itch.io

Thanks!

Oh, nice, I get it then. Like: "Keep tapping to calibrate" and then I adjust things under the hood. You're absolutely right, this would be a great solution

Yeah, definitely more playtest would have helped! Thanks for pointing out the difficulty.

And good feedback on the 'dying randomly'. When they become empty of energy they die, it is part of the mechanics, but it lacks feedbacks at the moment. I still don't know how I'll solve this one. Maybe I can just remove it haha, let's see.

And good point on the manual callibration too, I might have to simplify the steps. I still don't get what you mean by 'automatic'. It is theoretically impossible to get the exact delay of a player's full PC setup. But there are some techniques like making this adjustment under the hood while the player is playing something, which is a good path, but requires a lot of work to get right too. It might be worth, though, if I keep working on the project. Thanks for the feedback!

Thanks a lot for playing and the time to give your constructive feedback!

Hi, thanks for the time and feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed the game overall!

The first version was actually FIFO, and I decided to change. I guess both FIFO and FILO lead to frustration, making me think there should be an extra verb you could do, like a second button to place the second on the line? I still don't have the answer. Many of the complaints talk about the lack of agency the core mechanic brings to a strategy game, which is usually not great. Thanks a lot for pointing that out! If I keep working on the game this will probably be the first aspect to try stuff and playtest.

Woow! Thanks for the kind words. So glad you enjoyed! <3

Wooow! Thats huge! I had no idea It did so well. Thanks for the effort! Will take a look at the rankings.

Hey Vhoyer. Just watched the video. Thanks for the valuable feedback

Yeah, the frustration of having to wait for the next loop is kind of a cursed problem that came from the core design. I did anticipate but did not find time to design a solution and implement. The three ghost lanes could be a great simplification! Also, I think the level itself could be easier, (including the energy economics, making the mic break by itself a less often event) I didn't have a lot of time for playtesting the difficulty :( maybe it is a good learning for the next jam already, reserving even more time to playtest (and maybe find someone else to work with could speed up the development as well haha)

Your video was really really valuable! Thanks a lot for the time and the effort o/

Wow, thanks a lot! I'm really happy you enjoyed! I too have not seen rhythm games with management elements, so I set out to make one - and I'm so glad you picked up the vision and liked it <3 Thanks for playing and for the compliments!

Thanks o/

Very good and hypnotizing haha. Simple but well executed, good work! Has great juiciness to it too. Great work!

The only complaint is that it starts to get kinda impossible to react to the note direction after a while, and when the direction changes is difficult to react too.

Other than that, great job!

I also made a rhythm game haha, you might like it too.

Nice simple idea, but it gets repetitive really fast. Maybe the game would improve like if all the notes were actually placed on beat and synced with the music, but for now it looks like you have a huge window to press.

It has good chill vibes. If you added more polish and incentivized the player to tap on beat the game has a cozy, relaxing game potential

Congrats on the project.

My biggest feedback for a game jam game is that it is not that creative. It is just recreating DDR or Guitar Hero. Which is fine for a small learning project.

But aside from that, It works great.

I also made a rhythm game, so this one called for my attention.

Cheers o/

Great job! The starting cutscene is really charming and gets you into the setting.

It is actually a programming game under the hood haha. Here are some feedbacks that maybe could improve the game:

On the looping bar, there is a big red thing and some knobs on the right, but they did not react to input, It feels like the don't do anything and is just aesthetics? If so, It would be great to make them call for less attention (specially the big red thing). They could be more grayed out, for example, and all pushed to the far right.

On the programming game inspiration: one cool thing on grid based programming puzzles games is that once you figured out the solution, you can play in x4 speed to just see the result. But when you have to wait for a slow song for like 1 minute just watching and thinking about nothing is kind of a drag that put me off a bit. Usually the fun of a puzzle game is in figuring out the solution, less in the execution, and much less in just seeing the execution play out for a long time. I don't know exactly how you can solve this downtime as it uses the theme of a music looping. Maybe there is a slow puzzly sound when you are experimenting, but when the player gets the loop right (and the game indentifies it), change to a super energized rock song that goes faster and the player can feel the urge to flee from the guard. Maybe this could add some change of pace to the feelings of a level too, which could be great.

