The biggest challenge by far was surprisingly not programming the levels, but rather creating the entire architecture for a single-input rhythm game similar to Rhythm Heaven- in effect, a very basic game engine. The course primarily focused on teaching how to create more traditional platformer games, so when I wanted to change up the formula and make time-based gameplay, I was pretty much on my own. With the help of my mentor friend Alex, I learned the very basics of design patterns and singleton classes, ending up writing my own classes to handle animations, music and audio cues, a generalized single input rhythm game “level” I could add rules to the instances of, and most importantly: a system to read text file “charts” of notes players have to hit, their timing, and their corresponding audio cues, something unique to rhythm games. With this system these charts could be made and modified by myself or any other person for any gameplay in the levels, technically allowing for charting of any song with any pattern we like and still remain playable.