I think it was a neat idea and giving everyone a unique experience by having them choose their own music was a nice take on "only one", but I think procedural generation like this usually shines when it's used to give players multiple, varied playthroughs. For a single playthrough, and especially under the constraints of a 48hr game jam, authored content will generally be better.
It was a novel idea though, and with more work on the platform generation algorithm/enemy design could really stand out.
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musicMove's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Originality | #1979 | 2.124 | 2.375 |
| Overall | #2203 | 1.752 | 1.958 |
| Design | #2278 | 1.342 | 1.500 |
| Adherence to the Theme | #2285 | 1.789 | 2.000 |
Ranked from 8 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
Hey,
thank you for you comment :)
Yeah, the idea was quite neat in theory, yet this being my first game jam plus my first "completed" / released game in unity it was quite a brutal time crunch. Procedural generation is indeed something to be used with care and not leave everything totally random. I guess games like faster than light and binding of Isaac do a way better job at this. I still hope it was something a bit memorable :)
Oh and i updated the game to fix a few things and tweak the game play if you want another go at it :)
I know the feeling - I accidentally ended up doing 2D sprites, animation and rigid bodies for the first time in mine, so didn't find time to make something playable (or to add a menu, or to add sounds, or ...).
I had a quick go at the updated version and already it looks like you've made some massive improvements. The jump feels a lot better, and everything feels a lot smoother with the longer platforms. I also think the decision to have the player spawn near where they died is much better than going back to the start.
If you're interested in further feedback, I think you need to either slightly increase or decrease the default vertical distance between blocks - as it is, it's possible to get kind of wedged between them. I also found myself falling straight through some blocks; I don't know if that's due to a gap not being drawn properly, or out of a need for interpolation in the collision detection.
I think one of the big dirty secrets behind FTL and Binding of Isaac is how much isn't random. If I remember correctly, all the enemy ships in FTL are hard-coded, or hard-coded with some minor tweaks. Binding of Isaac has a number of room templates that it makes minor changes to. Maybe some sneaky behind-the-scenes authored content with a random layer on top could work well in yours too. Hurray for backseat game development!
Interesting game!
I got stuck because of the random level generation when going left, not really sure what to do after that point. Sorry!
Also I has able to hold down space and keep jumping kinda.
I think it would benefit from a better jump mechanic and perhaps more enemies spawned across the map. Whenever a player gets hit. They could re-spawn into a new level to try again, so like one chance.
Check out my game if you have the time: https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/461850
Submitted
El GordoI assume maybe the map is built out according to the waveform? If so, that's a cool concept. But I couldn't seem to make any progress because I couldn't ever go very far left or right -- the AI on the enemies is so unpredictable I never made it more than a single screen to either side before having one leap at me. There must have been hundreds of enemy AIs on screen with no real-estate for me to use to dodge them. I have no idea the differences between red green and blue-- they all seem to equally stop you.
Submitted
One Engine LeftHey,
yeah, the game builds itself according to the detected frequency, sadly that did not translated too well to game play, as humans usually sense beats better than changes in frequency. I tweaked AI, enemy spawn and level build up.
If you wanna check out the update, it's in this game's description :)
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