itch.io

Thanks!
Sorry I didn't have the time to check out your game during the rating period. I'll give it a shot when I have the time. 😄

I think your idea is more akin to a traditional rhythm game. (compared to mine) 
My game is more like "Beat Saber" where you don't actually have to be on rhythm in a way and the accuracy is based on other things.  In Beat Saber the accuracy is based on how precisely in the middle of each block you strike.
Some call this "passive" type of rhythm game a "music game" instead actually.

It took me some time but I found the game yours reminded me of. Check out "Project Rhombus" on steam. 
I actually remembered it from an Osu! Lazer custom game mode "Hishigata" https://github.com/LumpBloom7/hishigata
I just now checked out what it's based on. It's actually also more of a "music game" than a proper rhythm game.


Anyway some feedback for your actual game:

The triangles should be more pointy or have some other way of distinguishing between different directions easier.
Of course you had the color (and flashed the whole screen for said color) But I actually only noticed the flashing while writing this comment and not during gameplay.

I saw you said in other comments the notes were random since you didn't have time to implement it properly.
You have to use the playback position of an audio file to have a proper metronomic rhythm game where the notes don't drift out of sync with the music. 
It was my first time doing it as well but if you need some resources or help you can shoot me a dm! 😁 

Thanks a lot for checking it out even after the rating period. 😁
I just tried your game! The idea is indeed a little similar with the DJ Decks and color matching. 🤔
I'm gonna comment on your game's page for further details.

I really liked the hand drawn aesthetic. I wish the menus also used it. The plain white text looks off next to the professional looking logo.

The description says "Tower Defence" but it's not a tower defence game? 
a TD game requires that there's towers you place down and the towers defend. 
It's just a defence game. (Nothing wrong with being "just" a defence game but it's a different genre)

Rotating feels good and there's nice momentum. The mix of 2d and 3d is fun!
Sadly the gameplay boils down to just hold direction and spam...
I did also replay it "intended way" without missing any shots and that also felt kind of bland.
I wish more effort was spent on this actual gameplay part to make it engaging.

The spatial sound was nice, maybe the game mechanic could work in a horror setting focusing on this aspect?

I'm sorry if I was too harsh, maybe I was let down since I really love tower defence games and it wasn't one.

Still great job finishing a game with such a fun and unique artstyle! 😁

Incredible game!
I didn't find it too hard or easy and discovering "Oh I can do this", "Oh this is the goal" was really enjoyable.
It takes some good design to achieve these kind of feeling in the player! 
Btw why isn't there a fullscreen option? (proper fullscreen without browser tabs and such seen)

The wheel spin was incredibly frustrating. I would have enjoyed the game at least twice as much if I could just pick my character. Or even if the random character was picked instantly instead of waiting nearly 4 seconds each time you die.
This fights against the core fun of the game. Exploration by experimentation.
How are you supposed to try out stuff if you need to wait so long each time you die?
I'm sure other people commented on this too...

Really it's still an incredibly polished feeling game for a game jam. 😮
I likely wouldn't mind the wait as much if actually playing the game wasn't so fun.
The game made me feel smart especially hearing other people struggle with the puzzles hahah.

Oh one more little note: The end screen blinded me with brightness but maybe it's just me being a darkmode enjoyer and playing this at midnight. 😂

Fun spinning top game! Controlling the spinner blade felt intuitive. It physically makes no sense that you come into a complete stop when you charge but it doesn't really matter since it works really well for the gameplay here.
You will be more vulnerable charging up but you can also come to a stop rapidly by starting a charge.
Hitting an enemy with the charge is satisfying!

I think there's a slight missed opportunity in not involving the play area like actual beyblade competitions do.
However refining the feel of just fighting in an open area like this makes a lot of sense for a jam game.
Upgrading was fun but I wish I could see my own stats and/or upgrades somehow. I sometimes forgot what I picked. 
Maybe even show some enemy stats when you hover their blade in the enemy portrait screen.

I wish there was a fullscreen option. Pretty sure that would've just needed one box checked in the itch page settings. (Since your canvas settings seemed to be correctly scaling even if I zoomed in the web page)

The game took me quite a few attempts to beat it but I did it!
The character art was stunning and fit the vibe of the game perfectly. The actual gameplay looks great too even if some of the play area pixels flickered / moved around when the camera moved.

