Ever since I heard about People of Note, it has been a game that has fascinated me. When I was offered an opportunity to preview the game, I took it without hesitation. Before I got my hands on the game, though, the team behind People of Note took me through a bit of the thought process behind its creation.
Jason Wishnov, the director of People of Note, has two engineering degrees and has a love of math. He has also been a voice actor for video games, including a prominent role in the Danganronpa series as Byakuya Togami. He wanted to bring his love of video games and math together, and it turned into a musical mash-up.
People of Note bases the gameplay on prominent JRPG titles like the Final Fantasy games and other games in that vein. Not only is Turn-Based combat in the game, but it is also heavily inspired by music. Musical theory shows up, and even if you can read or have played music in any capacity, you will notice the DNA of this game is filled with music.
Creating combat themes was difficult as they had to record the themes 11 times to have it mash up correctly with all the genres in the game they are covering. The world of Note is divided into multiple nations that all represent different genres of music. Cadence, the protagonist of the game, has an idea to combine genres to win the Noteworthy Song Contest. That is where we begin the story with the hands-on demo.
People of Note Demo
Cadence is traveling to Durandis, the city of rock, to find someone to join her and compete in the Noteworthy Song Contest. As you get to the beginning of the city, you see that it starts with a huge chasm. One side goes to a region of Durandis, and the other one is another region. One region represents punk rock, the other represents metal. I walked to the left side to look at the metal side and noticed a big screen of smoke. Apparently, there is a raid from Homestead, the region of Country music. As you get closer to stopping the Homestead from hurting someone, another person shows up to help. This person is Fret, and he has a rock guitar as his weapon of choice. Cadence uses a microphone. That is when combat starts up.
Combat in People of Note is turn-based. The number of actions you have will be the time signature. Your characters have a basic attack move, but their skills are based on the songstones they have equipped. When you do an action, you will need to press the left mouse button at the time all the lines intersect with the circle. Skills will sometimes require you to hit two or more prompts in succession at the right time. On attack skills, there will be a number next to the name with a range. In most RPGs, moves will perform a dice roll to determine the amount of damage a move will actually do. That dice roll is replaced here with the music prompts. If you do the prompts perfectly, damage will be at the max. If you do the prompts terribly, then the damage will be minimal.
Once Fret and Cadence stop the Homestead, we see one of the leaders show up, Martell. She asks about the key to the city, which makes Fret confused. Apparently, the Homestead fears that Durandis is planning on using their key to destroy them. After you do a mini-boss fight against Martell, Fret goes back to his home, where he just sits in his hut and doesn’t want to talk to Cadence. To get Fret to join, Cadence needs to go throughout the regions of Durandis to figure out what happened. Fret was in the top band of Durandis before his band separated. That also led to Durandis separating the genres. They went from just classic rock to punk, heavy rock, metal, and grunge.
There are a few side quests in Durandis. The first one starts right after you come back from Fret’s place to figure out why he is being stubborn. One of the citizens of Durandis dropped his wallet somewhere, and all he can remember is that it was near something green. You talk to him again, and he clarifies that he thinks it is a green speaker. Items you can pick up are shiny marks on the map. The game is structured very similarly to maps in older PlayStation 1 Final Fantasy games. They are sets that have a camera that is static from behind or above as Cadence explores them. When you reach a spot the camera can’t see, it will move to a different static spot.
Once Cadence learns the history of Fret and his band, she goes back to try to convince him to join her. This scene does a great job of showing off Fret’s connection to music and what it means to him. It is not just his past, but it is still his passion to change the world through Rock n Roll. Once the scene comes to an end, the game treats us to a high-production cinematic that has Cadence singing to Fret to convince him to join her. The cinematic ends with both of them singing in harmony with their respective tunes overlapping. Fret makes one final ask of Cadence, though, to talk to his old friend Quincey. She agrees, and the two head off on an adventure together.
Quincey is in a region called Pitch Black. He leads the Osmiums. If you don’t know what osmium is… its the literal densest metal on the periodic table. This game does love its puns! Quincey goes all out on his dungeon by making it so you can’t open it without solving his riddles by shooting lasers to illuminate light switches. You can use Cadence to rotate the guns to shoot off the reflections and illuminate the switches.
Thats where one of the accessibility settings can kick in. If you don’t want to do a puzzle, you can go to the settings menu and turn off the puzzles. You can also turn off the music prompts and have it play like a more traditional JRPG. If you get annoyed by shops asking you to equip after you buy gear, you can even turn off that prompt, too. There is a lot of control in playing the game on your level. I kept the settings normal, so I went through all the puzzles and kept the musical prompt on.
This is the section of People of Note where we get the Mashup meter. Meters run below the health bar on both characters. If two characters have them filled, then they can do a mashup attack, which dishes out a ton of damage. The downside is that it will take two actions to accomplish. I won’t spoil more of the story other than that Quincey’s nickname from Fret is Freq. So yes, his full name is Frequency. I love these puns!
My Thoughts
I really liked what People of Note is doing. It has a game system that reminds me of PlayStation 1’s titles, with moving from set piece to set piece. The combat is a fun take on JRPG turn-based combat. The story does seem to have more under the surface than just the Noteworthy Song Contest. I don’t know if the younger generation of gamers will appreciate the in-engine scenes that are less dynamic than the big cinematic scenes. For me, it reminded me a lot of how Final Fantasy X would do its cutscenes. The basic in-engine scenes were very static and had models of lower quality than the scenes where cinematics would happen.
In this game, I played solely on keyboard since it did not have gamepad support. This will make it difficult for the PC handheld devices. It is a shame, since this game would be wonderful on Steam Deck or ROG Ally in my opinion. Also to note is that not all the button prompts had the same impact of timing. Some feel like the music doesn’t match completely. I also wish that the normal attack had more impact audibly if you successfully hit the prompt. It is an early build, though, so it might just be due to early build kinks. I liked this game a lot. I am looking forward to playing the full release when it becomes available.
Overall, I loved the music puns and also the references. I think this is going to be a nice treasure trove of a game. If you played the PS1 Final Fantasy games, I think this is also going to be your cup of tea. The demo ends with a trailer that reveals the release date, too! Considering it is coming to console, I imagine the PC version will get gamepad support by launch at least.
People of Note will release digitally for PC via Steam and Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5 and Xbox (X|S, Windows), and Nintendo Switch 2 on April 7th, 2026. You can play the demo on Steam right now!
