GAME CLEAR No. 261 -- Knobswitch

Knobswitch (2016, PS Vita)

Developer: Tiredtrope
Publisher: TiredTrope
Clear Version: PS Vita
Clear Platform: PS Vita
Clear Date: 10/8/25

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Why should I care?
This musical interval trainer is gamified just enough to make it a game and is nothing if not a curiosity.

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[Nixon voice] Do re it to me*?*

Man what in the fuck is this thing. Okay, I know what it is. It’s a $2.50 musical training software. But why is it the only game ever made by this developer? Why is it exclusive to the PlayStation Vita?

The only thing I can find about developer Tiredtrope is this LinkedIn page ostensibly belonging to its founder Woodrow Jang. He claims that “Tiredtrope LLC aims to create cinematic interactive narrative experiences.” That’s certainly not what this game is. My best guess here is that this was a tiny game Mr. Jang made to familiarize himself with Unity and he simply never did end up making those deeper narrative experiences (or, perhaps, he’s still working on his groundbreaking debut!).

If my hypothesis is correct, he’s actually got his head on pretty straight. Making a tiny project like this is a great way to scope your first game! He got it out the door on a PlayStation storefront! Good for him! The Vita is a very funny choice to be the only platform you launch a game on (especially considering Unity easily deploys to just about everything last I checked), but maybe that’s part of the bit.

It was the perfect thing for me to stumble upon as I was cruising through the PlayStation Store’s listings on a lark after booting up my old Vita to play Halloween Forever.

All this game is is an ear trainer. There’s a knob on the screen that you rotate with the left stick. The L and R buttons play two tones that are some interval (a measure of tonal distance) apart. It starts with just the octave, major third, and perfect fifth. You can listen to the tones as many times as you like, then you select what you think the interval between them is by pointing the nob at your choice and pressing X. Do this ten times successfully in a row, and the game adds another interval to the mix until all are present. Each failure reduces the score you’ll receive at the end of each round. After getting ten right with all intervals in play, the game ends and you get your final score.

I think this bit of gamifying a fundamental musical skill is awesome! I enjoyed training my ear with it and will surely continue to as a music dabbler. I’m glad this thing exists.

Now, it could just as damn well exist in a browser or whatever else, but it’s pretty funny that it’s only on the Sony-forsaken PlayStation Vita of all things. What a treat.