Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines
(3 edits)

The web build is quite laggy. Doesn't mix well with rhythm games, which can require high precision at millisecond levels. The timing window for a full-scoring hit in rhythm games is usually somewhere around +-50ms, highly competitive games have windows of +-20ms for the maximum judgement, and some players are consistent enough to hit at +-5ms accuracy under certain circumstances. I don't know how large you chose your windows though. Did you even do it time based or is it position based?

The resulting patterning isn't particularly fun to play (from a rhythm game enthusiasts' perspective), and the notes aren't quantized to the music. But that's nitpicking at a high level. You could improve the gameplay by focusing on 4 towers that can be upgraded, which increases the complexity of the tower's rhythm. That way you have more than 4 "difficulty levels" in complexity (one whenever you add a new lane).

Here's the main issue: How does the player find out what the towers actually do? It matters during the building phase, but the game doesn't tell you. That's ok, in regular tower defense games a player can just look at the tower while the wave is coming and figure it out from the behavior. But the issue is that you can't do that, because you're busing looking at the bottom and hitting the notes. So you never actually find out what they do.

It's also not obvious how the performance during the rhyhm game affects the towers. Do they stop shooting, or do less damage?

Overall it doesn't really feel like a true "fusion" of genres, it's just two games you play alternatingly that don't really interact with each other. You don't think about the rhythm game while building, and neither do you think about the tower defense while playing.

Thanks for the thorough feedback :)
Yes, I'd consider the web build to be rather broken. We should probably remove it. You definitely have a much better experience with the desktop builds.

The timing is position based as far as I know, a typical quick and dirty jam solution :)

> notes aren't quantized to the music
That's weird, since we actually do that (I think). Maybe this is another thing which is broken in the web export?
Making the rhythm more complex when placing more of the same type of tower was actually planned, but we need to cut it due to time constraints. We also planned a B-Side loop when you play really well.

> you're busing looking at the bottom and hitting the notes
Yeah, I've noticed that as well. You focus at the bottom of the screen and often completely miss what's going on above. 

Overall, there are many small things that I think we could fix to glue both game aspects better together and improve the general UX, but we barely made this whole thing work in time, so I'm happy it's actually playable :)