kamikaziuk 2017-07-31 12:21
I really like the concept of this game. I got stuck on second level, it was confusing and the audio for the waves is too loud. It put me off playing the game further. Great work on art and mechanics though.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD39 → Ministry of Synthesis
By impbox
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 33 | 4.02 | 142 | |
| Fun | 228 | 3.36 | 141 | |
| Innovation | 3 | 4.52 | 142 | |
| Theme | 535 | 3.00 | 141 | |
| Graphics | 50 | 4.14 | 142 | |
| Audio | 57 | 3.73 | 141 | |
| Mood | 38 | 3.97 | 139 |
I really like the concept of this game. I got stuck on second level, it was confusing and the audio for the waves is too loud. It put me off playing the game further. Great work on art and mechanics though.
@kamikaziuk thanks for playing, could you tell me what you were confused about so I can make it more clear? I'll work on adding a volume control for the waves.
Really great game, I ended up getting stuck on the level with a vertical stack of three identical oscillators and a splitter. The audio and overall presentation are amazing and the puzzles are fun. My only complaint is that the timer feels like it doesn't really fit in with the rest of the game. While I understand its relation to the theme, it feels more like a needless limitation, and after spending an hour in the game, having to restart is very discouraging.
Incredible game for 48 hours. The graphics, animation, and atmosphere are really excellent. The gameplay concept is unique too.
I did find it a little tricky at first. I think it probably needs some more introductory levels demonstrating the affect that a wave has on another wave. I also wonder if the two-way connector blocks could have little monitors in them so that you can see what the result is (I realised that's why you have the Oscilloscope but I rarely used it).
I think it would be a very enjoyable game if you continue it post-jam.
@stevenjmiller thanks for playing! yes, in retrospect the timer doesn't fit so well and it was mostly for the theme, I should add an option to "keep playing anyway" after you run out of time. I'll add that in a post-compo version. Thanks for letting me know where you got stuck.
@pitpony thanks for playing! I'd like to rework a lot of the levels and yes, they do get too hard too fast. I think a big improvement would be to have an "always on" oscilloscope at the bottom of the screen out of the way so you don't have to turn it on or off, since it's very important to use it. Also being able to see multiple waves at the same time. It was difficult to show much on the small boxes since the resolution is so low. Thanks very much for the feedback!
How did you manage to make such complicated game in just 48 hours?! Great game!
Really nice game, I saw the progress on twitter and knew I need to play it. the Sound was really loud (maybe my own settings). The fourth lvl was hard, maybe some easy instruction levels are needed.
While I find it very innovative and interesting I found it a bit annoying to have to run around to connect the "machines" (for one, it's kinda pointless, and the controls feel a bit weird). Why not just connect them using the mouse?
You mentioned that one can lower the volume. Could you add the controls for this to the description?
@berserkerchris yes I should definitely add in a lot more tutorial style levels to each individual components and basics. This is the problem with a "compo" game, no one else has played it before release so I'm not sure what people will need more time with. But will definitely do that post compo.
@smbe19 you can press escape and use the menu with the arrow keys to adjust the levels. I'll update the description.
And you're right that the platforming is kind of pointless in this game. I had planned to make platforming more important later on but ran out of time.
This game is pretty cool. I like the concept of playing around with waves. However, it was very challengine for me since I don't have much experience with waves and how they work together. If there could be a little tutorial or some kind of experience that clearly shows how the waves work that woudl be helpful. Other than that, I love the graphics and the game is very well made.
This game looks incredible, sounds great, and is honestly really impressive for a compo game, but it needs instructions. I got to about the 4th level, but had to stop there. If you could add instructions for how each of the wave splitters works on itch.io or this page, the levels would become a whole lot easier to understand. I tried my best, but I couldn't figure them out.
As far as the platforming element that other people have talked about, it doesn't really bug me. It adds a bit more immersion, and isn't that annoying. The only things I would have changed are the jumping physics (just tweak them a bit), and on the second level, it's a bit confusing how to get to the oscilloscope below you, especially since the instructions mention how to connect to things below you, but it's referring to something else.
Overall great job, and I'll definitely return if you add further instruction.
I was looking forward to play this game. Awesome color palette, awesome atmospheric music, awesome chord physics, the only thing I didn't like was that buzzing sound that would appear. Otherwise awesome game.