I hope these constructive feedbacks can help improve the game :)

I also made a rhythm/music game haha, so maybe you guys might like it too o/

Great work. Cheers <3

The game starts too slow! The idea is simple and it is a very positive thing, but it is purely a reactive game and not even a rhythm game.

Maybe there could be a chance for an arrow to change to a different direction, or maybe a an arrow could 'catch on fire' so you have to NOT press that arrow on that loop. These two things would already make the game more interesting.

Congrats on the project!

Good work! It reminds me of a game from a previous jam, but in that one you wasn't allowed to change the notes on the loop. Adding notes adds a second layer of strategy.

The one small feedback on the game design is: it looks like you can stick to a pattern you are comfortable with. For example, moving with shield for some beats on the first half of the bar, and then shooting for the other half. As shooting and moving on the same beat is very risky, you most likely will never do that once you learn it. So moving repeatedly and then shooting repeatedly seems to be a very very strong strategy, making the element of changing the music feel somewhat pointless sometimes once you catch this.

I don't know yet how you could make players feel pressured to change the beat. First of all, in this version you cannot remove notes from the bar, so there is that haha, but maybe the notes have a lifetime on the bar, so they vanish after like 8 bars. Then you can respawn notes on the field  in a similar duration cooldown. This would already allow player to change plans during the level. To pressure them to make this decision maybe add enemies that you need to throw a shield at then and then attack really quickly? Or some ideas in this direction could be the solution.

I really like the game, the polish, the execution. Really well done! 

I also made a rhythm game! Haha, I think you might like it.

Also, did you use an asset to play the sound with a short delay? Or just using the AudioSettings.dspTime and looking ahead like me? 

Great work! First thing that stood out for me was that the main menu is very polished and caused a good first impression.

I have two small feedbacks that align on the same problem: readability of the state of the game.

The first thing I was struggling to read fast was the direction of the player. The main bird is super small and it only turns in 8 directions. To aid in understanding the  direction there is a small red arrow, but It was a bit too small for me. There were several occasions I thought I was in some direction to accelerate and go to another. Maybe It could be a thinner sprite, but longer and more transparent, so you can understand at a glance even with your peripheral vision. Making the player bird stand out from the other birds would help as well

The second is more related to the visual language of the game objects. Maybe items the player can collect could blink white periodically so it stands out from the enemies. I bumped into enemies thinking they could be collectibles and vice-versa. Also, the score numbers are red, so they kinda look harmful, so maybe change to white or some other color?

I think these two small improvements would make the game a lot easier to play. I love luftrusers so the game caught my attention, and looping around stuff is a cool challenge for this controls scheme. 

Hope this feedback can help! Great job! o/ Cheers

Wow, that's so good to hear! <3 So glad you enjoyed! Send to your rhythm game lover friends o/ haha

Thanks a lot for the compliments! o/ I had a bit of experience making rhythm games beforehand, that helped a LOT

Thanks! Yeah, the soundtrack is amazing. Leonardo Lima is a legend haha

He also made the instrument sounds that are played on beat when a mic shouts out a note. They are then randomized and played at the right moment according to the lane

Thanks! I'm really glad you enjoyed! <3

Huuahsuahs yeah, it is being well received! I might work on more content on the future, who knows!

And I did not use magic, just a lot of coffee. Magic would be great though.

Yeah, the soundtrack is a banger from Leonardo Lima. He nailed it

Thanks for playing. I hear you! Maybe the pacing of complexity and difficulty could be improved to avoid some frustrations early on

Thanks for the kind words!

