Play musical experience
Jukebox Synesthesia's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Music | #9 | 3.750 | 3.750 |
| Overall | #12 | 3.542 | 3.542 |
| Fun | #12 | 3.417 | 3.417 |
| Visuals | #13 | 3.375 | 3.375 |
| Innovation | #22 | 3.167 | 3.167 |
Ranked from 24 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Please mention below any pre-made music or art assets you used.
https://freesound.org/people/freesoundjon01/sounds/384437/
https://freesound.org/people/ZeSoundResearchInc./sounds/117512/
https://freesound.org/people/lunchmoney/sounds/380200/
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Comments
This was a fun entry! I'm still humming the song as I type this. The Z control was definitely not intuitive for me (maybe it's a normal thing for this genre to have a control for state change?) I'm also not great with reflex-based games, but I had fun trying to make it through the whole way!
If there were health pickups worth navigating the bullets for, and bullets didn't instakill you but lowered your health, it might solve your "easier by just slowly circling" gameplay feature. I agree with others that the immediate restart is frustrating.
I love the concept! Having bullets forming this choreography, instruments represented in different shapes… It's really beautiful, and fun to play!
However one thing I'm really not fan is the instant death. I've found the act of repeating the beginning of the song quite frustrating, and in the end haven't been able to complete the game. The beginning is also punitive very early: the two waves are pretty difficult to dodge, and the dash more than often throw into another bullet. I enjoy difficulty, but it doesn't always have to be punitive.
But this choice aside, it's still a really good game! I enjoyed getting as far as I could.
I think the game is fun and creative. I like the visuals and the music/background noise, it adds a really good environment sensation and the control feels nice and smooth. Good luck with your submission.
Clever idea! I included it in my Music Game Jam compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :)
As a few people have said, you can generally avoid most of the bullets by slowly circling the center. The beginning green wave was clever though! I think you should do more patterns that make use of the invulnerability.
I'm rather terrible at this style game, but had fun with it anyway! Plan to come back to it in a little while and try again lol
It's okay I had to suffer many attempts in order to test it xD
I didn't get to finish testing it though since I was up until 5am and I just passed out at some point
Almost hypnotic! Really fun! Nice work! :D
Very cool concept! And pretty good execution! I'm positive my heart rate just went up quite a bit.
Regarding controls, the A/Z key was pretty obscure, which let to weird hand placement. I found out the mouse left click worked better for me. Speaking of the mouse, did you guys consider using it to guide the character rather than WASD? It is usually more natural and therefore easier in situations like the "double bass ring" that happens soon after the tune starts.
One last thing regarding gameplay is that sometimes there's an easy way out in just standing there. If done right you end up avoiding most projectiles and you only have to move slowly to keep up with the slow spinning (btw I didn't get too far but I suppose the disc rotation speed increases with time/difficulty?)
A solution to get rid of the "lazy approach" is to apply a constant forward motion to the character. Kinda like a snake game or the recent slither.io. This forces interaction by forbidding a static player. Of course it requires a different approach in level design.
The music itself was great with very distinct elements reflected in the (fitting) graphics. Maybe I would have modelled the enemies like oscillating soundwaves instead (sine, square, saw).
I really liked the minimalism and the entire game happening in just one speaker cone. Its round shape makes this whole thing pretty tricky! :)
I hope you had fun making it! It sure is fun to play! (Giving you verbose feedback here but the note I gave is very good!)
See you in the next one! Take care!
Hi there! I can't speak for everything since I didn't do any of the coding, but maybe it has something to do with my partner being in Spain? Perhaps the key placement affected that. I however have only played it with an xbox controller which feels fine. I'm assuming arrow keys work and therefore Z would be fine for that.
As for the gameplay, I think that's sort of the nature of the game. If you played just shapes and beats, you can kind of just do that. Personally I think constant forward movement in this game would be way too much with the eventually really dense bullet patterns.
As for the shapes, I had certain ideas and colors in my mind for what I associate with each instrument. The end result wasn't exactly what I had in mind initially but whatevs. I think if we were to use waves, the sounds would have to match them but there are real instruments so...their wave patterns would be a pain in the butt xD
I appreciate reading this comment and all the feedback you gave!
Sure thing! I understand the choices and they are legit! And you're right about the colors. It was interesting to make a game about synesthesia :)
Thanks for the feedback!
Now that you mention it, I didn't plan the control scheme too much because of being busy with other things and only used arrows to move when testing, so Z made sense to me at the moment.
And yeah, you're right, some moments are easy because of how patterns work. I thought at the end that making the patterns rotate uniformally instead of following the player around would've been better but, as always happens in Jams, time's short.
I'm glad you enjoyed our little game in spite of those issues! :D
Aye, so hard to get controls and level design right in so little time! These things take time, much like good wine :D