay video below to gain a better idea of how the gameplay flows. VRFocus will be sure to bring you all the latest on the title and the Little Chicken Game Company in the future, so make sure to stay tuned for more in the future.
It has been fairly well established by this point that puzzle titles work fairly well in virtual reality (VR). There is also a rise in interest in music-based experiences in VR, whether this is concerts in 360-degrees, or rhythm videogames. Track Lab combines both into a hybrid puzzle-rhythm title.
The idea of Track Lab is to offer players a way to interact and create with music by translating music creation into a videogame experience that is simple and intuitive.
There are two main modes to Track Lab, the first is a puzzle-based mode where you are presented with a large grid. This requires the player to place various blocks across the grid in order to make sure every point on the grid is hit with the travelling light pulse. The objects that can be moved are referred to as ‘Optics’ and you have only a limited number, which is where most of the challenge comes in.
As your progress through the puzzles, you quickly find yourself tapping your foot in time to the beat as the light pulse flashes through your orbs and Optics, making them sound off their designated noise. The difficulty curve is fairly gradual, and there is definite satisfaction to be gained from solving the puzzle and completing the tune. This is one of the ways you can divine if you are heading in the right direction, as the music changes to indicate that you are getting close to the solution.
The controls are pleasingly intuitive, as you just have to pick up the required Optic and set it down in the right space, twisting your hand or arm to make sure its orientated in the right direction. The layout takes advantage of the range of vision possible in VR, so you can quickly scan across the full grid, making very nice use of the advantages offered by VR and the PlayStation Move motion controls.
The other mode is the Creation mode. In effect, Evolver acts as a kind of gentle tutorial for this mode. This mode uses the same toolset as was present in Evolver to allow you to create your own music. There are some basic frameworks you can use, and a whole host of instrument types representing a vast array of music genres from rock to electronica or even classical.
It is remarkable easy to craft very intricate music tracks using the tools provided. You can layer music together, apply effects and change the tempo. Its quite fun and satisfying until you run head-first into a major disappointment – you can’t save them.
One of the major lacks of Track Lab is the inability to save or share your musical masterpieces as audio files. While its possible to record a YouTube video or livestream a play session using PlayStation 4’s built-in sharing, it puts a sad number of hurdles in the way to sharing your best efforts with friends, and seems to somewhat defeat the point of a music creation tool.
Having said all that, Track Lab is a well-crafted experience. It looks good, sounds even better and is wonderfully intuitive, even for people with no prior knowledge of music creation. Its definitely worth your time if you are interested in music or puzzle games. Its a good VR title, but the ability to share your music would push it over from ‘good’ to ‘great’.
Over the last few decades, many developers have tried to deliver music creation tools within the confines of a traditional video game, and the majority of them have failed – writing and performing simply doesn’t translate well to gamepads, and when more intricate control schemes are used, the fact that you’re technically playing a video game becomes rather irrelevant.
Track Lab is the latest game to step up to this challenge, throwing in an intuitive PlayStation VR puzzle game while also offering several different tools for composing your own electronic beats. As a puzzler, Track Lab is a good few hours of fun, but its creation tools fail to make the case for themselves or the game’s use of PlayStation VR.
Track Lab is split into two distinct modes. The first is “Evolver,” a puzzle-based music mode with gradually increasing difficulty. Over nearly 100 levels, the mode tasks you with activating blocks scattered throughout each board by manipulating the trajectory of flying orbs, made possible through several moveable “Optics.” If an orb is moving from left to right, for instance, you can set up an Optic that redirects it up and into the block you’re trying to hit, or you could place one that shoots one orb off in three separate directions.
Figuring out how to make the most of the limited number of Optics you’re given can make the puzzles quite challenging, but as you place them correctly, you’ll begin to hear a funky tune to let you know you’re on the right “track.” When you finally have your “aha!” moment on a lengthy puzzle and see your completed run play out, you can’t help but do a little dance.
In Evolver mode, it’s clear why developer Little Chicken decided to make the game a VR and PlayStation Move exclusive, as you’re constantly picking up and turning Optics in an effort to crack the complicated puzzles laid out in front of you. Being able to quickly scan over the entire board and select a piece cuts down on some of the frustration that inevitably occurs during the more challenging stages, particularly those that make use of more than a dozen separate Optics.
Little Chicken bills Evolver as a teaching tool before heading into Creation mode, and that’s a shame, because Evolver is easily the better of the two. Track Lab’s use of music lends itself extremely well to puzzles, and it would have been nice to have twice or even three times as many different boards to solve. That being said, there are a few times when you’ll likely have to pull off your headphones and hit the mute button on your television, because hearing the same few notes over and over again while you’re stuck on a puzzle is enough to drive you insane.
