🎸 How to Play

📅 Your Calendar

The Calendar is the heart of the game. Plan what your musician does each hour: sleep, rest, practise, work on songs, busk and attend booked events.

Once an hour has begun it is locked. Important commitments such as booked gigs, interviews and music lessons are also protected so you cannot accidentally replace them with something else.

Tip: plan ahead, but leave yourself enough time to recover.

❤️ Health & Energy

Most useful activities consume Energy. Sleep restores the most; Rest can recover some Energy during the day. Your housing affects how reliably you sleep and recover.

Exhaustion and poor recovery can affect Health and increase the risk of illness. Being unwell may force you to rest and can interfere with work, gigs and other commitments, so recovery is part of managing your career.

🎶 Skills & Practice

Practice improves musical skills over time. Improvement becomes harder as you get better, and Talent influences how easily your musician develops. Your home environment can also affect the quality of practice.

Your primary musical skill can be practised from the start. New secondary skills are first learned through Music Lessons. Once you have learned enough of a secondary skill, you can practise it independently.

🎓 Music Lessons

Teachers let you improve existing skills and learn new ones. Lessons cost money, take an hour and are booked into your Calendar.

Teachers differ in musical expertise and teaching ability. A lesson can therefore be particularly useful when self-practice is slow or when you want to branch into another instrument or Vocals.

🎸 Gear

Instrumental musicians need suitable gear. You do not have to manage an equipment loadout: the game automatically uses the best relevant item you own for an activity.

Gear wears with use. As Condition falls, its effective quality falls too, so an expensive instrument that has been thoroughly battered may no longer be your best option.

💷 Jobs & Money

Music careers rarely pay the bills on day one. Apply for jobs, attend interviews and work shifts to keep money coming in while your musical career develops.

Work costs time and Energy. That creates one of the main choices in the game: earn more now, or spend those hours developing your music?

🏠 Housing

Where you live matters. Starting without a proper home makes reliable sleep and recovery harder. Better accommodation generally provides more Comfort and Safety, helping recovery and giving you a better environment for musical development.

Of course, better places cost more. Becoming a successful musician is easier when you are not permanently exhausted — but the rent still needs paying.

🎤 Busking

Busking is one of the earliest ways to perform. It can earn cash, improve your playing and occasionally attract attention. Different locations, days and times can produce very different results, and new places can become known as you explore the world.

Repeating hour after hour at the same pitch gradually reduces the return. You may also meet persistent local musicians while busking, opening the door to friendships, rivalries, advice and future musical opportunities. Instrumental busking uses your best suitable gear and contributes to its wear.

✍️ Songwriting

Start songs and schedule hours to work on them. Each songwriting hour targets one specific song. When a song is finished it receives a Quality rating based on the composition you created.

Completed songs can be refined further, although improvements become harder to find as a composition matures. Writing and refining also develop your Songwriting skill. Your songs can then become material for recordings, gigs and bands.

🎙️ Recording

Finished songs can be recorded rather than remaining compositions on paper. Recording can take place with home equipment or in studios, with different levels of equipment, engineering and cost affecting the finished result.

Recording takes time as well as money, so producing stronger versions of your best material becomes another part of balancing the musician's career.

🥁 Bands

You can find bands looking for musicians, apply for suitable roles and attend auditions. Once in a band, the other members are persistent musicians rather than anonymous bonuses to your character.

Bands rehearse together, develop familiarity with songs and have their own roles, personalities and musical strengths. The band system is continuing to expand towards deeper relationships, collaboration and player-created bands.

🎟️ Gigs

Your first gigs will be small. Find suitable opportunities, apply for them and, if accepted, the performance becomes a real commitment in your Calendar. When the time comes, your preparation and musical ability feed into how the performance goes.

Performances can build experience, reputation and an audience as the career develops. The long-term route runs from busking, open mics and tiny pub gigs through progressively larger venues and eventually major stages. Nobody starts at Wembley.

📰 News

Check News regularly. It reports what happened while the game clock moved: practice progress, lesson results, job decisions, songwriting progress, busking events and other career developments. Some News items also lead to decisions and interactions that need your response.

If you are wondering "what the hell just happened?", News is usually the first place to look.

⭐ Fame & The Long Game

Fame is earned rather than selected. Performing, building a catalogue, recording music, joining bands and taking career opportunities can gradually move your musician beyond being a complete unknown.

Rock 2 The Top is still in active development. The next major layers include releasing music, sales and streaming, fans, singles and album charts, media, the wider music industry, touring and an increasingly active world of AI musicians and bands.