I wish some of that art effort went into the menu screen and the win screen. They look quite low effort in comparison and don't even use the same pixel font as the rpm display in-game.  

I had a bug on one attempt where I managed to get knocked out of bounds and sadly lose because of it:


The music is great! Gets me hyped up as if I'm the main character in a sports animes' tournament arc!
SFX serve their purpose really well too 😁

Overall a really fun game with just a few minor issues 😄

It's a fun game idea!
I really enjoy unique control schemes but I'm stuck here and I don't really understand how to continue.

I don't understand how it behaves. In which way am I supposed to move my mouse to move the green one back and forth for instance? I turn it and it then seems to get stuck. I'm probably just doing something wrong instead of the game being broken.

It seems you read my gameplay tips 😄

Thanks for the feedback, I got a similar suggestion during playtesting already, but sadly didn't have time to try it out. 
The maps are built around having to juggle between the 2 records. (Though still too hard on average)
So just adding the feature doesn't automatically make it better.

There's also the questions of:
how fast the keyboard movement should be, should there be a dash button (to make it faster) or a focus button (to slow it down)?
It's gonna take some time to figure it out since there's a lot of possibilities on how it could work 🤔

I'm currently working on a proper map editor so I can try out different control schemes faster. (Since different mapping styles are ideal for each possible control scheme)

That's some high praise, I truly appreciate it 🙏

Well done on that FC for the metagame cog! ⚙️
Controller is one is one of the input methods I'm trying out once I'm done with making a proper level editor!
You're right. 2 analog sticks, 2 records. Seems like a good match 😁

Would you be so nice as to elaborate on what sort of feedback you were missing?
Did you have trouble understanding when you hit/missed or do you just wish the game feel was more "juicy" ?
I'm open to try out suggestions! 😄

Wow! You added a bunch of stuff to this for a week long jam game.

The start text was hard to read because the starting point moved. It would've been much easier if the words scrolled from left to right instead of the start point moving to the left constantly.

The artstyle is kind of chaotic, You're mixing 3d, Pictures and Pixel art of different pixel sizes. (Some blurry some sharp) If you're doing this on purpose and want a "chaotic ADHD" feel to the game I can vibe with it. 
I thought I'd mention it if it's not intentional and you weren't aware this could come off as "low quality" or "incoherent"
Maybe it's intentional since you also spin the background so fast to add to the chaos?

I felt like I didn't have much player agency even if I could choose the things to add and press space for each action.
I'd prefer that the player had some say in what action they're doing. 
I didn't find myself needing to understand the mechanics and I just kind of zoned out while playing because of this.

I'm not 100% sure what sort of experience you are after but depending on what exactly you're after it would affect my feedback radically.

Still an impressive game for the gamejam time limit! 

The art has a mysterious vibe. Could fit some more horror themed game.
The controls are quite complex, I'd prefer to learn the game without reading the description.
Well done finishing your first game jam!

I found the bottle spin minigame too hard.
Otherwise a fantastic game with a very cohesive and charming artstyle!

I played because of the cute capsule art!
I enjoyed all MS Paint style drawings they add a lot of charm 😁

There's a few technical things you might want to fix for your next game:
- The music doesn't loop.
- The Full Screen doesn't work properly.

Good job finishing your first game!

This game is FUNNY. Seriously great job (pun intended) on the writing and visual humor.

The tutorial introduced a bunch of mechanics in a row which was a little bit too much for me. 
However seeing as the rest of the game is meant to be a speedrun I understand you most likely didn't want the speedrun to be bogged down by a tutorial dialog box. 

Maybe the tutorial could be a little longer? I would've liked a little more space between each new mechanic to let the player get used to them.
 
Some of the text went offscreen. Specifically to the left side of the screen. In case it matters I played full screen on a 1440p monitor.

The art fits the game really well and it's funny to see the IRS logo and job application mixed in with the pixel art. 
It's very clear to see each game element too!

Level difficulty felt like it went a little up and down but I suppose that's good for the pacing.

OH and I found the key bindings annoying. I really wish I could jump with the "W" key instead. 

Very fun jam game! 