Enjoyed following this one on twitter, mad how much you were able to do. Well done!
I like the idea of this game and I love the incredible graphics but the controls are not my cup of tea. I often accidentially disconnect the upper socket when trying to attach a different wire to the lower socket, may it could default to free sockets?
I haven't finished the game yet but I will hopefully. If the game would only save progress. :wink:
The game is very unique! The pixel art and audio is also really good. I'm not sure if this is a glitch, but the sound doesn't seem to fade properly when walking away from those boxes. The gameplay doesn't really match the theme even though you added a backstory that does. It seems like you had an idea you thought was cool and tried to add the theme to the idea instead of basing the idea on the theme.
I found the game itself somewhat confusing, but when I started going by sound instead of doing it visually it got easier(I figured it out a bit late though). Overall, it was still enjoyable and well polished even with what I consider to be design flaws.
One more thing I'd like to point out is that I couldn't ever figure out what the different shades of gray in the background were for, although that could just be my problem. :P
Also, I forgot to mention that the core of the game didn't synergize well with it being a platformer.
Great mood and art. The wave sounds when near a component was a bit loud but otherwise a nice challenging little puzzle game!
I was totally blown away by this game! Felt really polished and very atmospheric. I really enjoy puzzle games and this is definitely one I will return to after the all the rating is done. The pixel art is amazing and I liked the added dust clouds when the player moves. Give the player the sense they are really in a very dusty old area. I do have to say I did miss the connection to the theme but otherwise is was a really good game. Well Done!
This game is __so cool__ ! It's a nice puzzle game with __good art and sound effects__ !!! At the beginning it was __a bit hard to __ __*me*__ to understand the mechanism of the puzzles but when I got it it was so fun !!! Liked :heart: it a lot !
I don't understand the waves very well so I had to do everything thought trial and error. I found this frustrating. The game though has amazing graphics and sound. Very well polished.
I don't understand the waves very well so I had to do everything thought trial and error. I found this frustrating. The game though has amazing graphics and sound. Very well polished.
Really cool game. The mechanic is really awesome! Very well done there. It's a little confusing, but I don't think there's a lot you could've done about that, especially in the small time frame. The art is awesome. The buzzing sounds are a little annoying, but otherwise you did a great job!
This is insanely good for 48 hours i feel like i should have paid for it!
I really like the aesthetics of the game, platforming is on point too, but I have to admit, it looked more fun in theory from the gifs I've seen. Once the signals get complicated, it becomes guesswork in a lot of cases for me. But I enjoyed the game anyway, it just requires much more complicated thinking that I was expecting. Also, somehow I didn't realize that the signals are from -1 to 1 (not 0 to 1) and spent much more time that I should have on thinking over how this situation is possibly correct:
Untitled.png
@mortus thanks! yes, i had the same realisation that it's not very fun once the signals get complicated. I need to rework it quite a bit and focus on simpler signals, or better tools for comparing signals, since guesswork is not very fun. And yes I should have noted that the signals run from -1..1, I've now added some updated instructions on the itch.io page.
@cmlsc thanks. The idea of making a puzzle game with audio signals is something I've had in my mind for a while, but it came up again when I was thinking of power and electrical signals for this theme. Admittedly the gameplay is quite removed from the theme. And I've wanted to try making a platformer for a long time so I decided to add that too. But perhaps the mix is not so good, but I think I could continue work on it to make it work better, making more use of platforming mechanics in the puzzles as well as the signals. It's interesting that using the audio made it easier. I was hoping that playing the game would give people a better understanding of what different wave shapes sound like. As for the shades of grey, they have no meaning, just to make it a bit more interesting to look at.
:zap: **The Reactor Has Been Reactivated** :zap:
Whew, that was very difficult.
As others mentioned the game gets hard fast once things get complicated. The three oscillator modulation puzzle was they first place I got really stuck at, and I'm still not really sure I have a conceptualization of what modulating a wave does. I had to restart once and pay more attention to what the early levels were trying to teach. It wasn't immediately obvious what that there were two blocks "X" and "+" or what they did, but the second time though I figured it all out. It was clear that you put a lot of effort into this game, it seems you tried to make things as accessible as possible (audio feedback to listen for frequency similarities, visual feedback to teach and show how close you are, and I really liked the green bits on the bottom that showed where the waves matched!), it's just that the game deal with a complex subject matter.