Hi! Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, maybe if a slower song could help new players, specially if they are not used to playing rhythm games. Thanks for your comment and the compliments o/

Thanks! <3

Thanks! Haha, yeah, they're working hard to keep the party going

Great mood and soundtrack/sound effects.

I thought the camera was against me though. It was really hard to react to the level in a the speed the game reaches. I was just blindly jumping every time I saw different colored stuff. Maybe the camera could be bigger (show more stuff) or, at least, adjust it so the player sticks to the far left of the screen. As the levels makes you go right, that's what I'm interest to see in advance to make a plan and act. The visibility doesn't help either, as the background is very noisy and calls for your eye's attention (specially the blinking lights)

Another improvement I would think about is the visibility of the tape. The leve makes your eye look to the right of the screen, but the tape is on the upper left corner, so you have to move your eyes a long distance everytime you want to check on the tape color/buff. One simple solution would be to just change it to the upper right corner, this would already help a lot.

Hope these feedbacks help! o/ Congratulations on the project, very atmospheric and polished as well.

On a side note, my game is also music themed haha a rhythm game actually

I wonder why the tracks are so short, maybe to avoid some desync issues? Also, the control scheme really goes against learning the game. Maybe using amy set of 3 keys that are already vertically aligned would make the game may times easier. To help the player more, just slap the button name to the lane, write [space], [s], [d] somewhere.

I also made a rhythm game of sorts! Thought you would like it, it is a tower defense with rhythmic inputs. And I had to solve some technical issues and learn some stuff to actually keep the music sinced with the game logic, maybe that's why you kept the level short? If so, very smart move for a jam project!

Congratulations on the project!

Above my expectations. Nice game. It is actually a 'programming' game under the hood if you think about it, and there were some fun levels.

One frustration I had was when you are stepping through the bar you cannot edit the notes, but it does not have any visual feedback, so sometimes I was clicking without being able to edit anything, to then realize I was in 'stepping mode'. So a small usability issue that could be improved. Maybe make the nodes greyed out or something would be enough.

The way the camera works, you always have to fail some times to get it right. As you cannot see what is to come, there were some levels that I just pressed forward some times to see what would happen next. Was thinking about it, maybe a nice feature would be to allow the player to pan the camera forward when there aren't any notes on the track, this way the player can hit play and inspect all the level and study how things move before starting to work on the solution.

Really nice game, congratulations on the project!

I also made a music game. It is more a rhythm  game actually, but uses the concept of a looped bar of a music too! It is a tower defense with rhythmic inputs. You might like it :)

This is impressive for a gamejam. Its like a grid puzzle DAW haha

Love the ideia, wish there were some objective to add some depth to the game. It is more like a toy for now. But it is a well done toy.

I feel like sometimes the sound would not go through a straight line, and than I had to redraw the line and then it worked. Not sure why.

And if you keep working on the project, maybe some usability features would help, like keys to change between tools, easier way to change the note of the modulator or instrument of the percussion would be nice.

My game is also music related, more a rhythm game, though. You might like it, give it a try! :)

Incredibly chill toy-like game. Nice to see another music inspired project like mine.

It was a bit unclear to me how the score was calculated. The amount resets at a certain condition, but I was not sure, so I just kept trying to hit the targets.

Interesting take. More like a cozy game to relax to. Great job!

Good to play another music inspired entry like mine :)

Great vibes and soundtracks! But, unfortunately, I have no idea about what should I do. I just placed random slime on random tracks and didn't how the score was calculate or why should I strive for a high score.

Maybe add a an target score for me to aim towards a strategy, explain to me how the gloops interact to score, sum scores between hands so I have a long term plan of sorts. Thinks kind of stuff. I feel like the game lacks interesting decisions to make.

Hope this feedback helps :) great job!

Cheers o/

Really creative. Has some interesting level mechanics to support the basic mechanics as well. 

