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Playing By Ear's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Style | #13 | 4.735 | 4.735 |
| Creativity | #98 | 4.353 | 4.353 |
| Overall | #110 | 4.176 | 4.176 |
| Enjoyment | #1249 | 3.441 | 3.441 |
Ranked from 34 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?
Toys are built, and are playing musical scales!
Development Time
96 hours
(Optional) Please credit all assets you've used
https://www.1001freefonts.com/digital-play-st.font
https://www.fontspace.com/musical-tone-font-f103067
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Comments
Nice game! I think it would be nice to have a win/lose condition instead of just maximising a score that is going up on the side, so we know whether we have "completed" a level or not and get a sense of satisfaction when we do so.
Oh! We hadn't considered that! Will talk about it with the team, see if something like that would fit our game. We do plan to save the highscores, so that may also help in the future to the satisfaction sense
Interesting approach to the theme! ♥ I like this "scene", it has a bit of a scary vibe, but overall it looks very nice! The mechanics are very cool and original, the gameplay is really fun! Well done! ♥
Haha! Someone else said the game gave them some Fnaf vibes, maybe that's what made it scary? Might be the lighting too. Also, on one of the first versions there was a furby in the background, I think that would've made this much more terrifying lol
Furby??!! Oh no, no, no... It's good as it is ♥
Wow everything came together so nicely. Freaking loved it <3
Thank you so much for checking our game out <3
Amazing art and audio! Seems like we were not the only one that built a game on musical scales :D. Do consider checking out our submission!
https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2024/rate/2913495
Thank you! Lots of people played around with the musical concept! Very fun to see everyone's ideas! I'll check out your game right away!
WOW... The smooth art style, the use of audio, everything was really cool! I think this can actually be turned into a game to sell on steam/itch! Good work, keep it up!
Thank you very much! We'll definitely be uploading a better version after the jam! As for a full on game? We'll see!
Love the visual style, reminds me of the I Spy books. Sometimes it felt a little hard to know which lights were out without quickly scanning over all the pedals, and I think that was giving me a bit of lag with the mouse. And (as others may have said) how to turn a knob with a mouse click-drag is a little ambiguous (though, this game could be rad as hell in VR!). Maybe display it as sliders instead? Seems like it might be a slider behind the scenes.
I would love to know how you designed and programmed the sound for this. When a value knob is off, is it that track’s pitch and/or tempo shifted or something? Or is it playing an entirely different “wrong” track? Very cool interpretation of the theme!
Originally, we made the pedals go down because we thought it would be too easy to fix them all if you could see everything, but the feedback is strong, so we decided to release a post-jam update that always shows the pedals. As for the click-dragging, we need to improve that more for sure! (behind the scenes, it’s a normalized value between -1 and 1, 0 being “correct”) An update for fixing the pedals’ hiding issue on the web version is ready, but we also want to add proper tutorials to make it clear how to control the knobs. I couldn’t agree more with the VR comment! Thank you for all the feedback :)
We’re controlling the audio using FMOD parameters. Our composer, Cédric, laid out the tracks for each instrument (bass, accordion, drum, and guitar) in FMOD Studio. Each track can be manipulated using two parameters: pitch and reverb (drum has rhythm instead of pitch; bass has FX instead of reverb). The reverb knob acts as a volume knob below zero, so it adds reverb for positive values and turns the volume down for negative ones. We also wanted the toys to sometimes completely miss the mark and play a whole another track instead of just adjusting the parameters, but unfortunately, we didn’t have the time to put that in even though Cédric had already prepared those “wrong” tracks.
Thank you so much for playing! We’re so happy you enjoyed our game :)
Yeah it was super fun! And thanks for detailed reply, been thinking about playing around with FMOD.
The music for this game was fantastic. I was a little confused at first as to what to do, since I'm no music expert and don't know what changing level and value mean. Also, I wasn't sure the correct timing to parry the performer's mistake since I thought you click during the shaking and the stars were a good thing. However, once I did get the hang of the gameplay, it was a really fun and unique experience for this game jam.
The animations and artwork for the game were really well-made as well. It really fit the vibes (I like the guitarist? bassist? the most). My favorite piece was probably the Overture, but I do like the vocals for Antonio. I would like to see saved high scores during level select though. Overall, this was a great and really enjoyable submission, good job! Did I mention how good the music was?
We're working on making changes (to upload a new version after the jam) thanks to all the feedback we've received and saving the highscore is definitely on the list! As well as adding an extra indication to when the parry didn't work aside from the clouds and the characters' animations changing.
Our composer, Cedric, did an amazing job with creating original music for our little toys to play, so we're glad you enjoyed it! The "level" knob was for how loud the music was and the "value" for what key they were playing! The thing to pay attention to though is if the light under them is on or off.
The Rat was the bassist, and our Kangaroos were the guitarists!
one of the most unique idea i have faced so far! the art is very nice as well! a bit hard to tune the knobs but everything else is fine!
We’ll definitely be improving the controls after the jam! Thank you for giving us a chance! We worked really hard on our little game <3
This is the most interesting take on the theme I've seen, beautiful visual style as well!