:star: The graphics were awesome! :star: The background music reminded me of Myst, and layered well when an arbitrary wave was played over it. Even after an hour of playing, the music didn't get too repetitive, so very well done there! :bee: A small platforming bug I think I found: As far as I could tell you are supposed to hang onto walls slightly, and fall when you move away from them. I noticed if you hang onto a wall, and slowly fall, but don't move, you will drift down even if there is no more wall to hang onto. ^_^ :point_right: In innovation this game really shined, I really loved the idea behind it. I feel like it falls behind in theme though. It felt a bit more like "Signal Lost" than "Running out of Power" (power signals I guess, but it feels like a stretch).
Overall amazing work for 48 hours, and I really enjoyed this. Thank you for making it!
I loved the concept! Really something new.
Sadly I got stuck at the level with the 3 sine oscillators on top of each other and a splitter. (Reading the comments I wasn't the only one) Also, it didn't make sense for me that I got a different signal when connecting the oscillator directly to a phase and when I had a splitter in between.
Controls are fine and I think that actually jumping instead of just point-and-click around added a lot to the game feel. Would love to see a more polished version later!
I saw the gifs when you were working on this and couldn't wait to play it! It looks great, and the idea is fantastic. However, I've felt a bit lost. I got stuck on level 4 I think, it has an adder and a multiplier. I didn't have a good sense of what the resulting wave would be so it just became guesswork. The levels before that are simply a case of connecting everything together. I still really like it, but it needs more time to make it understandable I think.
I followed the development on twitter and was so keen to try it! Obviously the art is gorgeous!
The concept is very clever and interesting, but as other people already said it gets too hard too soon and you just try different combinations to see if it works. Some tutorial levels would have been great, but you already did a huge work for 48 hours!
Maybe also a playground where you can experiment with all the oscillators and the effects to see what the result wave is would have been helpful.
Needless to say I'll be following the post compo developments!
Really unique gameplay and great implementation for 48 hr!
oh men this is the best entry so far in my opinion! what a great mood ,and the idea.. very very interesting game, you should complete and sell it on steam ! one thing I can argue and that would be the controls ,its quite difficult to play with the awsd and the actions on z ,x,c - maybe the action put it on b,n,m ! but overall its the best entry for me!
I really like the concept, and saw this on twitter, so I had to play it. Learning how to make your own sounds by looking at the wave form and the operators is a must have skill for any sound designer! (This might be fixed in the post compo version?). The learning curve seems rather steep though. While the platforming element is cool especially with the graphics, I feel if you ommitted that you could have focused on the learning part a bit more, but yeah: hindsight bias.
The sounds you make dont blend well with the background, so that would be awesome to see as well.
Overall it looks great, the controls feel pretty good, and the idea is fun. Though only vaguely connected to the theme. Great job, will play the post-compo version now!
What a great and unique idea! The game feels great to play and the puzzles are engaging. I hope you continue working on this, it has great potential :)
Really cool game, love how you can what each thing sounds like by standing next to them. The only problem I have is the control scheme, something like 'w' to jump and space to connect.
Love the game man! the graphics, the cable physics and the gameplay! although I got stuck in the scene where you have to try different combinatios :\
Congrats on the entry!
I really liked the game but I wish you had more levels teaching the mechanics. I got stuck and couldn't beat the level with a splitter 3 sin waves a reducer and a multiplier. I knew I had to feed the waves into each other to change their frequency, but I couldn't find the combination needed. I actually studied signal analysis too so this isn't a notice person coming into it. I just didn't have an intuition for how to make an asymmetrical signal like what was required given the tools I had. Also, many of the levels were designed to make the platforming very annoying. It made solving the puzzles more annoying to deal with platforming while also trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. Still a great game and very impressive for 48 hours!
@hitchh1k3r congrats!!! I think you're the only person to finish it so far! I admit it's way too difficult and requires too much trial and error, something I plan to fix in future versions. But thank you for playing it all the way through.
I didn't realise that the + and x would be confused, but in future I'll make that more clear, and introduce each module individually before combining them.
That platforming bug sounds correct, well spotted, I only reset the wall touching flag when you move left or right!
@zeknir thanks for playing, yes that level is very hard!
