xkcd Game Jam

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A jam submission

Guitar Hero HedgeclipperView game page

Guitar Hero game inspired by xkcd comic 8, 70, and 119. https://xkcd.com/8/ https://xkcd.com/70/ https://xkcd.com/119/

Submitted by kan kan mikan (@kan_kan_mikan_) — 22 minutes, 30 seconds before the deadline

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Guitar Hero Hedgeclipper's itch.io page

Results

Criteria	Rank	Score*	Raw Score
Audio	#47	1.937	2.429
Visuals	#67	2.165	2.714
xkcd-ness (how well it matches/interprets the comic)	#79	2.393	3.000
Innovation	#82	1.481	1.857
Overall	#85	1.481	1.857
Fun	#90	1.140	1.429

Ranked from 7 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Link to xkcd comic / 'what if' article the game is based on
https://xkcd.com/8/ https://xkcd.com/70/ https://xkcd.com/119/

Please list any pre-made art/music/other assets that you used.
None

Team size

Team's social media links:
https://twitter.com/DrEvilBrain
https://github.com/DrEvilBrain/xkcd-Guitar-Hero

Anything else you want players to know before they play?
Heavily recommended to play with a physical controller if you have one, though this game was developed entirely with a keyboard with Frets on Fire-style controls. Almost all assets were created in MSPaint as atonement for not making a game during the MSPaint game jam.

Special thanks to Corvette who lent his voice as the singer for Hedgeclipper.

Inputs:
Green Fret - F1
Red Fret - F2
Yellow Fret - F3
Blue Fret - F4
Orange Fret - F5
Strum - Up Arrow and Down Arrow
The Button that Lets You Start the Game or Return to Menu - Enter

Comments

ScrapMetal03Submitted6 years ago

I wanted to like this one as I'm a huge fan of guitar hero and rock band games. It's crazy impressive that you were able to make this in a weekend.

Does it work with a 360 controller? I wanted to try it with a controller but don't have my rockband stuff hooked up to my pc. It would probably be way better with a guitar controller.

The keyboard controls were somewhat difficult. But I think the biggest thing was needing some kind of feedback when you did well or messed up. There were a few sounds for playing wrong notes, but overall, seemed to play the same thing no matter what I did. So I never knew if I was doing good or not. (Until I failed :P). There was also no visual cue for hitting notes correctly. Just that lack of feedback made it very frustrating, even though I loved the concept.

Overall, still crazy impressive.

Submitted

xkcd - Infinite Saber

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kan kan mikanDeveloper6 years ago

There's a few unused sound files I recorded, but they aren't implemented. It's a to-do for the future.

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ezamelczyk6 years ago

Pretty bad.
Using function keys as controls is never a good option. The game overall is poorly made.

It's ugly

The notes don't align with music at all (if there was any music actually)

Hitting the notes is HARD. Like insanely hard. I've played guitar hero and many clones of that and never had such problems with those games.

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kan kan mikanDeveloper6 years ago

The notes are mapped to the function keys because you're meant to hold the keyboard like a guitar similar to Frets on Fire. However, I did not include a lefty flip mode, so that would be quite cumbersome if you were a lefty. If you are, I apologize, but I completely didn't think about that when I was making the game.

As for the art, it's mainly a heap of programmer art slapped together. The entire game was made in 2 days, and the art was the least of my concerns, especially since I have almost no artistic talent. I wanted to do the project by myself and with only original assets as a personal challenge.

The music should be playing, and if it's not I don't its a fault with the game. When I tested the game, it never failed to play the music. Unless the Mac and Linux builds somehow handle audio files differently and don't play the music, I don't think its an error with the game.

Note alignment is pretty rough, and it was one of the last things I did. It's a poorly done job that was mostly repeated guess work while half-awake. Going back to it, some notes are pretty far off from the musical cues. I would like to do an automated beatmapping system with MIDIs if I have the time to do so. I did not have enough time to do that for the jam though.

If you're using the original bugged build of the game, the game would decrease your health every time you strum regardless of whether or not you hit notes. If you installed this game before January 20th at about 5 PM EST, then you probably have the bugged build still. Besides that build, there aren't any particular issues with visual note timings. In fact, the visual timings are quite lenient and let you hit notes that are a bit off.

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ezamelczyk6 years ago

Sorry for being so harsh in that comment. I guess my problems could be related to macOS build because I was playing it on a macbook. And that was why I found using function keys cumbersome, because you can't hold a laptop like a guitar :p
Overall this game is not so bad. If it had better music and better aligned notes it could be fun.

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kan kan mikanDeveloper6 years ago

On laptops, typically pressing the function keys requires you to press the Fn key. Otherwise, you're activating media keys. Again, didn't think about laptops when making this game. I'll probably add multiple default control set ups to accommodate for that.

The music was entirely improvised and meant to be pretty basic up until the end.

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Etra's Games for Non-Gamers6 years ago(+1)

Cool that you were able to make a guitar hero style game this quick! Anyway one thing I do want to mention is I'm doing a review of design on the games in this jam so here's a shameless plug to my channel if you want to be notified of the vid when released: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7Vj46GGL9VMUvd4YTMtjXg

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kan kan mikanDeveloper6 years ago(+1)

It was totally a huge rush job that was started on Saturday morning and then finished right near the deadline. Wish I had the time (and skill) to make better art, but functionally the game is more or less good with some noticeable bugs.

Not really sure what you could grab design-wise from this game, but would like to see some videos on the games. Are you planning on making design analysis videos of all the ones you're reviewing?

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Etra's Games for Non-Gamers6 years ago

No sadly because I believe these games are too short too make and episode longer than 50 seconds. So I'm picking the most unique and polished and giving them their 50 seconds in an episode covering about 10 games!

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Etra's Games for Non-Gamers6 years ago

My XKCD game jam analysis is out!

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Coral NullaSubmitted6 years ago

What are the keyboard controls?

Submitted

Bull in a Gun Fight

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kan kan mikanDeveloper6 years ago(+1)

They're posted on the game's page, but during my half-awake state of mind, I forgot to put them on the game jam submission page. I'll fix that now.

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