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A jam submission

Puzzling Beats | GMTK Game Jam 2021View game page

Puzzling to the beats
Submitted by Katanoueki — 1 hour, 46 minutes before the deadline
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Puzzling Beats | GMTK Game Jam 2021's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Originality#4553.8613.861
Presentation#6953.7783.778
Overall#8393.5193.519
Fun#18182.9172.917

Ranked from 36 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How does your game fit the theme?
I wanted to try to make the player 'join' the game, by syncing them to the music and also the puzzles, making everything be 'Joined Together', joining together with the music, Tetris-style joins. But also in the UI elements being joined together as well. Almost each part of the UI joins with something else.

Did your team create the vast majority of the art during the 48 hours?

Yes

We created the vast majority of the art during the game jam

Did your team create the vast majority of the music during the 48 hours?

No

We used pre-existing audio

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

This is definitely not my type of game. I have never got on with Tetris-type games. So when I say that I really loved playing this, you should really know how much that means. I loved the music and joining things together at the beat. It was very relaxing to play, and I spent way too much time playing it. I would suggest having it more obvious when I was hitting the beat, as I was never really sure, and I'd consider refilling all empty slots even if you haven't depleted your shapes, but these are minor issues in a game that was very fun despite all the odds against it.

Developer

Thank you so much for playing! I'm really glad to hear you loved playing it! Unfortunately there is only so much I can do in 48 hours. But if I do expand on it and update it in the future, I hope you'll give it another go!

Submitted(+1)

Sorry for not getting a chance to play your game during a stream but I am running out of time and had a hefty amount of games to get through so I am just playing and rating at this point! Thank you for your understanding :D

Developer(+1)

No worries! This is a pretty big jam after all. I appreciate you playing my game at all! Thanks

Submitted(+1)

This was a super fun idea! The only issue i had was getting it to run smoothly on my machine, but the idea was brilliant!

Submitted(+1)

Well this was definitely an interesting concept for a game, unfortunately I'm not generally very good at rhythm games, especially ones like this so I didn't really manage to do to well.  But it was definitely interesting, there was a nice bit of feedback on the tetris style top to bottoms, though I wish there was a bit more?  It felt a little underwhelming, especially considering this is a music game, I was sorta expecting some sort of sound queue.

Overall though an interesting game and the only real critique I had was the fact that I couldn't get new blocks without being out of the old ones which encouraged a lot of random block placement.  Which isn't terrible but it meant I couldn't really plan anything.

Developer

Thanks for your feedback! There are definitely still a lot of improvements to be made to make it more interesting. While there is no sound queue at the moment, I have added some extra songs in the options menu. 

I spent too much of my time trying to figure out how to detect the beat and didn't have time for much else. If I were to expand on this game concept there are definitely a lot of things I would change.

Once again thanks for your feedback. I really appreciate it!

Submitted(+1)

Very very original idea! Too bad I suck at rythm this bad, but I enjoyed it!

Submitted(+1)

Even with the video it felt somewhat confusing 

Submitted(+1)

This is a really interesting concept. I think that it would benefit from smaller, more interesting patterns to match than the whole row or a match-3 type thing to speed it up a bit, and encourage the player to keep pace with the music. 

Developer

Thanks for the feedback! Glad you like the idea!

(+1)

Hello again! As discussed I'll be playing Puzzling Beats tomorrow on stream along with several other games from the GMTK jam at 3:30pm EST. I hope to see you there for a good chat about design and development! :)

Submitted(+1)

Very nice music, and its like a jigsaw fused with tetris, i like the overall concept

Submitted(+1)

Great idea and nice presentation!

Submitted(+1)

The idea is good and good mechanics! Good job!

Please check my game as well ;)

Submitted(+1)

Great and fun rhythm / puzzle game! The music and artwork is really lovely, great job :D Tho it is a bit "hard" to pick up, it's a really fun experience! Great job :D

Submitted(+1)

Really liked the song, and placing pieces to the beat was very relaxing. Not sure I ever got a great feel for how to lay out the grid aside from just guessing and hoping it matched, but still had a good experience.

Developer

Thanks so much for playing the game! This isn't actually a real 'jigsaw puzzle'. You can place pieces wherever you like! The main objective is to get the multiplier up by doing things to the beat of the music. I didn't explain it very well... Glad you enjoyed it though!

Submitted(+1)

Gotta say, I would have NEVER thought of combining a puzzle game with a rhythm game. It's such a unique idea and I'm all for it!! Also, that music has one heck of a groove! Had me bobbin my head the whole time! I love it. The art, which simple, has a very pleasing aesthetic too :)

In terms of this idea of combining puzzles with beats, at the moment, I feel like it's not quite coming together the way you intended. I get what you were going for, with placing shapes on the beat for the multiplier. But I feel like... since the controls are click + drag, which tends to be a slower motion, it's really hard to sync that up with fast paced music.  On the other hand, a tapping mechanic is much easier to sync up to a steady beat. That's why I found myself tapping the space bar over and over (way more than necessary), to get that multiplier up, and to jam out to the music. Perhaps a tap based control, or slower music, or maybe osu-like motion paths for the dragging could help tie that puzzle/rhythm aspect a little more!

Also in terms of board size, I think a more vertical board would be better suited for this game. Or perhaps a square. Something with shorter rows. I tried to play long enough to get a tetris effect to see what that looked like, but I found that the shape algorithm kept giving me way too many corners for this to be possible. I think letting players have that tetris effect more often could really increase the satisfaction factor and have people playing for even longer.

But of course, all these are just lil suggestions that crossed my mind on how to make this great game even better! :D Well done with the creative ideas and polished gameplay. Best of luck in the jam!

-Sasha

Developer

Thanks so much for the feedback! I couldn't get the beat to sync up properly unless I used a very loud audio clip. The multiplier actually goes up and down on every action, so the idea was to get them to click, and tap spacebar to the beat while moving it to the grid. 

Also, the pieces aren't actually meant to fit properly. You can fit corner pieces in the middle. 

Thanks for your suggestions though! If I were to develop this further I'll definitely come back to this. In the mean time, I'll have a go at your game.

Submitted(+1)

Cool idea! Music and general aesthetic is nice. Very relaxing to place pieces

Developer

Thanks so much for playing my game😁. Glad you liked it.