itch.io

That's something baked into the game already! You might need to navigate to the options so it can properly display keyboard keys instead of controller buttons though.

Bug Reporting Time

While in a song in either Story or Quick-Groove mode you can quit through the menus but still maintain control of your inputs. This is apparent by spamming the accept key (S for me) on quit and seeing animations play out behind the menus,

This can lead to you being able to press quit then pressing left and up to press the accept key on Resume and THEN pressing pause again which leads to the game turning full black screen and locking all inputs. Forcing you to either alt+f4 or open task manager for the game. This is 100% replicable during any song.

If you're on Windows 11 I think it should be a base option nowadays where you just click "Extract All..." and then just extract it to unzip the folder but if you don't have that option then you download the tool of your choice like 7-zip and right click the folder after installation to be able to extract it.

It's a bit hidden but it's in the options menu under the "system" tab to the right.

I think when I wrote the comment the butter bit was me just venting about the PJ interrupt since I played it again very recently lmao
It does admittedly flow with the kind of aesthetic the game is going for, dropped jaw and all from the crew around there. It really do be a different strokes for different folks kind of thing but it's even close to a deal breaker.
Same for the vocaloid voices, I think the vocaloids fit perfectly for the tutorial since it's a song with more unusual visuals. Hard to do a 180° on the others personally but hey, maybe voices for songs where they talk more and then vocaloids for the more unusual can be a good mix!

Tackling the surprise left hook from some notes is kinda rough though because of how big the display is for the notes. The note scrolling in works for single note lines but it would get a bit awkward for double note lines. For line transitions though like the dreaded Stir and Mix example, it's up to the stars for how that'll get looked at. A line preview would simply fill in too much of the screen or crunch the bar in an awkward way which it's just not formatted for. I don't know exactly how a note coming in would work for a line transition either stylistically. The quickest fix could be to be like Um Jammer Lammy but that game doesn't exactly have a style to worry about for the bar itself. It's a problem that really only applies to support lines with notes at the start of them too so we'll see what happens there.

I'm glad you liked the rambling though! Honestly this one of the first few times I've actually voiced a full opinion rather than just saying "game good / game bad" so I thought it was just EXTREMELY nitpicky / whiny at first. I guess that's just how review type things you write sound while reading it back when it's a bit opinionated.  Melodii do be pretty cool though!

It is!

Bug Report at the bottom of this text wall

It's a cute little demo so far! So far I feel like the story mode open world aspect to it has too much space with too little in it to the point where it feels a bit barren. Admittedly after collecting some stuff and doing the Cream Cheese Icing song I just went to free play instead to cut out all the fluff. As for some nit picking-

I feel as if the notes are a bit TOO tight at times. I got used to it relatively fast I would say but it definitely requires you to be much more on beat than most other current rhythm games. Some lines just really come out of left field too. It's most apparent in Stir and Mix where around the second half of that song a lot of notes can catch you off guard on the first run (Especially the support lines at first). Some songs have random transitions too where they just don't mesh at all. This is most apparent with again, Stir and Mix where it just randomly has that "random ecksdee" butter man breaking it down. Nami.wav has ok transitions besides the one where they dip into water to see the turtle giving it them GOOD hip thrusts but that was a tiny bit jarring at first. At worst I would compare the butter man breakdance in Stir and Mix to the PJ interruption in Parappa the Rapper's 2 "Noodles can't be beat" since it's out of nowhere and after that bit it just randomly jumps back to where the characters were before that and continue the song. However, Grease Poppin' has the breaks and all the transitions in it working seamlessly and don't at all detract from the gameplay or song.

Mechanically and song wise that's all I think I can say for now, it's time to move on to the possible suggestions and questions that every developer loves receiving unwarranted :,)

1. Seeing some notes ahead of time would do WONDERS for off setting notes feeling like they're coming at you out of nowhere. Currently there is no way to get a peek at the next time which just lets you get a free miss out of nowhere.

2. The point at which a line ends and it's your turn to go can sometimes be out of nowhere as well. I love how getting cool mode is represented on the top left but at the same time giving that screen real estate to letting Melodii's icon more time to start up would help with knowing when a line begins.

3. Extremely opinionated but I'm just not a fan of TTS / Vocaloid voices which automatically makes me say Nami has the best song despite the fact that Grease Poppin' really do be poppin'. Is there any plans to move the rest of the cast + Melodii to an actual voice or is Nami the random outlier? (I understand if this question may be one to ask but I'm glad you're even reading this actual text block :D)

4. I notice the end of the note bar has a pink bulb but it doesn't really mean a support bar is coming and instead that's what the flash is for. It's not really a big thing but that's more of a question why not to use the end bulb there. It might be a bad move in the end actually but given that it's already pink at first glance it can look like a support bar notifier.

5.An option to change the note bar colors from the blue and pink to something more neutral would be nice because in specific scenarios it clashes with the art itself (Stir and Mix strikes again).

TLDR: Current game DNA is kinda like Parappa 1 and I hope it turns out to be as healthy as Parappa 2 in the end.

Overall I enjoyed the game still and I look forward to seeing future progress on the game! Thank you for taking the time for reading all this if you did and I hope Melodii has a lively future ahead of her!

Bug Report Starts here

1. If you select a song in Quick-Groove then as soon as you press it you press back to menu and then your play button again to hit the story mode button the game will accept that as where you are in the story. This can be used to travel both in the future and the past of where your current story progress, allowing you to teleport back to Melodii's home as if you just started or get full story completion immediately by completing Grease Poppin' via this method. This can be done with 100% guarantee any time.

2. Changing the graphics to high can sometimes make the music box in the Quick-Groove menu not open then subsequently crash the game, then making the game take 15 seconds to start up. I have not replicated this yet but I have a high end pc so the 15 second start up was surprising to say the least. I sadly do not have footage of it.

3. Using the Alt + Tab command at any point in a song will cause the note placement by the rival musician to desync and be placed at points where it's even off the chart. This seems to be only visual as trying to match the notes in their newly placed spots will result in a bad grade for that line as you most likely missed a lot of other notes already. I will attach a photo of the desync using the start of Grease Poppin' but this is 100% able to be replicated in any song at any point.

3A. This same Alt+Tab bug can be used to entirely ruin some cutscenes as well but the only one I have tried it on is Grease Poppin' and Nami.Wav. If you do it at the start of Grease Poppin' you'll cause the game to make Melodii and Synthwave Ronald open their doors in very quick succession or outright skip it. Wait a bit longer and you can make the beat map appear earlier than it should be in the scene right before they start playing but this does not have any affect on gameplay besides looking wonky. On Nami it did not seem to prematurely end cutscenes.