itch.io

A tough challenge for sure!
the speed of the game is quite something, but if you're fast enough, it's quite something!
Excellent implementation of the leaderboards and scoring system (though I wish I was able to get higher than D :c ). Slider moving up and down paired with the notes slowly fading in makes the appearance of new notes excellently smooth.

Criticism-wise, I'd definitely add a level or two on the lower side of the difficulty, because the game feels genuinely overwhelming for some with limited reflex :/ Another thing is the lack of punishment for pressing a note when it's not needed - I could land decent scores by just mashing all the keys as fast as I physically could - there is no safeguard against this kind of cheating. Still, very solid entry, was it not for the low amount of tracks, I could've mistaken it for a fully released game, with how smooth and polished the core gameplay loop is!

Lovely game, the graphics are incredible for a jam entry - the best looking game I've seen in here, with a biiig margin. I really like the blending of movement and actions with the rhythm - reminds me of patapon, which is one of my favourite rhythm games. The narrative is good, and engaging and game is considerably longer than I expected it to be. Having some spells on the first 2 notes and other on the last 2 notes made for a really fluid and organic combat system - lovely design, well executed.

Criticism-wise, the interface is decent, but the text on the letters doesn't display properly - it overflows to the sides quite a lot. (downloaded version) The difficulty feels just about right - though sometimes I couldn't even finish a single spell, other times I chained 4 or even 7 spells one after the other, so it's just about getting in the groove right. A little more visual feedback on when it is time to press the note could help. The background song is nice but gets really quite repetitive after a while. Adding some more variety to the soundtrack would help, I think. 

Genuinely awesome entry!
Impressive amount of levels for a jam entry, definitely eye-catching design and animations - the character is excellently polished! The music is good and the SFX are cool (and every enemy has their own SFX which is again, impressive). Each level has a distinct and clear colour palette which results in the game looking great! The camera effects are excellent, and give the game a lot more impact/oomph. Good stuff. Difficulty scaling throughout the levels felt good as well.

Criticism-wise... the enemies are not really well synced with the music, I felt that especially in level 2. It often felt more like button-mashing rather than well-timed strikes, which detracted from the experience :/ The accuracy and rank rating was a great touch (got at least 95%, and S on all levels with button mashing though, so that's a bit of a shame)

That was a neato entry. The rhythmic, bouncy animations are great, the graphics are really neat and the concept itself - ambitious. And you get some extra points for puns... and undertale (if Toby Fox doesn't sue you :p )
Brace for criticism: the score counter simply displayed 99999 the whole time, the game just kept going, characters and score counter bouncing to the song that was already over. The biggest problem though is... the input of "every character" being ridiculously hard. I'm probably not the best around at rhythm games, but I really struggled to catch even a fraction of the notes. It simply felt overwhealming. Maybe reducing the number of possible inputs would help with that, or alternitively tone down the number of inputs per second. Still, you made it and solo - with good music and good graphics - you deserve a pat on the back :)

Thanks for the quality feedback! Scoring went through a few iterations, but ultimatelly, you get 10 points for hitting a note, lose 5 for missing a note completelly, and then also gain... I can't remember the exact values, but about 0.1 points for every 0.1 of a second when holding the right note, lose about half that if holding a note which should not be pressed. There was no system to verify if the note was hit perfectly or little late, so yeah, there is no punishment for hitting the note after 90% of it is over... apart from losing the note-holding points.

I've played through these songs probably about a 100 times readjusting the notes to fit well between following the music perfectly and... being actually possible to play, so uhh no wonder I'm still near the top of the leaderboards :p Looking back on the feedback we got (including Yours), the notes should have evolved a lot more between the songs, to improve the difficulty curve and lessen the sense of repetitiveness...

Thanks for the feedback! And... yeah, compered to your game, ours was incredibly easy. The idea here was that the leaderboards will help to cater to the more dedicated, challange-seeking players, but the less skilled players won't ragequit after failing 3 times in a row. I actually scrapped a bunch of 'hardmode' code, because my teammates said the game was too hard as is, so... yeah, try and please everybody, you end up pleasing noone. 

