As with any instrument, learning the piano can be intimidating when you first start out. But indie developer Plai Technologies is developing an interesting approach to gamifying piano lessons with its upcoming mixed reality app, PianoCafe.
Coming to Quest 2 and above on July 30th, the MR game isn’t about ‘beat-ifying’ keystrokes like we’ve seen with other games, such as PianoVision (2023) from Zarr Apps, but by turning your keys into actual cooking ingredients.
Here’s the gist: as a short order chef, you use a real piano to cook meals by playing chords and serving ghostly customers a variety of dishes and drinks.
And you’ll need to serve up the right dish by summoning the right components, which are linked to individual keys and chords. For example, you might play a C major chord to get bread, F major for cheese, A minor for meat, and G major for lettuce. Put it all together, and you’ve got yourself a musical sandwich.
Granted, PianoCafe isn’t really supposed to be an all-in-one piano learning app—the studio says it’s “designed for curious minds and musical beginners”—but it does sound like a unique way to build early muscle memory and ease you into playing the piano before heading onto more difficult tasks, like learning to read sheet music.
You’ll also need your own MIDI-compatible piano to play PianoCafe; the app itself is currently using MIDI detection from the keyboard to the headset, which allows the app to accurately detect keys across MIDI-outputting electric keyboards with 45 to 88 keys.
The studio says the app’s next phase will however include using the Quest’s cameras to automatically detect keys, which will open gameplay up to traditional acoustic pianos without needing MIDI input.
In the meantime, you can wishlist PianoCafe over on the Horizon Store for Quest 2 and above before it comes out on July 30th.
