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A jam submission

Dice BeatView game page

A chance based rhythm game where the dice control the beat
Submitted by Bolt, Ricardium β€” 38 minutes, 54 seconds before the deadline
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Dice Beat's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Presentation#1674.3334.333
Overall#4973.7043.704
Enjoyment#6473.4813.481
Creativity#15613.2963.296

Ranked from 27 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?
Roll the dice to change up the song in various ways. Also the main character is a dice.

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?

Yes

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

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Comments

Viewing comments 21 to 2 of 21 Β· Next page Β· Last page
Submitted(+1)

it is SO refreshing to play an honest to goodness rhythm game in a jam! Nice work. The randomness felt a little arbitrary -- maybe a mechanic like a number of on the beat dashes or tempo changes depending on the RNG roll would be something to consider. Love the aesthetic style and it felt good to play.

Developer(+1)

Hey, thanks for playing :)

Yes, i agree. The dice roll actually does pretty distinct changes and we wanted to really display that ingame with a cool dice roll sequence which would show what effects you're getting, but we just ended up not having time for it. 

Maybe we'll add that in post jam :)

Developer(+1)

With how annoyingly difficult it was to code a rhythm game system in such a short time, let alone the part where it has to be able to switch songs and stuff without stopping and while keeping things in sync, I'm just glad there were a handful of people who really appreciated it πŸ˜‚
The randomness is fairly arbitrary, it's partly that it sounded a lot less arbitrary before we did it, and you can blame me slightly because I was pretty adamant on not bothering to make the dice rolls apparent because I felt like it'd just take dev time and it wouldnt really change the outcome of anything anyway.
But yeah, if it hadn't been such a pain in the ass to make and work with, doing more interesting things with the dice wouldve been nice. Towards the end I quickly attempted changing the tempo and seeing how the system would handle it, I thought it might be fine since I force the notes to the right position on every beat, but something was terribly wrong and I noped away from that so fast. I was so beat (pun intended) by the end that I couldn't bring myself to add anything cool anymore πŸ˜…I was desperately just trying to make sure it was decently playable.

Also yall guyses game was very impressive as well, good polish and vibes. And I can't imagine it was easy to coordinate such a team for a small project like this...

Submitted

This was a really cool and fun game, and its amazing that you did this in 2 days.

However, I do feel like the randomness aspect doesn't feel that important. It does change things, but I never felt that I actually cared if I hit one or not, I just focused on hitting blocks.

This is an uninformed suggestion of mine that may make no sense, but it might have been interesting if the dice increased the song speed by a random amount, and the faster the beat the more points you would earn.

Of course, that idea may make no sense practically or just not be fun, but I do think that the dice don't have as much of a purpose as they should in a jam about randomness.

Despite that, this is an amazing rhythm game, good job!

Developer

Hey, thanks for playing :)

I appreciate the feedback. I do agree that the dice mechanic is a bit lacking. Of course a lot of it is due to the time constraints.
Our idea was that different sides of the dice affect the song in different ways, so different song styles and tempos would also involve different difficulty and different playstyles.  This is kinda in the game and happening behind the scenes whenever you pick up a dice roll, i did my best to map different beats, song parts and layers have varying difficulty and playstyle, but that was like a whole day of hammering out beatmaps, so nothing got tested or tweaked beyond a basic "is it playable".

 of course the classic pickle is if it's a diceroll you don't have much say in it, so we had the idea of different dice pickups so you know what you're affecting but not what the exact effect was going to be. 

Thanks for the indepth feedback, i really appreciate it :)

Submitted(+1)

Great job!

Regarding fMOD + WebGL check out the fMOD documentation
https://fmod.com/docs/2.02/unity/platform-specifics.html#html5webgl

At the bottom there is a link to an example project that helped me get it to work. You basically just have to make sure that all banks have loaded before playing any sounds.

Developer

If only it were that simple... I remember last jam trying desperately calling all the functions being absolutely sure the banks were loaded, but in the end, sfx would play fine, and music wouldnt. Only thing that sortve fixed it was delaying the start of the music by a second or so, which felt arbitrary and weird. And same for this, sound fx were fine, but music was a no go. and even delaying things didnt matter. Either way, it feels pretty humongously bogus that this is an issue at all, when you use a tool like this, it should "just work". Or a the very least tell you why it isnt and a straightforward recourse for how to fix it.