I ended up not finishing, stopped at the big rope switch that I had to stitch ropes from the level, and this is why, for me: usually, the fun in puzzle games are about figuring out the solution, not about the execution itself. So puzzles that flows well for me is the ones that is a bit tricky to figure out, and you can easily experiment with your possibilities. And when you actually figure it out, is not that hard to execute, because the actual fun was from the mental process and the 'aha' moment (as Mark Brown calls it haha)

That said, the big switch level was a bit too fiddly and I ended up giving up. It is really hard to stitch the ropes on the right spots, and to do it like 4 times  was kind of a pain. So my constructive feedback would be to simplify the steps to complete the levels and focus on the 'aha' moment, instead of the execution. Being a physics based puzzle also intensifies this frustration

Also, I think there is a bug because I can jump indefinitely mid-air sometimes

But again, really creative and imaginative! Hope my feedback can help the project :)

Thanks!

I started playing without reading the comments and was shooting non stop. I only realized the bullets were looping after dying like 4 times.

I think the idea is great. It would be helpful to give some feedback that the bullet is looping, like they enter a tiny blue portal to the right and the come out from a tiny blue portal from the left. This would help teach the mechanics of the game. Also, a bigger shooting cooldown would help prevent players from making huge mistakes when learning the game, as shooting non stop is usually the strategy in these kind of games that doesn't have ammo, so many will have this natural instinct.

This set of mechanics generates some interesting strategies like creating a 'vertical' barrier of bullets on each side, or even a rectangle of bullets looping around the center area to protect you. But some enemies disrupt this strategies by shooting or bouncing. Really cool concept

There is one thing that bothered me though and maybe It could be improved. I thought the player character was too slippery to control, it maintains momentum quite a lot. Adding to that the after image trail effects, it becomes hard to control the player while not looking directly at them (which is what usually happens in games with a lot of bullets like this). I would test 'increasing the friction' and resolving the readability of the player position. Maybe add a 'cross like' sprite overlay to the player, so you can tell the x,y position with more precision with peripheral vision.

Also the game ramps up really fast on difficulty, but maybe it's on me haha.

Congrats! o/

Thanks for the kind words! o/ Glad you liked it

Congrats on the project! The bloom effects on the orbs and the sound they make are cool!

Here are some feedbacks and problems I faced

I think there is a bug on the movement. You move very slowly until you press shift to run, after that you keep running for a while? I didn't really understand and felt a bit wrong

It would be helpful to show something in the HUD about the other weapon, I was shooting rings for a while until I decided to read the game description to find the tutorial there. After discovering the vacuum gun I started to make some progress. An Icon in the hud with a [tab] label would solve this problem.

The game is a bit hard to read, when the ghosts stabilizes, they close their eyes, but when they are facing the other direction the eye is not visible also, so these two situations are visually similar, making the game frustrating at times

After dying, I couldn't click the Menu button. I think the mouse was still locked from the FPS logic and the Menu button was not selected, so Enter or Space didn't do anything

Hope it helps :)

Yeah, like the comments say, it is a webgl build but you are making the files available to download instead of hosting. Wanted to rate as there were 0 ratings, but the game is not playable rn :(

I had implemented a HUD bar that filled up and the token spawned very predictably every 7 high fives or something. I changed the calculation on purpose and removed this bar. I wanted it to feel a bit more random and the player to be able to focus on dodging, and then having to plan and improvise when the token spawned, I wanted this feeling of "when is it coming?". Also I did not want a hud bar just for this system, so it was a win-win for me. Currently, each high five that doesn't spawn token increases a chance of spawning by 4%, and when it spawns, the chance is reset to 0%. Sad to hear you didn't like this unpredictability, and thanks for bringing that up. Maybe it is still something to look at and study in future playtests and feedbacks if I keep working on this game. Maybe showing some kind of visual aid when the chance is high so players can manage the expectations better can make this system feel better too.

About the counter-intuitive part of the player's body. Yeah, that's a bummer, I didn't factor this would be such a friction. Still thinking about how to make this part smoother.

Thanks a lot for the feedback

Yes, it was a solo project. Thanks for the kind words!