Once you take off the training wheels and head into Creation mode to make some tunes on your own, Track Lab starts to fall apart. You’re presented with a simple repeating loop that you can expand using Optics to create a custom beat, or you can erase the basic framework and start completely from scratch. Regardless of how you begin, it effectively feels like you’re creating your own puzzles that just happen to play a bar or two of music after you’ve completed them.
That isn’t to say that you can’t come up with complex and melodic tracks on your own. Track Lab provides you with several different instrument types across electronica genres as well as more classic music, and by layering tracks on top of each other, manipulating the tempo, and using special DJ modifiers on the fly, you can create something to get people dancing – especially if you choose to livestream your performance – but the entire Creation mode feels like it’s putting unnecessary hurdles between you and a completed song.
The PlayStation VR integration doesn’t help when you’re trying to produce intricate beats, either, as you’ll likely suffer from eye strain or a headache before you’re anywhere close to done, and even with the digital control panel fully raised, we encountered difficulty reaching certain abilities with PlayStation Move due to tracking limitations of the platform.
Once you do finally complete your Top 40 banger, you’ll find Track Lab’s biggest disappointment: There is no way to save your masterpieces as audio files for use on other devices. With the amount of effort needed to make a worthwhile song, it’s something of a punch in the gut, even for a game primarily focused on performing music in the moment.
Final Score:5.5/10 – Mediocre
It’s certainly easy for basically anyone to craft a simple beat in Track Lab, but someone looking for anything more advanced would be better spending their time in a program like GarageBand. For VR junkies, the prospect of becoming a virtual DJ is certainly appealing, but a game with pre-selected and popular song clips like Electronauts will be a lot more satisfying and a lot less time-consuming.
Track Lab is available exclusive for PSVR right now for $19.99 on PSN. Check out these official review guidelines to find out more about our process.
Gabe Gurwin is a freelance journalist that covers tech and games. Follow him on Twitter for more: @GamingAngelGabe.
There are quite a few ways to experience or experiment with music in virtual reality (VR), ranging from virtual attendance at a big concert or festival, to slicing up notes in Beat Saber. Track Lab is somewhat different in that it offers users the chance to create their own music in a way that doesn’t require an education in music theory or knowledge of complex tools.
Track Lab is a hybrid of rhythm game and puzzle game, which aims to make it both fun and easy for players to create original music tracks in a variety of genres and styles, without needing to learn how to play an instrument or learn musical notation.
The developers behind Track Lab, independent studio Little Chicken, had the idea to take music videogames beyond plastic guitars and pressing the right buttons and instead take inspiration from professional music creation tools and give them the videogame treatment to make them fun and easy to use.
Players will be able to choose from a wide range of beats and samples, and use the motion controllers to pick up a selected sample and place it into a timed grid. The rhythm of the track is a ‘pulse’ that runs through the grid, and when the samples are hit by the pulse, they make their assigned sound, allowing players to assemble the disparate samples into a complete track.
Peter previously go hands-on with a preview build of Track Lab at E3 earlier this year, where he said: “[The developers of] Track Lab, developing an experience that takes a well defined genre and turns it on its head. For the musically gifted Track Lab might seem simple, yet for the rest of us the mix of gameplay and music creation will likely win over many fans. This is another PlayStation VR exclusive that gamers should be keen to see arrive.”
The new trailer for Track Lab is available to view below, and Track Lab is due to be available for purchase on 22nd August, 2018 for the PlayStation VR.
Further coverage of Track Lab and other new or upcoming VR titles will be here on VRFocus.
You would have to go a very long way to find someone who doesn’t enjoy listening to music. While not everyone shares the same tastes, many people long to be able to create great music as well as passively listen to it. This is the central core of Track Lab, a hybrid of puzzle and rhythm game, which is coming soon to the PlayStation VR.
Track Lab was created with the notion of letting anyone create music, by making it fun and easy to create original tracks, no matter your level of musical education.
The idea was to take music creation beyond simply remixing or mashing together two tracks, or pretending to be a DJ, or following along with a plastic guitar, pressing the right buttons. Instead, Track Lab takes inspiration from professional music tools and gives them a videogame spin.
The player begins by picking up a music sample and putting it in the path of a rhythm ‘pulse’. When the samples are struck by the pule, they sound off their beat. The player can combine various samples in a timed grid in order to create loops and samples.
This grid and the samples become the building blocks with with a track is created. The use of motion controllers means that players can simply grab the beat they want and move it to the right location, allowing players to advance their skills and gradually build up intricate tracks.