Hey! Thanks for the feedback! If you're playing on widescreen/4k or any kind of funky resolution and had problems with UI scaling, be sure to play the widescreen fix version! 

we got the widescreen fix just for you <3

The backgrounds were impressively full for a jam game. The music was really selling the setting, too. The long notes were a bit hard to see though, as the bar for holding the note didn't contrast too well with the background. Got 140k in 1st level, 180 in the 2nd level. Not too sure what the EDIT button in the menu is for, but it's.... there :) The SFX are nice, the transitions are smooth, but it lacks a lot of juice, impact, VFX, camerashakes or particle effects. It's nice, but it's not too satisfying/ rewarding  to play. You have a strong core gameplay loop, so just sprinkle a few more effects on top and you'll have one awesome game :D

I mean, if you're going in solo, it's an achievement to get anything finished, let alone polished and ya know - fun to play :D

Give yourself a pat on the back, you made it :)

This is just a blast!
The first words to come out of my mind while seeing the menu, and realising the light follows my cursor, and this is a quote: "Yooo this is DOOOOOOPE". The shrimp battle is an absolute jam, and apropriatelly for a bullet hell, it feels properly crowded. My goodness, the visuals are amazing. The lighting is on point, the anticipation/announcing/warning shapes leave just enough time (although at times they are a bit hard to see because of the intense flashing and low contrast against the background). The transitions and effects are simply glorious.

Main point of criticism: healthbar? I had no idea if I was at pretty much full HP, or on the absolute brink of death. Another thing - you can walljump and it's reaaaally useful, but there are no... walls in the visual design of the game, so I didn't realize I could jump off of invisible walls. Another thing that would be really handy with this level of intensity would be having some sort of invincibility frames after being hit, because many, many times I just fell into a big projectile and got melted in less than a second.

Having the tracks as... literal rail-tracks is a very neat idea! The incinerators feel good, the animations are clean and the graphics are, while nothing spectacular, cute and easy to identify - which at this speed is all that really matters :) . The music is nice and having some notes be [you must NOT hit this] requires a lot more attention from the player. Unlocking more and more rails (and hence depth and difficulty) is a very good way of organically scaling up the difficulty over time and according to the player ability. A very good solution there.

My only problem is... I cannot, for the life of me, keep up with more than 3 tracks at once. Got to 5 incinerators a few times, but it's just too much at once. The starting difficulty of 2 at once is just right for the begginer, 3 are alright when you're in the beat, 4 is as much as my fingers could at once... Maybe it's not that there are too many tracks, but rather that each new track adds too many obstacles, or more likely that having 5 input keys clustered right next to each other is sort of impractical from the ergonomic perspective - maybe instead of having all the keys directly next to each other, have half for the left hand, half for the right. 5 input keys just makes me try to franticly find a spare finger as I see that pink son of a [curseword] on track 5 about to eat all my precious gems.

Thorough and constructive criticism. Much needed and very much appreciated!

Now this, this is something special. The core mechanic is incredibly simple, but incredibly fun and open-ended. The gameplay loop is addictive, satisfying and doesn't feel repetitive. The guns feel awesome, and the sheer amount of juice you squeezed out of everything rivals a very, very large orange ;) Again, really impressed by the VFX. Sound design is nice, clean and simple. The timing on the music and the weapons is well, perfect. The variety in enemies is just about right.  
I went through a quarter of all the games in this jam and I'm pretty confident in saying yours is the best, by quite a margin. Hell, it's so good, I wouldn't be pissed off if we lost to you :D 

Now, to be more critical: the intro transitions are really neat, but it really starts to feel like you're just showing it off the 3rd time around, since it's so flashy and over-the top. It's awesome the first time, but gets old fast. Another thing (nothing personal) but wherever I look, you put your name everywhere - and I absolutely understand being proud of what you've done (and don't get me wrong, the game's awesome), it just sort of makes you look unnecessarily egocentric. Another thing is the lack of variety in the level layout - the weapons change, the enemies change - great! But the rectangular arena feels very same'y in contrast. The train-carts were a cool addition, but they really just felt like another enemy on the same level. They change visually, but the game really could use some more variety in the layouts - add a few pillars, or a wall, and now the player needs to consider sight-lines! With how good the game is, as is - you could just about double the amount of content  by just adding a handful of obstacles. 

I'm very glad you enjoyed it!

A really original concept! The movement is nice, the sound effects are nice and although it's visually simple, it's consistently simple. My main point of criticism is that when the new notes are picked up, the delay feels inconsistent - sometimes they go on the current beat, sometimes on the next. 