A splitter should not change the signal at all, if it did that's a bug, I'll try and reproduce. However I did test all levels are possible and have solutions before releasing.
Thanks, I like the platforming too, but I hope it make it a more important aspect of the game in the future rather than just a means of getting around.
@atkinssj thank you! yes I plan to make more levels that introduce each machine more slowly to give people a better idea of what each thing does and how it will effect the waveform. Thanks for the feedback!
@matita thank you! Yes, it's definitely too difficult, I'll be redoing all the levels methinks. I like the idea of a playground to experiment, I'll definitely include that in the final thing.
@manoloon thank you! I don't think it's ready to sell just yet, but I'll definitely consider it when it's done. You a can use arrow keys if that's easier instead of WASD. And eventually it'll all be configurable.
Great job ! Nice graphics, nice physics for the wires. But the lack of detail on the screns and the blinking make it really hard to think about a solution without testing many combinations.
Really nice concept, and very well executed :slight_smile: I found the controls slightly hard to remember, but I guess it's tough to map three things to the keyboard like that. Loved the pixel art style, and the game seemed very polished! Nice entry
As a former electronic student, this is gold.
Extremely difficult, and sometimes I had to go by trial and error, but still it's very well done and the idea is really good. A minor complaint is on the sound of the waves, as it is more often than not just noise, it can be a bit annoying, especially when I'm analyzing the waves to understand what's missing. Oh and the theme is basically just in the description, rather than the game itself but having seen the quality of the work I'm still glad you did it like this.
I didn't manage to finish it but I'm pretty sure I'll keep it around to try and finish it some time later.
Great job!
Big puzzle/platformer fan, so I was so excited to play this after seeing some gifs on Twitter. Love the idea and the cable effect but overall I found the game confusing. The audio was ear-grating, and put me off wanting to experiment with the game. It's still incredible you make a game this well polished for the jam though.
Wow, this is really cool game. I like almost every aspect of it. The idea of mixing signals seems very innovative to me. However, it is hard, at least for me as non-skilled signal engineer :-D.
The negative is you have fulfilled the theme by adding a game time limit only, which doesn't directly affect the game most of the time, it will just end ... one time. The next thing, which can be improved is platform arrangement, for a better movement between them and the placement of the connection pins, some of them must be connected when jumping, which causes sometimes the wire loss when missed.
Really good job!
I liked this game but I feel the platformer element did not need to be there to make connecting the boxes any harder. Overall it's a really amazing idea and a great implementation there was just a lot of unfun guesswork and it was hard to correct mistakes. Overall an amazing achievement for the jam time limit and you should be really happy with yourself. This is the first game I've played that I'd love to see a larger more polished version of.
I love the design behind this so much! Amazing job creating something so unique in such a tiny amount of time!
Very nice entry, it was exiting to play with curves and operators. But I find it a bit too hard, probably because the signal are moving constantly, so you cannot compare the phase of the signals, which is super important to shape the final signal. Anyway, it's a very interesting idea.
@nusan yep, that's a big issue, in the postjam version I'm adding the ability to freeze the scope and show multiple waves stacked to make it easier to compare phase and amplitude at your leisure.
Incredible entry. Just wow.
I couldn't see the theme, but I really like this type of games, awesome!
@sleepless yeah the theme was mostly from the story, and "power" in this case being phases of electricity in the wires, but the "running out" was more related to the backstory which I didn't really get to fit into the gameplay during the compo unfortunately.
An interesting puzzle-platformer that, as others have mentioned, gets a tad too difficult with time, at least for non-enthusiasts. That said, I liked the concept of messing with the signals and the platformer bit was making the game more dynamic. The graphics and audio combine into a nice final touch for the mood of the game. The only thing I'd change is how the wires are getting connected to the top/bottom ports on the same side, it felt annoying when I was replacing one wire with the other from time to time, but a) this's just a minor gripe, and b) I'm not sure how I'd change it myself, so I'm mostly providing some food for thought here, I guess. A solid entry, well done!
