Dev Blog: Feeling like a Musician in MAJJAM

1) One Shared Musical Tune

Why every instrument uses the same scale

The problem

Making music together is hard, especially in real time.

When multiple players make music at the same time, each note interacts with the others (musicians call these relationships intervals). Depending on how well these notes relate, the music can feel stable, tense, or chaotic, and can evoke emotions such as calm, sadness, or excitement. For trained musicians, managing these relationships is a learned skill. For most players, it isn't.

In a multiplayer game, this creates a core problem:

How do you let anyone play together instantly, without musical knowledge, while still producing coherent music?

We get everything in tune for you

In MAJJAM, playing music together shouldn't feel like passing an exam. It should feel like walking into a campfire jam where everyone's already smiling at you and making room.

So we do the difficult part in advance.

When you start playing an instrument, it's already aligned with the same underlying harmony as everyone else. That means you can jump in instantly and your notes will naturally sit with what the group is playing. No awkward "uh… is this wrong?" moment. No accidental musical crime scene.

What this enables

Because harmony is handled by the game, you can focus on vibe, intention, and timing. The game makes sure what you play belongs in the same song.

Because the goal isn't to prove you know music.

It's to make music together, right now.

Example

• When sounds don't share the same musical context, the result feels tense and unresolved
• When everyone uses the shared context, layering instruments and switching jam cards stays coherent

This shared musical harmony is what allows harmony to emerge by design.

2) One Shared Beat

The problem

Music is not only about which notes you play.

It is also about when you play them.

In an online game:

• players press buttons at different moments
• network latency varies
• inputs arrive late or unevenly

Without structure, multiplayer music becomes overlapping solos rather than a shared groove.

What we did

MAJJAM runs on a shared musical pulse that the entire world follows.

When you trigger a sound, the game aligns it to this shared rhythm. Even if players join at different times, or connections aren't perfect, the music stays together.

You don't need perfect timing, you don't need to coordinate: the system keeps everyone aligned. This will allow to keep that list structure more striking at the end.

An example of how this works

• Multiple players, one groove
• When timing drifts, the groove collapses, even with the same sounds

Your Internet connection doesn't break the music, and your timing doesn't exclude you from the jam.

The takeaway

By sharing both a musical harmony and a musical pulse, MAJJAM makes multiplayer music feel natural and welcoming.

You don't need training.

You don't need theory.

You just play and it works.

That's how MAJJAM lets everyone feel like a musician.

In future dev blogs, we will go deeper into other aspects of MAJJAM's musical identity. One will focus on how we design the sound of the world itself, including the musical instruments carried by our heroes. Another will explore the changes and ideas we are actively working on to make music even more meaningful in MAJJAM, both as a form of expression and as a core part of play.

Got questions or comments? Feel free to ask us directly on the MAJJAM Discord server!

The MAJJAM Team