Wow! Thanks a lot 😁
I'm seriously considering to continue it post jam 😎

Thanks a lot!
Haptic system is a great idea. Could be fun to make it directional since there's 2 records 🤔
I appreciate the feedback 🙏

If you didn't try it and you're using any audio effects in Godot it's most likely the issue since the docs say:
"Note: AudioEffects are not supported when playback is considered as a sample."
Sample is the default playback type for web.

Really satisfying to spin around the playfield. The name is very fitting!
It's clear you put a lot of effort to make it feel juicy and satisfying. 

The menus seem like the least polished aspect. They seem to have a little bit different style than the actual gameplay. I probably wouldn't mention it if the actual gameplay didn't look this good!

Hear me out, this would work amazingly well as a part of an incremental game where you buy more orbs to collect, more health, better control, more time etc. and continue to the next level after surviving. Similar to the Tower Defence game "Outhold" but with your spintastic mechanics. 🤔

It took me a while to understand the controls and I didn't get that far but I still had fun with it! 
Great job 😎

You're using Godot right? Did you try putting "Default Playback Type.web" to "Stream"? 
The docs have a warning that it might cause crackling or latency but it has usually fixed my problems for web build audio.
(oh you mentioned filters those don't even work unless it's set to stream so maybe you tried it already?)

Yeah I think those things you mentioned would help a ton to make the game feel even more polished. Great Job!

Thanks for the comment!
That last song was something I really wanted to add and spent the last day of the jam on recording and making the map for it. Seems like it was worth it 😄

It's my first game I'm actually considering to put "into production" and make an actual product. I didn't expect so much positive feedback...
Will have to do a bunch of testing before that though.
Thanks again for playing and your kind words 🙏

Gloomy is adorable! Good game length for a jam and the difficulty seemed quite generous too (Which is good)

Tutorial is kind of intense with just walls of text explaining how it works. It's not easy to internalize how the game works. 
I would prefer something more interactive where you do a single action and then there's some short dialogue between each aspect.

The items could have had some explanations when you hover over them. Even if they're kinda self explanatory.
The enemies too, seemed like one of them always knocks you back and it took me some time to get that.

I'm curious how well this game idea could be expanded into a longer game? Maybe I just lack imagination though. Doesn't matter for the jam rating of course.

The music fits the vibe perfectly! Even if you didn't make it yourself. The SFX had some problems, but that seems to be a known bug in web version.


Overall a very pleasant game especially for the game jam context of playing a billion different games in a short time😁

The artstyle is great! The colors really stand out when everything else is monochrome.

Level design seems to take into account how the player movement works. The enemies shoot very predictably.
However I still found the movement more frustrating than fun since it takes such a long windup to move. It reminds me of the rage game "Jump King". I don't think it's inherently bad design since as I said you built the levels with the movement in mind. Just not something I enjoy personally as I prefer something that's faster to control.

I wish there was a little more feedback on how beating the enemies works. The average player should be able to figure it out just by playing. I didn't figure it out before writing this and reading the comments here. The enemy should for instance flash/make an unique sound when you successfully hit them.  Quite easy to implement and that would have helped immensely in trying to figure out how the game works. 
When playing I came up with a bunch of theories like (Oh I need to hit the barrel, Oh I need to hit them fast) which then guided me to not play the game correctly and in turn found it too difficult and gave up.

Also I have no clue what the babies have to do with anything???

Bouncing around all over the place with full force was fun! 
Cool game even if not my cup of tea gameplay wise. 

Thanks for checking it out 😎

Yeah that's solid specs I'm pretty sure it's firefox then. Will have to see if I can replicate the issues myself. I did try some builds using Firefox (and it was fine) but I added a lot of stuff after that.

Thanks a lot for helping me to figure this out!

Nice nice, the credits scroll by so fast I couldn't see the song lol

You're right about the difficulty, I should have made most of the maps a fair bit easier especially considering there's no tutorial that would help you on how to effectively control the record.

Thanks for the compliments! I'm starting to feel like I really should keep development going post jam! 🙏

Thanks for playing!
It's nice to see people like the UI so much despite it being so minimal and not too difficult to make 😄

Glad you found it helpful and not preachyl! 😁

The scrolling was fine for the current length as I said but I'm curious if there's some possibility to maybe have the scrolling be rhythmic and part the beatmap somehow. 
Like maybe you don't have to scroll constantly but there's a "wall note" and you change the direction or something.

It was a joy reading this comment! 

