Last-minute rating time! I loved this, very beautiful and relaxing experience. I shan't try to type any more as it's about 10 seconds until the deadline. ;)
Fantastic concept for a game! As others have said, it could maybe benefit from some tuning to make it a little easier to work out what to do. But I do love the idea, and I think it has a lot of potential!
Great game, nice concept and lots of polish. Difficulty is harsh from the second level, but then you already know that! I'd definitely be interested to play an extended version of this with better tuned difficulty. Certainly one of the most addictive and complete-feeling games of the jam!
This was fun to play, though as a lot of other commenters have said, it is extremely tricky too! Good luck producing a version that's a bit easier to pick up.
My only real query is, what's the musical element? The song is nice enough, but I'm not really getting the Music Game Jam connection. :)
This was a really nice, polished game (except the lack of restart or
win screens). The visuals are very nicely done. I enjoyed how the
interactions were timed along with the music, that was a really nice
touch. I did find the little guy's movement a bit frustrating, since he seems to move so slowly in a horizontal direction.
The main mechanic is nice and feels very natural, and the whole thing is
very relaxing! The music is very pleasant, but I'm guessing from your
comment above that you didn't make that?
I had to read the comments to find out I needed to press space. Is that mentioned somewhere and I just missed it?
It was a fun, chilled little game but my only problem is it didn't really pose any sort of challenge - once I'd realise it was the space bar I was after, breezing through the one short level was done in no time.
This is super-polished and fun. The visuals are great, I love the whole aesthetic. The music is the best part, fantastic stuff!
Those aliens sure are a fickle bunch. One minute I was the best thing since Pink Floyd, the next thing I seemed to be the new Nickelback! They speak English real good for aliens too. ;)
I kinda wish that there was some difference in the music when I
did badly, to explain why everyone hated me so much... but on the other
hand, I'd hate to hear such great tracks ruined by splicing in a
version of me sucking at playing them.
Definitely one of my favourite games in the jam, I hope you place as highly as you deserve!
Damn, for something so simple that music really gets into your head! I'm going to be hearing that damn monkey in my sleep.
This was a neat little game. It only took me three or four attempts to pick up the idea (to be fair I'd had advanced warning by watching streams of people butchering their first 20 or so attempts!), but after that I was able to continue pretty much indefinitely. I'm not sure exactly what you could add, but it would increase the replayability if there was some way to scale up the difficulty later into the game.
This was very fun. It's a bit unforgiving, but at least it was a challenge! The visuals were fantastic too, I love the pixel art, and the main character is super-cute. There's an amazing amount of content there for a jam game - all the different enemies, and a decent amount of levels to play. It's an impressive feat for two weeks' work!
Most of all, I loved the concept of jumping on the beat, it really added to the rhythm-based aspect of the gameplay . There were a few rough edges around the implementation, though they didn't spoil it for me. It's a shame you decided not to do a post-deadline update to polish it up a little though, as I think it deserves the attention!
This is really funny! I love the way the audience snap their fingers (are they humans, or just automated snap-bots?) And did you really write this whole thing purely in order to air the pun "open mech night"?
I love the visuals, the characters are fun! I felt the game itself could benefit from more to do than just hitting the keys that I'm told to hit. Having something to do or collect on the dance floor while still keeping up with the keys would add a whole new dimension to the game!
Fun little game, pretty polished too! Love the idea of shooting on the beat increasing your combo. It seemed a little harsh to completely obliterate the combo on being slightly out though, especially as there were times I was certain I was still clicking in time. Perhaps reducing the combo rather than zero-ing it would feel more fair?
I was looking forward to trying this, as the cartoon style art is excellent and the funny animals on the title screens are wonderful. But sadly I suffered the same bug as reported below - as soon as I tried to start the game, it crashed back to desktop. I thought at first it might be because I'm running in 4K, but it seems lots of other people have encountered the same issue. I hope you manage to track down the bug, I know how frustrating these things can be to find!
Super-cool idea! I especially love the idea of multiplayer, though I didn't manage to try it that way. Very confusing with all the different options though, and the slight lag on the camera following the object just made me wish I was controlling with the mouse instead. :)
The concept is nice! But the lack of feedback on picking the correct answer, and the high speed of the movement, make it a bit frustrating. It would also be nice to have some kind of negative consequence of picking the wrong answer, otherwise it really just becomes a matter of clicking four buttons till one of them works. :)
Even knowing that the faces had to be oriented correctly, I could have sworn at first that the game was punishing me for pieces I had positioned correctly. When I played a second time, it did seem to be me that was screwing up after all! Having said that, I did find that some pieces came to rest a whole row above others, and that this was quite disorienting.
Good fun, and a nice twist when it plays back the song at the end. I only wish that the "wrong note" noise was a little less annoying - even when I managed 95% on my second playthrough, every wrong note still really grated. :)
This was a fantastic idea. Knowing that the whole "backwards attack flip-around" thing was there definitely helped!