The developers at Amsterdam-based studio Little Chicken first had the idea for the project twenty years ago, but are now firm in the belief that virtual reality (VR) brings a new element to Track Lab, and that Track Lab, conversely, complements VR by allowing players to do something they can’t do in the real world.
Pre-orders are due to go live imminently on the PlayStation Store, and Track Lab will be available on the 22nd August, 2018. For further coverage of Track Lab, keep checking back with VRFocus.
In previous Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) years Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) has always touted to the world that PlayStation is all about the games. That’s certainly been the case for 2018, with a myriad of titles including Déraciné, Trover Saves the Universe and the rather good Ghost Giant. Adding a musical twist to the proceedings is Track Lab, a videogame by Little Chicken Game Company that combines both music creation and puzzles into one inventive experience.
The core gameplay which VRFocus demoed centred around the puzzle aspect of Track Lab. The videogame uses light to symbolise beats and sounds, with a massive chequered board laid out in front of you. A pulse of light will be automatically fired out, flowing through various coloured orbs and hitting bumpers which create sounds. The aim of each puzzle is the get this light source to an end goal or goals.
Depending on each of the difficulty levels you’ll be able to access different items to manipulate the light and complete the puzzle, from objects that’ll change its direction to others that’ll split it in two. These are simple grabbed and placed as needed using the PlayStation Move controllers. Each level is made up of several boards, each needing to be completed in sequence that’ll create a core sound or rhythm.
Here’s the thing, when you succeed in completing a puzzle you’ll get a box which can be placed on a plinth with a volume slider. As each puzzle is finished you’ll be able to add further boxes, building up a selection of beats. Then as a side mission – more something fun to play with – this DJ style area can then be used to manipulate the sounds collected, with various manipulation options located on either side of you plus a cross-fader where your knees are.
This has a complete two-fold effect for a single-player puzzler, the puzzles themselves are well laid out and easy to pick up once you’ve learnt the basics. Then once you’ve finished with the puzzle aspect of Track Lab you can play around with those beats as much as you like. And that’s before VRFocus has even mentioned the creation mode – which we didn’t demo this time, that’ll come later.
It’s clear to see that Little Chicken Game Company has put a lot of thought and effort into Track Lab, developing an experience that takes a well defined genre and turns it on its head. For the musically gifted Track Lab might seem simple, yet for the rest of us the mix of gameplay and music creation will likely win over many fans. This is another PlayStation VR exclusive that gamers should be keen to see arrive.
You’d be hard pressed to find a busier Wednesday for virtual reality (VR) news in recent memory. Not only is there all the goings on in San Jose at the GPU Technology Conference hosted by NVIDIA, but Oculus are busy celebrating the second anniversary of the Oculus Rift. Add to that an avalanche of news and announcements that have tumbled out of Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) – such as new titles and a price drop on PlayStation VR bundle packs – and it’s difficult to quite know just where to start first.
One such announcement from SIE comes with a reveal on the PlayStation Blog of a brand-new videogame for their VR headset, one which is not a first-person shooter or a platformer, but rather a title that involves the creation of music.
Developed by Little Chicken Game Company, Track Lab allows you to create original music through designing various tracks on a grid, taking a respected sound, placing it in front of a pulsing light beam which then generates the sound, these can be chained, looped and have other affects added that alters the wave’s path whilst other tools that alter the environment can also be manipulated to change the way pulses operate. You aren’t so much composing music as you are composing it through constructing it
Thomas Sala, Creative Director on the project, explains it in the blog: ” String along some blocks, and you’ve got the first outline of a beat. Then use what we call prisms to divert, split and reflect the light beam to create loops and ever more complex musical constructs. If this sounds a bit strange, you’re right. Track Lab is truly something unique and new.”
“That said we don’t drop players in without any guidance. We have two modes in Track Lab, creation mode where you’re free to go at it, and an evolver mode that lets you learn how to create awesome music patterns through puzzles and challenges. On top of that you can mix your creations and add live effects to create amazing performances. We’ve intentionally tried to stay as far away as possible from normal musical instruments or the technology for creating electronic music.”
You can check out Track Lab through its announcement trailer below, VRFocus will of course bring oy further updates about Track Lab in the weeks and months ahead.
One such announcement from SIE comes with a reveal 
“That said we don’t drop players in without any guidance. We have two modes in Track Lab, creation mode where you’re free to go at it, and an evolver mode that lets you learn how to create awesome music patterns through puzzles and challenges. On top of that you can mix your creations and add live effects to create amazing performances. We’ve intentionally tried to stay as far away as possible from normal musical instruments or the technology for creating electronic music.”