I'm glad you noticed the different note shapes😄 
I did think of several other ways to make it accessible to colorblind people (Preset or manual color select for different kinds of colorblindness)
"Symbols on the disc" was actually on my to-do list but I barely got the current visuals done for the record on the last day.

I did a lot of testing for the beatmaps so it's nice to hear you enjoyed them! Only problem is they're maybe a tad bit too hard for a jam game.

I'm sad to hear about the lag. But thanks for telling me! No one else reported it yet.
I assume you played the web version.
I did add particle effects for each note hit I wonder if that might have been the cause🤔

Would you be so kind as to list your OS, Browser, Rough specs (laptop, desktop, how new?)
so I could look into the performance issues. Rhythm games on the browser can be real finicky sometimes.


Thanks a lot for genuinely appreciating and engaging with what I created despite the performance issues!

Thanks for the in depth comment!
Yeah I worked on it with minimal breaks for the whole jam time. Spending more definitely wasn't an option haha.
There's been lots of ideas for switching up the control scheme I'll definitely experiment on what ends up being the best!

I hope you got the metagame gear! 

Wow seems like you liked everything in the game😮
Thank you for kind the comment!

Fun game!
Art and music are both solid as well.
Music needs little more balancing I think. The level beaten jingle is a bit too much louder than the background music.

I couldn't beat level 10 but had a good time nonetheless.
It was fun to go for all toppings and a fast time on some of the levels!

A very enjoyable experience.
The soundtrack fits the game so well! It doesn't try to do too much and sets the mood perfectly.

I like the idea of different objects being affected by gravity. 
The lazer levels were quite hard. I think if they were any harder I might have quit.

The space looks gorgeous and there is a certain cinematography to this whole game.
It felt immersive which is quite impressive for a puzzle game I think.

Really it's hard to think of any negatives, the game does what it needs to and executes it very well.

Enjoyable puzzle game!
I think you hit a really good difficulty curve for a jam game.
Not trivial but a good amount of challenge while still very beatable in a reasonable amount of time.

I don't know how much a timing based rank makes sense in a puzzle game? 
You just memorize the solution and do it again for a better rank.
I think a better rating would be number of turns/interactions.
The customer complaining was stressing me out too haha.

I could see the mechanics being developed further. 
Great job!

yeah I'll be following to see if you will continue the project!
Will definitely give it another shot post jam if it gets more fast paced!

 https://devismo.itch.io/vinyl-spinners 

Hey! Is the vsync turned off? 
My pc turns into an  overheating airplane when launching the game so I can't really play it. 

I don't think this game could look any better! 😲

Controlling the spinner is fun and responsive. Although I wasn't 100% sure what the dash direction is based on. It didn't seem to always behave like I expected.

The actual gameplay though felt a bit empty? 
The survival mode felt like it was best to passively avoid everyone. I didn't feel like it really challenged me and then you get hit by someone you don't see and lose without any feedback.
Well I mostly lost by doing whatever parkour by myself. This was also the most fun I had.
The survival time felt too long. I wish it was a shorter time but higher difficulty.

The coin mode didn't seem focused enough for my taste. Levels seemed to open to figure out the best path.

I'd love to have like a speedrunning parkour course with these controls or a more focused battle mode with faster win and lose states. The current modes felt boring.

It may be that I had way too high expectations based on the screenshots and gifs which promise fast paced action.
I still had a lot of fun moving around and trying to do cool stuff like I was playing a skating game.

Music/Audio is easy 5 stars! 
But I do wish there was some actual synthwave tracks too because of the visuals.


It's a very beautiful game with some flaws.
I just feel like it could be so much more fun if it focused on some faster paced gameplay!

I replayed it once again and beat a run. (I didn't before)

For all these thoughts and suggestions I made the game would of course need completely different game balance and effects.
If you did make it random it would need a complete rebalance haha. I was more suggesting maybe having full control but I can understand keeping it like this.
"it’s rare to really mess up" I think that's what I meant with the "barrier of entry". You've passed it so it's trivial but new players haven't so they're playing on random with the game balance for "choose perfectly"
But honestly the barrier isn't as high as I initially thought. Falls a little closer to the "It's easy enough that it's a choice"
I'd still take a look at completely new players trying it of course. I initially gave up quite early so there's something that could be improved in the new player experience I'm sure.

Thanks for the discussion and good luck with your game!