I get what you're trying to do with the whole score-only, no-deaths thing, but I do think a lot of casual players would think they're doing fine by not dying, then wonder why they scored 1 point at the end. I can't help but wonder if a more traditional lives or shield-based system might teach players better where they're going wrong.
I love the idea, but it's kind of hard to tell that the block heights are even based on any kind of analysis of the song. Without it being obvious what's going on they just feel kind of random and disconnected from the music.
It's also really tricky to get the perspective of where the player character is landing without some kind of shadow showing where she is. The visuals are a lot of fun though!
Aww, this game is just lovely! The combination of the hidden object mechanics with the beat creation once you've found each one is genius. The art style is wonderful, and the finished loop is great too, so chill! If this had been a team of three or four people I'd be impressed enough, but for one person to do the art, dev and music in a couple of weeks blows me away.
A minor point, unfortunately the audio didn't loop at quite the right point for me, which spoilt the effect slightly. I didn't notice it during the game particularly, but once I'd completed the whole thing it was very noticeable. Maybe that only happened because I was playing in browser?
Regardless, this was one of my favourite things in the jam! I only wish it was longer. I could see this working beautifully as a series of these tableaux, all linked with some kind of storyline, and perhaps with some other mechanics interspersed. That is a game I would pay good money for!
Your aesthetic is beautiful, I love the mysterious feel, the creatures you encounter, and above all I love the player-character herself! I found the gameplay itself a little frustrating, especially when I wasn't sure which of the blocks I'd stand on and which I'd simply pass behind.
The music was quite lovely, and added to the mysterious atmosphere. But that just made that damn text noise all the more jarring. It's bad enough when you're just watching the text appear at normal speed, but when you're trying to skip it, it's physically painful!
I'd love to see more of this world, but I'm afraid the gameplay wasn't gripping enough for me personally to progress any further than half way through the second world. If there was a bit more to do other than just platforming - some puzzles or some other game mechanic - I could see this being very cool.
Nice, the main game idea is actually pretty solid, the music works pretty well, and the pixel art for the characters is nice. I'd suggest making all the art assets at the same pixel art resolution, as it's pretty jarring seeing different ones next to each other. There's not a lot of "music" in the gameplay though - just making the bullets look like music notes and calling it "Musical Weapons" seems a little tenuous. :)
But my main problem with it is just how easy it plays. It could be a fun little Gauntlet-alike if it was a lot harder, but it's too easy to just plod through the levels and feel in no real danger from the enemies.
Really liked the visuals, and the music was great! I just wasn't feeling much of a connection between the two, which is something I'd hope for in a music game. The 80s aesthetic was great though, and the graphics reminded me of one of my favourite arcade classics, Atari's Hard Driving. :)
Thanks Daniel, really pleased you liked it! Much of the art was placeholders due to lack of time, though we're really pleased with Brian as a main character. :)
I've seen other people react the same way to the missile, so I think you're right that it's not clear what to do. Maybe we'll make the missile into something you do have to slide under in a future release, and use something less deadly-looking as the speedy airborne enemy.
Sorry level 2 didn't work for you! Though most people seem to have had no problems playing, we have had a couple of other reports of mysterious bugs. Unfortunately I've never been able to replicate them here - one of the hazards of writing a native browser game I guess!
That was actually pretty satisfying! I love the way you've scaled the damage according to variety in the melody, so spamming the same note(s) isn't effective. I could see this being expanded into quite a detailed game by having different notes (or intervals?) having differing effects on the various types of enemy. I would agree with other posters that a count-in before I start each recording and playback would help though.
This was great - an inordinate amount of fun for something so simple! Level 3 totally threw me with the starting point though. I also managed to get a "level failed" and "level complete" message simultaneously, by finishing just on the wire!
If there was some kind of score counter, with score being added on for your time remaining at the end of each level, that would give the game a nice competitive element.
Excellent stuff! Not only great fun - and really challenging on the harder level - but also one of the few games in the jam that's really taken the concept of a music game and created something original out of it!
Nice idea, but the audio was incredibly jarring, and trying to map orthogonal controls onto diagonal directions is hugely irritating as a control scheme.
I gave it several tries, but it just crashed every time I tried to launch the game. I thought at first it was because I was playing on a large resolution, but then I tried 1280 x 720 several times, and it still kept crashing.
It's a shame, I've seen it played on a couple of streams, and I love the weird retro aesthetic, so I was looking forward to trying it out for myself!
This was really nicely done, the bullet patterns were pitched at just the right level of difficulty, and I love the main gameplay idea. My only worry was that sometimes when it got quite hectic, I felt like I was just pounding the key at random instead of on the beat, and it still seemed to be dispatching the enemies pretty effectively. I also wish there had been at least one more level to try out.
Regardless, definitely one of my favourite games of the jam!
