Thank you! In my first draft, I planned for making several levels, each with different layouts and collectibles to catch in order to get to the next level. However, I eventually scratched that idea, as the only challenge it presented was mostly based on RNG and thus not that interesting to play. For me the most interesting aspect of the game is the procedural music, and thus it felt more pertinent to work on a single level that I could "tune" correctly, and that would produce a single music that evolves as the player interacts with it. The "challenge" required to beat the game is just an excuse to play with the musical system. Otherwise it's just firing balls randomly and hoping it will bounce in the right directions!

(… pro-players of pinball might strongly disagree with me…)

Glad that you enjoyed the game! Sorry for the clipping. I tried as much as I could to reduce it with compressors and lowpass filters, but it's still slightly there. The thing is, each instrument has kinda to be on lead, as otherwise it is a bit frustrating to not hear them when they bounce. With that constraint, balancing volumes was a bit tricky. I guess a good solution would have been to increase the volume of an instrument when it plays a new melody, so that the others stay in the background. But of course that's another layer of complexity!

Thanks! Playing the other entries of the jams, I can see how mine can feel like a relaxing break from the others.^^ A lot of games are about trying to retain a control that is inevitably lost in chaotic situations (which is not a reproach, this idea is really fun), while I started from the philosophy of accepting the loss of control and enjoying the beauty of the emerging chaos. In a way, it payed off! I feared that it would be a bit frustrating to not control anything, but I'm glad that you enjoyed the game eventually! :)

Thank you! I might build a slightly improved version of this game (with the possibility to select the instruments and modes), but after that I will probably move on to other musical game projects. I love to make short games that allow player to create music with a layer of uncertainty. Those are really fun systems to explore.

The chaos was even worse in the earlier versions!^^ But indeed, the music it makes is more a minimalist ambient, an unusual & kinda "modern" genre but still pleasant to listen. Except when playing on phone, where the music seems to follow some kind of rhythm and I still don't know why!

Thank you for playing the game! I'm glad that you enjoyed it. :)

Yeah, I kind of like myself when music react dynamically with the events of the game! It creates some kind of synesthesia. Bouncing balls making beautiful sound when hitting stuff procures a very basic satisfaction. :p

Happy that you had a good time playing the game. Thank you!

Thank you! It's really cool to learn that the music produced by the game is enjoyable by itself. That's always the catch when making procedural music: by not being really sure how it will be, sometimes it can be "fun" to play but not really great to listen. This time the result sounds really different from other musical toys I've made!

Google has indeed made some very cool generative music doodles! :D While this game is not directly inspired by one of them, they played a role in my discovery of what can be done with algorithm and music. (the Oskar Fischinger doodle is to this day still amazing)

Thank you for your feedback!

Fits much better to the theme than most submissions in my opinion - you're creating a piece of music but you have no control over the notes or rhythm.

If a beautiful, sublime song comes out the other end, was it really you who created it if you had no control over what any of the notes were?

Thank you very much! As audreydeux said, the core idea was to let the player create something over which they don't have control. The breakout aspect is mostly just an excuse for inviting to play with a musical system. I like to present the game as a musical instrument that doesn't produce precise melodies.^^ The bouncing of the ball is also here to make feel that the outcome is tied to rules of physics rather than the player will.

But yeah, I also agree that this is debatable. I wondered during the creation if "out of control" was equivalent to "loss of control". If there is nothing for the player to control in the first place, is it really out of control? And since in most games the music is not in the player's hands anyway, what does it really change for them if it is procedural or not? In a way if you play the game with no sound, it becomes just a breakout with too much randomness. Thus we can ask if the "out of control" aspect is part of the design or purely an esthetic…

But I guess that's why this game is often qualified as "experimental"!^^ I don't know for sure if it completely fits the theme or not, but it started from questions around the idea "out of control" that I tried to answer by creating an explorable system. And at least it produced something enjoyable! :)

Thank you! I'm happy to learn that the visuals are pleasing. I wasn't sure were I was going with it, but after fiddling with color palettes and light effects I accidentally found this "night / fireworks" atmosphere. While it's mostly made of fancy effects (can't resist the magic of particles), it seems to work nicely.