I'm glad you enjoyed it! Seems that many people agree that the fonts we used were a bit too... stylized. There are thousands of font out there, so definitely gonna look into that

Thank you for the quality feedback! I agree, the different instruments should change and become more difficult with each musical-battle, that would make it less repetitive and made the difficulty curve smoother at the first levels. Again, thanks for good criticism :)

Okay, this is a really solid entry! The movement is fast, dynamic and satisfying. The controls are basic, intuitive - good. The music is just straight up FIRE. Especially the track from lvl3, which just reminds me of the soundtrack from NFS:MW (ah the soundtrack in that one :D ). The player animations are also pretty neat :) A huge layer of polish as well, which is very impressive.
Criticism-wise, the blending of styles is very inconsitent. The trees in the background feel very cartoony, wheras the bushes and trees in the foreground have a far smoother look (which I think suits your game a bit better). Then there's the stretched default cubes. The beat visualiser and the hook-dash are another style completely, reminiscent of the lights and heavy bloom of Hollow knight's soul, or Ori and the Blind forest. You can absolutelly go in any of these directions, but you can't really go for all of them at once - it makes the game look quite a bit messy. Again, interface design, scoreboard integration and the movement is excellent and just juicy, just the visuals seem a biiiiiit all-over-the-place. 

Just something completelly random, one time when I restarted (possibly after disconecting from internet, or alt-tabbing), I got respawned into a black scene, with the counter numbers overlaying on top of each other. Only happened once in over half an hour of gameplay, so it's rare.

Awww, it's so cute!
A lovely concept, cleanly executed. The shapeshifting transitions are very smooth and fluind, the music is incredibly groovy and the game's notes follow the music very well.  I got 795 and 780 in the 2 levels respectively.
Criticaly speaking, the lack of feedback on hitting/missing a note made things a bit confusing. It took me a while to realise I have to tap a key, while being the respective shape (tap triangle while being triangle) to get a note hit. I thought I just need to be that respective shape before the note arrives over my cat to match the incoming notes, or change as the note is exactly on top of my shapeshifting cat. Not sure if that was an intentional design, or just me not playing it right. Again, a bit more visual feedback to signal 'you're doing it right' or 'you're not doing it right' would help quite a lot!

A fun little game for sure. It's tricky but perfectly possible to stay alive - the level of difficulty is just about right. 
Critically speaking, it didn't really feel all that... rhythmic. The cars were coming in very vaguely to the rhythm of the music, but because of all their chaotic motions, rolling and bouncing around and the slippery-ness of the ice, the rhythm element was a bit lost on me

A unique idea, for sure!
I was not expecting a clicker game, and well it's technically not a clicker game, as you don't click.
The progression feels satisfying, as it is the rule for good clicker games. The style is minimalistic, but hey - it's consistently minimalistic and clean - I actually quite like it. Raising awareness for the deaf is just good. And you've finished all this solo, which is something to be proud of :)

Criticism-wise
It's absolutelly quiet, which is great within your narrative and message, but is also uncomfortable. There aren't really any visual effects either. It feels very empty. Since all the upgrades are for the passive income, the whole rhytm aspect as well as the different rewards, become less and less relevant as time goes on. I've got 20 notes, 20 drums and I just let the game sit there, make cash for me. After there is no point in actively playing, it just gets boring. Maybe an upgrade that boosts the reward for hitting a note would encourage more active approach :) Onto smaller things, the descriptions of the upgrades sometimes get cropped- for example flute gives an income of 2000, while in-game it says it gives 200. I imagine it just clips it after the 3rd number

A fast one, for sure. The 6-button  input made the game feel extremely fast (which fits the music excellently well, actually). It's really exciting and adrenaline inducing! The froggy theme is hilarous, stylish and adorable. Not sure if the music is yours (I've never heard of the artist), but the synchronisation of the beat with the notes and the music is excellent. Collecting frogs as a mark of how good you are - is GENIUS!

Criticism-wise, it is very intimidating at first - I'm pretty sure I could keep up with one side of the track at most, with how fast the BPM was. I failed the first 2 tracks, then got into the groove for #3 and #4. On the #4 I realised that there's no penalty for pressing a button when there's no note, so you could just as well mash all 3 on each side at once, to ensure you hit everything (obviously there are empty beats that make me lose the combo, but it takes away 2/3rds of the game's difficulty). The visual effects are really nice too! In my opinion, the game plays a lot better on the lower BPM tracks (#1, #3, #5), because it's a lot easier (at least for me) to follow a rhythm that's a little slower [in our game the BPM was 120, so you've got almost double that on your fastest track]