The only feedback I have is that tuning the knobs felt a bit tricky as the "pedal" would pop back down once the cursor is off it (even though I'm trying to turn it).
Overall very impressive, loved the music element :)
So happy you liked our take on the theme! The pedals going down is a known web issue and will be fixed on our next update after the jam! Thank you very much for checking out our game! <3
The game looks good. :)
Thank you!! We're glad you like the art!
This game looks gorgeous! Both the 3D and 2D visuals look great, and the music is also good. I didn't quite like how it felt to tune the instruments, but it was still fun :)
We're very aware that the tuning mechanic needs a little tuning itself haha. Glad to know you could still enjoy the game despite that <3
Ooh, I like it! Very stylish and beautiful art, and all these are 3D models?
The background is all 3D, yes, only the characters are 2D. The 3D is pre-rendered, so it's actually just more like a video than 3D assets in the game. Even the zoom out of the menu is pre-rendered!
Nice way to optimization! Good work
Woah! This is one of the most unique games I've played. I'm not great with music so didn't get much of the gameplay, but I do draw, and the visuals here are amazing. The game looks like a page from one of those "I spy" books, or an old hidden object game, I played both a ton when I was young so the art here just feels really cozy and nostalgic. Also MINIDISK WALKMAN SPOTTED!!!!!!!! I have 2 MD Walkmen, sadly only one works :(, but still I love old tech! I have a whole webpage dedicated to old tech! Seeing something I recognize down to the exact model feels so good! Great job, one of my favorite games so far!!!
Thank you so much for playing! I'm really glad this game resonated with you. It does have that hidden object game vibe! I had sensed it, but I hadn't been able to give a name to that feeling. The art is something we put a lot of care into, so we're all pretty happy with the results and the reception it's been getting
Composer from the game "Crescendo" here! I found the game pretty simple and extremely fun once you figure out how to play. The visuals are among one of my favorites from the jam so far! The music is very chill and fits the atmosphere so well. I'd love to see a full release of this game and think it's got a lot of potential for success on being unique. I did find the knobs to be a little difficult to adjust sometimes, the main problem being that sometimes my cursor would go off the hitbox of the knobs when adjusting, but it didn't seem to be an extreme issue as I did manage to quickly adapt to it. The other issue I ran into was that when selecting the level, it was kind of hard to see which level I was selecting since the hitboxes also seemed to be off, but I imagine you probably didn't have the time to implement a highlight. Overall, this is a very unique game, and one of my favorite visuals mixed with a very chill soundtrack so far! Definitely incredible what you were able to accomplish in 96 hours!
Thank you so much for taking the time to leave a review! We've definitely been considering polishing the game up a little and were thinking of the possibility of adding different characters to have a greater variety of instruments, but alas even with all this time, we still rushed to get our idea out haha! We'll definitely fix the knobs issue, and we'll definitely take into consideration highlighting the levels when selecting them! I'm glad you enjoyed our little band despite these hiccups in our game <3
The visuals are really good. I liked the mixture of real world stuff and very good character designs. I particularly like the purple mouse that uses his whiskers to strum. But I'm not quite sure how to play?
We put a lot of love into the visuals and the characters <3
We’re sorry we couldn’t make a tutorial in game. Here’s the gist of it: if a character begins shaking, make sure to click on them only when the sparks come out, otherwise they will mess up anyways. In case they mess up, you can re-tune them on the knobs at the bottom of the screen (if the light dot is white that knob is good, if the light is out, that needs fixing) . There is a known issue that the panel may hide on the web version while trying to turn a knob.
Thanks for trying to play anyways!
Thanks, that helps! I'll give it another go and rate it!
And the love you put into the visuals and characters reaaaaaally shows. Good job.
I didn't understand the idea very well, but the designs and music were very nice.:DD
We’re sorry we couldn’t make a tutorial in game. Here’s the gist of it: if a character begins shaking, make sure to click on them only when the sparks come out, otherwise they will mess up anyways. In case they mess up, you can re-tune them on the knobs at the bottom of the screen (if the light dot is white that knob is good, if the light is out, that needs fixing) . There is a known issue that the panel may hide on the web version while trying to turn a knob.
Thanks for trying to play anyways!
What an adorable game with some lovely music, I found the menu hiding itself all the time to be a bit annoying, I wish I could have kept it open all the time and just played the adjustment game. The visuals are incredible, I love immediately eye catching!
It's a web version issue that the menu hides unfortunately, on the downloadable version it was fine. You can also avoid using the knobs by clicking on the characters right when sparks come out, succesfully parrying their mistakes! I'm glad you enjoyed the game anyways! Thank you very much for trying it out <3
The art is on its peak ! Really amazing work, great game. Well done !
Thanks a lot for trying our game!
Really solid entry. Hats down to all of you. I especially loved the bassist mouse, playing on its whiskers.
Only nitpick I have is that i found it hard to turn the knobs on the pedals. Maybe locking and hiding the mouse when holding down left click would help.
Other than that, good job! :)
We’ve definitely been considering on fixing the knobs. We may do that after the jam is over. Thank you so much for playing! The rat was definitely interesting to animate thanks to its whiskers
This is definitely the best visual I've seen :)
Thank you! We worked really hard on the art!! <3