Post by ExelleDev in Scratchin' Melodii [DEMO] comments

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I know there must be a lot of comments and feedback to consider, but I feel it is EXTREMELY urgent to get across, as someone that really really really REALLY likes and appreciates this project, that the introduction to this game for a new player is GOD AWFUL.

The fact there's no mention of Remixing and how Expression works, so one third of the scoring system that is entirely just not mentioned to the player is completely unacceptable. It is a CORE MECHANIC, you can't describe the game as "press the buttons in time" and have them find out there's a whole third of the game they're doing wrong. Even a person that plays rhythm games is completely hopeless to actually understand why they get a D rank on the very first stage after hitting every note correctly if they happen not to know about freestyling in Parappa. It's an entirely broken onboarding, they CAN'T figure it out.

That's before even mentioning that completely honestly, the first song is EXTREMELY DIFFICULT for the very first moment of gameplay a player gets. This is not a skill issue, think SINCERELY of a player that has never player a game like this, and now think of what the first song of this game is like. There's a good reason Parappa starts with just verses of one button. Playing these sequences is REALLY HARD ACTUALLY. As it stands, this game doesn't seem to have a difficulty curve at all which is REALLY BAD ACTUALLY.

It is tremendously disappointing to see this after waiting this long for a demo.

Axolotl_lover262187 days ago(+1)

for the second part of this comment i agree especially the first level is REALLY hard but for the first part of the comment, in the old demo they had an npc explain how remixing works and i assume so will the full game. as for the most resent demo if you read the itch page you would know about all the criteria the game ranks you by, it literally says "Expression - This will increase every time you gain points from remixing the suggested line" and if that's not "good info" then the Rhythm would probably let you know that you need to remix on Rhythm so you can get a better score :|

ExelleDev187 days ago(+1)

Explaining on the itch page is good and all, but that doesn't replace explaining it within the game. A player shouldn't be expected to learn something from outside the game in order to know how to play it, that is not acceptable.
Along with that, this description of "remixing the suggested line" is actually STILL really vague and it doesn't get across well what that translates to in gameplay. What is "remixing" a line? That could mean a lot of things, and it's not an obvious conclusion for it to mean "make up notes that don't appear in the song", especially when the game trying to do that tends to sound bad unless you're already really good at making it sound good, and the game has already explicitly told you to play the notes that appear on the screen.

It's very strange they would remove that NPC, and it's really concerning to see them commit to doing that considering that while yes, having an NPC just describe textually what a mechanic is not good game design, just removing ALL explanations of the mechanic without replacing them is infinitely worse. I wish I could assume they will just put it back but I cannot imagine a reason for them to remove it to begin with.

LJ LephemStar187 days ago(+2)

More proper in-game explanations for the mechanics are planned for the final game. For this version of the demo, everything in the hub world had to be completely remade, so as stated in the launch screen, not everything has been finished yet at this time. Sorry for the confusion.

ExelleDev187 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

I appreciate addressing that, but I feel hugely compelled to highlight that teaching the game and getting the player to the skill you want them to have should be something far more prioritized than it is being right now, honestly even more so now knowing that there was an NPC that explained this and they were not the first one to be put back after the hub was remade. It is sincerely a very alarming mistake that this demo, which would be the first time of so many people playing this game through SAGE, seems to put this off almost entirely. At the very least I very strongly want to suggest a more thorough tutorial process, as someone that has seen fun games die by their onboarding. Ideally working more advanced aspects naturally through the experience past just the one single tutorial song is a good place to start.

itch.io

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