Submitted

Did you toggle on "persistent"? It makes sure that the timeline flows even if no sound is currently playing.

Idk, that is just what I had to do for a test project I made :)

Developer

Hmm, how would you toggle it to be persistent? Not sure if we tried that or not.

Submitted

Here

Developer (2 edits)

yeahh as far as im aware everything is marked persistent.
seems to spit out an event not found exception in webgl when trying to create the instance for the music event. But I don't really get it since the other sfx events play fine. And I've made sure banks were loaded before trying to create the instance. 
Edit: .So I guess I wasn't understanding how to properly wait in the code for the banks to load.
https://fmod.com/docs/2.00/unity/examples-async-loading.html
Following this helped me do it right I guess, still weird why this is only an issue on WebGL. But boy I just hate FMOD's  api. 
Too bad can't yet reup it as a WebGL build. I get why they cut off the uploads, but man is it annoying for reasons like this.

Submitted(+1)

Nice that you made it work!

Yeah fMOD is great for musical timing/manipulation, but the unity coding becomes significantly more advanced to the point where I'm reconsidering if it's worth it :)

Submitted(+1)

I can't even imagine trying to make a rhythm game for a jam haha, but, you pulled it off, I was not skilled enough to get very far or find a decent flow, but, it's quite impressive and visually is excellent!

Developer

I believe in you. Anyone is skilled enough, the issue is it just takes too much time πŸ˜…
Next jam game we do I swear will be so easy to pick up and play.
But thanks for giving it a shot and I'm glad you still found something to appreciate about it.

Submitted

I love rythm games and I like the difficulty of this one. It got me some time to get the flow, but after some time I was flowing very smoothly. Congrats on your submission Bolt and Ricardium!

Developer(+2)

Really happy to hear you got into it :) 

we've been really kicking ourselves for not making it easy enough to get into, so i'm really glad to see that someone appreciated the difficulty!

Developer (1 edit) (+1)

yeah rhythm game difficulty is something that is exceptionally difficult as the range is so wide. Something I didnt consider at all when selecting this idea. And being kind of  a rhythm game expert it just felt natural through the jam. It's sort of a lesson in humility for us to consider accessibility  in our games going forward. But I'm glad some people appreciated that we didnt dumb the game down. I think it was inherently flawed since there was never going to be enough time to balance this idea for all audiences.
Still, I know what it feels like to play a rhythm map where its just too easy even if the music is good, its really frustrating, and disappointing. So I'm mostly glad it ended the way it did. Still, I wish I couldve fit the final update in to randomize the starting song πŸ˜”

Submitted

It's neat to see a rhythm-based game and how you integrated randomness into it - it's a really cool concept!

Developer(+1)

Your appreciation makes the existential dread of this jam all worth it, no kap πŸ™

Submitted(+1)

Very beatiful presentation. The visuals and sound effects were great! 

Developer

Based Agezma πŸ™

Submitted(+1)

Very nice game visually and also from the sound side. What kills it for me a bit is the crushing difficulty. I also had to double click to restart.

Submitted(+1)

One of the most visually impressive games! Got into the zone a few times, but it still felt quite overwhelming. Wish it eased me into the mechanics instead of throwing me into the deep end. The dice roll mechanic is actually super cool, but unfortunately you couldn't really tell what it did. Overall super awesome game!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing! 

Yes, i really wanted to demonstrate the dice mechanic visually but we ended up not having time for that. 

Submitted(+1)

Amazing presentation of the project! 

Except that I have limited explore time due to failing to hit the timings :D

I wish there was a separate level or just a lighter start to get used to how the game reacts to input.

Really liked the idea of switching tracks. Especially the fact that the other tracks can be seen in the background and in front of you.

There is a bit of difficulty with the jumps when overcoming obstacles. There are sections in the game with very frequent blocks that you have to punch them quickly, and this alternates with spiky obstacles that you have to avoid. Because I'm jumping over it, and the player's block in the jump is slightly ahead of his normal state, my block goes back to where the enemy was, which I sort of dodged, and I lose. This is your vision, but it would be nice to leave the player on one axis and move him along it. Especially since it's a music track. You don't expect to be able to slide forward a bit.