I added screenshots of my scores, but well, itch.io doesn't like screenshots, so they vanished :c

I feel you, last jam I did, we started as a team of 3, then after not doing anything for half the jamtime, the rest of the team just bailed. It sucks, but hey - you made it in the end :)

Came for the beats, stayed for the hips.
Nah, but in all seriousness, nice little solo submission. It's really hard to do everything yourself, so you deserve a pat on the back for finishing in time. The sound effects are nice and the background animation is really smooth :)

Now, the critical part: First things first, the buildup, or intro before the actual game is really quite long. I thought something was not working alright, so I closed and opened again, just to realize that long time without me pressing any buttons was supposed to happen. Maybe adding some counter, or progress bar would help to suggest that the game is actually working as intended :)

The notes are in a rhythm, but it was off the music playing in the background. Synchronising the two a bit better would help a lot. Another thing is... There's not that many notes, actually. You repeat a very short sequence of notes again and again and it gets quite repetitive. Maybe adding a bunch more notes, or maybe making them a bit random would help with the game feeling repetitive.

Still, don't take my criticism too harshly, I'm not trying to point and laugh at you for being a begginer, more so trying to suggest how to get better. We're all learning here! :)

Google and YouTube are your friends if you want to get started. Programming is 75% just googling "how do I do this". I reccomend Brackeys on YT for absolute begginer tutorials - that's where me and a lot of my friends at Uni started. It's free, it's fun and genuinely informative!

cool music, very simple concept, well executed. The transitions, and animations in general were really nice. Having an actual settings menu -  a neat touch :) you got the rhythm in there for sure. It's not so easy that it's boring, nor so hard it's frustrating (though obviously you won't complete a level on your 1st or 3rd try). You got the difficulty just right :D The design of the levels and characters, especially the protagonist is really cool too! (I love the little bunny ears ^^ ) Criticism-wise, I'm not too sure about the pink... thing in the underground, it looks like a placeholder, so I assume it's that..? You had a tiiiiiny bit of a story/ context here and there, maybe a line or two of dialogue or just exposition could have made the story a bit more engaging (although it still works - you're simply running away from the bad guys)

a challenge, for sure.
A pretty cool concept, with different powers having different rhythms, the sound effects are pretty neat as well. Sadly, I got stuck after the magical fairy power up - I couldn't get a beat consistently enough to get her vision, then the sword to kill the enemies or just jump over them. From what I've seen the margins for what counts as a 'hit' are actually pretty generous, but it's either not synced up too well, or it's that the rhythm display is on the bottom of the screen, so you can either look at what you're doing or at the rhythm you are playing. Also the fairy rhythm is ridiculously hard. I don't think I ever got 2 perfect in a row. Again, very cute design, great SFX and the whole concept feels very fresh. Maybe by moving the rhythm bar closer to the character, or by creating less punishing layouts it could be a less frustrating experience :) 

OMG the kilometer long hotdog xD
that was a ton of fun, Trial of Spikes was definitelly my favourite (HS of 257k *flex flex*)
ridiculous idea, really neatly executed. The sauce is well synced up to the tracks, the little or huge hot dogs are hilarous to look at. The controls are intuitive and quick to get a hang of. You even managed to get a really in-depth settings menu. Within a jam, solo. Really impressive stuff. Critism-wise, the last 2 levels (well the last one especially) were very challanging. understandably - it's the last, hardest, toughest one. However it's at the point where it feels more like button-mashing, and the rhythm is a bit lost. Maybe by giving the notes a bit more breathing room, or having a few easier patterns thrown in there, it would be a less stressful inducing experience (it just feels like it goes at 100% intensity from start to finish). Still, the effects of the sauces and are really clean, the music is nice and funky and...
I still can't get over the tiniest hotdogs being super super tiny, and the longest ones being multiple meters long xD

Oh my goodness, somebody actually did a rhythm bullet hell! Yes! Great job on the animations, transitions and that... synthwave'ish aesthetic. It's the most fun game I've seen on this jam so far. In ways of criticism, it was hard at first to understand that the healthbar worked in a way that the fuller it is, the lower the health, and then as it empties, I would regenerate health. Rather confusing on my first run, but I got the hang of it on the 2nd run. I really felt like a dash would be a good addition, as for example the big wide ray enemies were really tough to avoid when I couldn't dash across the ray. Another small thing is a lack of checkpoints. I got to the second stage/part and died, and had to start over from the very beginning (which hurt). I'm seeing a bunch of parallels with JSaB (love that game) and you absolutely nailed the minimalistic aesthetic (though you know, with colours and not just raw shapes). A ton of fun to play :D

Thanks for the feedback! The fonts were a... tricky balance between conveying character and being readable. Maybe could have used another iteration to be just right.

