Hey this game is very solid!
it ran on Linux flawlessly.
Definitely spot on the aesthetic and theme and gameplay.
Was quite tough for me since i’m not super skilled on action games but was intrigued to play more.
Your quality is amazing.
Also you have some Touhou arrangements. Amazing!
Also thanks for adding english to your site.
I totally love your music :) Arigatuo!
This game is awesome! i hope you finish it.
i love the aesthetic and the style, the animations and the humor. The songs very good too (i loved them, though they could improve on the lyrics side (lacks rhythm and flow)).
The battle animations are incredible!
this game reminds me a lot to parappa in many good ways.
Unfortunately the mechanic is the biggest downside for me. As it is, its pretty much a mess and hardly playable atm (and im a rythm game lover).
I love how there are many different types of interactions (short bars,double bar, is pink and blue) but its extremely confusing, specially to know when is gonna be your turn.
sometimes you wait a bar, sometimes two, sometimes you dont wait and your turn is NOW!!-no-sorry-youve-missed-it.
and it all changes all of the sudden. theres no hint “hey this next bar is your turn”. Also the ui is a bit loaded so i would be careful how to address that.
The tutorial is kinda fun, but the 1st song in story is super hard.
also there are too many buttons. 6 are too much (wasdqe). at least you need a better way to differentiate them than colors (when using kb. Specially since another thing that would help is the ability to map to your own keys (making the letter name unusable). (specially for people with different keyboard layouts like me (i use dvorak yeah)).
mixing it with the 4 arrow keys is just TOO difficult and confusing (for me at least).
On top of that the quantization is too small (ie you need extreme precision).
And the actual keypresses (the .. “tabs” for the song) are too random not sure how to express this, but if you ever played pump it up which has tabs that follow the beat more than “the lyrics” and has more rythm youll notice. Parappa the rapper also staid closely to the beat. you cant really flow while playing which takes away the fun and makes it hard to “memorize” or master a song.
my unwanted suggestion is:
have that (lets call it tab line) all there, full of buttons, as if it were everything already written, but only show 2 bars at a time.
and it scrolls up, so you can always see one line/bar ahead.
every time a bar finishes, the whole tabs scrolls up starting the next bar and revealing one more.
Edit: (lol at my memory) that’s actually how um jammer lammy works https://youtu.be/1m1O1B-Q1jM?t=1497 (notice how it uses a different color for each character and the icon an the left animates hinting a change of characters)
With that you can get rid of the concepts of blue, pink, single and doubles. and only put the keys for the player. and would give you lots of flexibility. its a major change but thats how i would address it.
also having the face of the playing character moving along will help. and waiting on screen for his turn one bar ahead. if you take a look at parappa, thats how it does it.
i like how each line is only as long as it needs. so you know is a short phrase or longer one. https://youtu.be/UZF67blapFw?t=1591
Also worth noting how parappa uses the same button for same words (every time a word is repeated same button is used) this makes it more intuitive. And also how the difficulty increases very gradually.
Having said that, i really love this game and i really wanna see it published, so much potential!
i really liked how youve used the links that change and add texts.
and how the story unfolds.
you truly used the tech to create an experience that i havent really seen anywhere else.
simple and powerful!
well done David!
Im quite impressed by this one, network multiplayer on a Jam, and it works lol.
quite fun to play mechanic, i havent had the chance to play many like these.
And also +1 on the asymmetric mechanic, which are rare nowadays but i love them.