It's cool that you did everything yourself, I would have played more of the friendlier version.

Sadly, appreciate the art and music before anything programmed, because that's the first thing people see. The synchronicity in the rhythm game is a rather expected thing :D

You did a great job, well done!

Developer(+2)

Thanks for playing! 
yeah, the difficulty curve is the biggest misstep with this project. we'll hopefully make a small update after the jam to make it more friendly.
Really happy you noticed the switching tracks, it was @Bolt 's idea :) 
the feedback with the jumping is very apt, i also felt like the forward bounces kinda mess with feel of the timing, you've given some good insight there.

Submitted(+2)

I think this is the first time I've seen a rhythm game while reviewing, awesome! You did a great job with the music of course, but especially with the bouncy and vibrant 3D world in the background. Great job!

Submitted

I really really liked the idea! I love rhythm games and this is a wonderful addition to the jam! I don't know how you managed to sync the music with the game, but I believe it has something to do with frametime, as on my PC the sync is not that perfect.

Also, I think you could have made the songs gradually increase in difficulty, rather than obliterating the player with such a big amount of notes to hit right from the start.

It's a nice idea, with nice music, but of course it needs more polish!
Good job with the graphics and the snappy feel

Submitted(+2)

What a beautiful game! Loved the music and the visuals so much. It takes some getting used to before you start getting any score so maybe a smoother difficulty progression could help it in an after-jam version if you make one. Overall a very good entry!

  Thanks for coming to my stream! Here's a recording in case you'd like to refer to it

Developer(+1)

Thanks a lot for playing our game :) 
I definitely hope we can get in a small post-jam update to make the game easier to get into! Will need to convince the coder to live through some more rhythm game coding trauma though.

Submitted(+2)

Enjoyed my time with this! Love the art style and the music! Awesome work!

Developer

Everyone always loves the art and music, but never any love for the guy who had to figure out how to keep notes in sync while the rhythm and bpm constantly changes randomly...
Lmao, but in all seriousness, I'm glad you enjoyed it. It's been slightly sad seeing most people bounce off due to how initially difficult it is. Basically it's rhythm game with only expert difficulty πŸ˜…

Submitted(+2)

Bolt and Rich, thank you for submitting your game! I enjoyed the soundtrack and the art a ton. It was a bit difficult starting off not giving me a huge chance to progress smoothly into the game and learn it. So maybe starting with a lighter difficulty and then increasing difficulty over time. Great work rhythm games can be challenging. 

Developer (1 edit)

The nature of the jam meant we unfortunately couldn't ease players into it. Which is why like I was saying, going forward I'd wanna make something more approachable for the next jam, something with a lower skill floor than a rhythm game lmao. Something you can have fun with without needing to practice for a while.
But thanks for taking the time to play and share thoughts, your stream has been enjoyable to watch on the side and experience more the jam has to offer. γ‚γ‚ŠγŒγ¨γ†γ”γ–γ„γΎγ—γŸγ­

Developer(+1)

dare you...

Submitted(+2)

lol u mad lad :D

Submitted(+1)

I was honestly not expecting a rhythm game but this was able to make it work with the theme well.

Submitted(+1)

i like the effects on your game and also the music, was nice trying to match with the beat also this was my high score 

congratulations on finishing your game for the gamejam!

Submitted(+1)

Really cool idea, definitely needed some tutorialized 4-on-the-floor style beats though to build mastery before getting tossed in.

Developer(+1)

Yeaaaah, I really would have wanted to have tutorial but we just ended up not having enough time. We also accidentally had a fixed first song and it's not a particularly easy one. Might make one later though :)

Submitted(+1)

Very difficult, took a while to get the hang of it.

One complaint is how easily you die and the level gets restarted - I've heard just the same beginning of the track non stop now while trying to figure out the game.

Still, nice job!

Developer(+1)

The submission closed just before I could upload the change to randomize the starting track :(
It is fairly difficult but I feel the balance is p good once you get into it, just the song is supposed to be random so the restarts are less repetitive.

Thanks for trying it out though πŸ™

Submitted(+1)

I forgot to mention it was quite fun once I got the hang of it.

Thought I should throw it out there :)

Viewing comments 21 to 2 of 21 Β· Next page Β· Last page