MROW!!! Kalimba Quest

Kalimba and mroww!!

Inspiration

We set out to create a game that combines music education with adorable storytelling! The kalimba, a beginner-friendly instrument with ancient roots, is one of the oldest instruments in the world, yet still surprisingly underappreciated. We wanted to make music accessible to everyone through playful design and pixel-perfect charm.

What it does

MROW!!! Kalimba Quest is an interactive rhythm game where players learn to play real kalimba songs while controlling a musically gifted cat. It follows the story of Sarah and Bowie (inspired by the creators, Sarah and Bowie) where Sarah teaches Bowie on how to play the kalimba. The game features rhythm challenges, interesting dialogue, and artistic images where pressing the correct kalimba notes progresses the story of Sarah and Bowie. It teaches musical concepts through play — and meows.

How we built it

We used the Godot 4.4 engine (C# + .NET 8) for development, Aseprite and Procreate for our pixel and character art, and custom sound assets to replicate kalimba notes. Gameplay and input mechanics were built from scratch, including note-timing logic and sprite animation triggers. Team collaboration was managed with Git and shared asset libraries.

Challenges we ran into

Setting up Godot's C# scripting with the correct .NET SDK took some troubleshooting

Coordinating across multiple tools (Godot, Aseprite, Procreate) under tight time limit

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Building a working rhythm game that teaches real music skills.

Creating custom art and animations to bring our cat character to life.

Learning and applying Godot during the hackathon

What we learned

We learned how to integrate Aseprite and Procreate assets into Godot. We also tackled scripting complex input behaviors using C#

What's next for MROW!!! Kalimba Quest

We were originally thinking of 2-3 more songs so that the user can progress and learn more kalimba songs. We also made pixel art of Sarah and Bowie as we wanted the player to be able to move around and have the cats interact with each other to make the story more interactive and interesting. We also wanted to add real kalimba input support for hands-on practice for those with kalimbas. We also wanted to have the kalimbas be able to use a mouse or keyboard, depending on the user. Hopefully we can release a playable demon online for others to play.

Built With

• aseprite
• c#
• godot
• procreate