Thank you very much for the feedback :) I'm glad you enjoyed it!
The note alignment thing is something I (the programmer of the team) hoped to sneak under the radar. Basically it waits a single frame before a next note can be played. I'm genuinely impressed you were able to spot it :D

So I played through 3 songs. The music is groovy, the notes are to the rhythm, and it is a nice challange to try and hit the notes to the beat. The interface was quite intuitive and well laid-out Now comes the harsh critical part. Don't take it personally, I don't mean to say you're a bad designer or programmer, just honest criticism helps us grow and improve. So here goes:

so, uhh you actually got a license for any of that? The music is not really yours, I'm guessing the barbie graphics aren't yours so most of the appeal is technically someone else's property. If this wasn't a jam, you would be SWIMMING in lawsuit papers. The decision to make a controller the default input method is questionable - not everybody has a PC-connected controller (I did, thankfully). Having a controller as an option would be awesome, but having it as the only way to play really limits your audience. The barbie graphics were actually cool, but very very pixelated - which would be fine, if the whole game had a pixel-art aesthetic (like a bunch of games in this jam), but since a bunch of graphics and text are a lot smoother, the pixel-ness just feels unproffesional. Having some visual feedback on pressing the buttons would benefit your game a lot, make it more satisfying. Also, hitting left and down on my controller (xbox one) was really hard, so maybe left-right would be better, or just one at a time. Lastly, the buttons which the player has to push are synced to the beat, but they don't really follow the music - they feel like 'press this random button when the beat hits'. Having multiple tracks is awesome, but you don't really benefit from it much, if the game feels  the same in all levels. 

Still, solid job on completing this project on your own. It's not easy having to do everything yourself.

Looks nice, plays nice. Very short though.
For about 15seconds? I'm only getting a few notes, after a few long notes, the audio continues, but no new notes appear nor am I taken to the next level. I guess that's the 'unfinished' part, which is a shame, but hey, we learn from our mistakes :)
The controls are really nice and intuitive, the input feedback and note hitting feedback is really nice. Feels good to play, what can I say :) 

Simple concept, finished well on time. I really liked the enemy blob animations. The game is a bit too easy in my opinion, as I could avoid all the enemies without almost almost any effort. Perhaps increasing the speed would lead to a higher challenge and a more engaging experience. I'm not too sure what the level counter is about, as the game seems to be an endless runner. Maybe a score counter, which counts up over time would be more fitting? Still, it's definitely on beat and the cover art is really cool. Good effort :)

A simple game, for sure.
the piano sounds are really nice, they layer on top of each other quite nicely. There is not that much to the game but it is pleasant to play. There is no objective, goal, enemy or score, so the player can fully focus on relaxing with the piano - which is nice. Critically speaking, the images sometimes keep moving when they are not playing any sound which is a bit confusing. The notes played are very simple, maybe a little bit too simple - as you can't really create an interesting melody with so few simple notes (or maybe I'm just not musical enough ;)  ) Good, clean submission, hope you enjoyed making it :)

That was really fun! The note hitting was really satisfying, to the beat and just the right level of difficulty. Balancing of offence and defence through the ability to heal myself was a really nice way to make the game more interesting too. Criticism-wise, the game could use more than just 2 levels, the level select and save capabilities kind of made me expect it to be a lot longer than it actually was. Secondly, the bonus to damage and resistance is probably there, but it's not really communicated effectively. I genuinely could not tell, when I was upgrading my character - throwing in a little bit of 'juice' when the player powers up could a nice way to make the game more satisfying. 

aw, darn - yes, that would be the interface scaling messing things up. I'm sorry that didn't work well on your display :c

I mean, it's functional, finished and it's all done in Scratch, which makes the achievement about 10 times more impressive. There isn't really any rhythm, or music and well, the visuals are very basic.... but we all have to start somewhere. It's not a masterpiece, but keep at it, keep learning and improving your skills and soon enough you'll get people looking up to you :) Take it from me, I've been drawing levels for Portal 2 when I was 10, now I'm studying game design at a university. Don't give up, maybe give Unity a shot, it's going to be hard at first, but you can make so, so much more in a proper game engine! Good luck :)