I think the biased placement is a great idea. And to be clear, I'm not anti the random placement, just that it makes it harder to get into but I can easily see as part of the challenge. And I'm definitely a supporter of trying new thing, esp that's what jams are for! On that... note... armchair design idea, the bells are always onscreen and hammers appear around them. Just a thought, keep up the experiments!
Viewing post in Frozen Bells jam comments
I think the placement helped a lot, I was able to do much better. Having played a few rounds, I realized the initial frenetic pace prevented me from having deeper feedback. It's great that you get the indicator that the note as good or bad, but I realized that I'm not certain when the perfect time to hit the note is. I'd guess with some experimentation I could figure it out but having some indicator would be helpful. One idea would be an outer circle so when it overlaps (but this obviously creates more clutter). Another might be a glow effect on the perfect time. After writing this out, I can imagine that they shake at the right time but it's hard to see that since they scale in.
I think also having some key indicators for the items that freeze, like a "P" by the item the is unfrozen with "P"; I basically just kept mashing IOP to keep things unfrozen. My gut is that penalizing for that would be un-fun, but giving a boost for hitting right when it changes state could be fun so people can mash if they need to keep up but as you get more adept and time it, it stays unfrozen longer. Basically my thinking is when game have a quick-time reload mechanic, missing it isn't really bad, but can provide a bonus to keep expert players engaged.
Super cool that you improved things post jam, esp with the advent calendar. Each jam I mean to, and often do some work, but then keep delaying uploading because of the "it will be so much better if I add in one more thing" trap.
Thanks for the comments!
I see what you mean about post-jam updates :) I just did the most critical ones, which took like 2 hours.
But I agree with your comments! I thought about the things you've mentioned and I totally agree that I should go more for bonuses than for penalties :) And it would be cool to add some clicker mechanics separate from rhythm, like you've said - with point for clicking in good time.
And for the bells - yep, I should have placed semi-transparent positions for the full bell state I guess :)