@gil4 thanks! good point about the replacing cables when it's already connected. I've solved this in a newer (unreleased) version where connecting to an already connected socket will swap them so if you're holding cable A and cable B is connected, cable A will then be connected and cable B will be in your hand. Seems to work much better.
video-2017-08-04T00-20-15.gif
I haven't played it yet, but it would be really cool if this mechanic tied into the soundtrack, so you're patching the synthesizer making the music while you're solving puzzles!
also the jumping feels too floaty, like you're hanging in the air too long
The graphics are good and the audio is great, it just gives off a foreboding atmosphere, which is excellent. The jumping is a little weird, but seeing as it doesn't get in the way of the puzzles, it isn't really much of a problem. I felt that the oscilloscope's UI was too cluttered to intuitively use, and that makes the puzzles more difficult. The greatest problem I have with this game is its difficulty. I feel that some more introductory levels were needed to show the player specifically how each module interacts with waves (the Adder does this, the Multiplier does this, etc.)
Overall, the game has good graphics, great audio, and fun concepts, but it is bogged down by being too unintuitive.
I like that game. It is creative, good looking and has nice music. The gameplay is fun and challenging. Although the platformer mechanics feels unneeded, it still adds to the mood of the game. I still fail to find how this relates to the jam theme but who cares.
Really impressive entry for just 48 hours, great design, art and sound!
A unique spin on a simple puzzle game. The game is quite complex for being made in only 48 hours. Connecting all the cables through various modules in order to get the desired waveform is a cool twist. I didn't get all the way to the end but maybe adding some sort of progress tracker would have been nice, as I could see what I was accomplishing each level. I don't know if you already knew about all this stuff or if you had to do research, but either way nice job!
@teammonumental I'd previously written a modular synthesiser https://github.com/ftsf/nimsynth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHomZLUE6As so I didn't have to research much for it. I used a lot of the same concepts from Nimsynth in this game but with a game interface.
@jtn191 currently the background music is just something I made on a keyboard and is playing on a loop, but ideally the music would all be generated by the in game synths. Maybe building up over the course of the game as you complete each level or something like that.
I followed your dev on Twitter and enjoyed the game, though there are some cons: - First I found the game music clearly obstrusive, couldn't focus on hearing the waves. There shouldn't be music in a game focused on sounds, unless that music is part of the game like in Fract Osc. - I don't know if it was made on purpose or it's a bug, but the way waves scroll in the oscilloscope, as in the gif above, makes it difficult to get what's going on. The colors used to show the 2 original waves and their result also make it hard to see the result. - Couldn't prevent myself confusing the jump and plug keys, but that may be just me.
Just saying for further dev, it's a very good job on 48h dev. I love the idea, one of its kind, and mixing it with a platformer, i.e. instead of a top view puzzler, is great!
@impbox I'd suggest turning down the contrast on the two shades of gray in the background, because it kind of comes off as a failed lighting attempt until you really look at it. If the shades were a bit closer, it would easily pass as wall patterns.
Very smart and genius gamplay! Love that audio-puzzlses. It's pretty hard to understand game logic but this is very interesting. I hope, I'll beat it!
I loved the mood and feel of the pixel art, it was amazing.
But I found the gameplay really hard to grok, since I wasn't that familiar with signal theory, and most of the time I was randomly experimenting until I got a combination that worked, rather than applying knowledge of how signals combined to get the answer.
Amazing game with original and fun concept of play. Really fun puzzles and awesome level design. Graphics and audio are perfect and creates very nice mood. One of the best games I've played so far :)
The concept is super cool. The execution was done pretty well. After adjusting to the controls, I was able to hook things up pretty quickly and try out different things. I think I was pretty close to the end, but the three low pass filter level stumped me. Partially this was due to the fact that once I reached a certain "closeness" to the final wave, it just felt like a lot of guesswork and trying out all the combinations (and I understand how these things work!). I think there is a little bit of a disconnect between seeing a wave's visualization (or even hearing it) and being able to identify the oscillators/gates/filters used not to mention the order to use them. There *might* be a way to slowly build up the skill set to do this, but I think it would take a lot more carefully thought out intermediate levels. Anyways, mad props with this. I've never seen anything like it and thoroughly enjoyed my time.
@jahndis thanks! I'm not happy with the level design at all, thanks for working your way through what was there. It should never come down to having to guess and should build up the skills you need more gradually. I think the filters and phase modulation levels are particularly tricky since they're a lot less obvious in how they'll change the waveform. I'm currently reworking all the levels to make it a better experience.
I was really attracted by the concept of this game, but sadly didn't manage to enjoy it. :(
-First of all I've no memories of the electronics lessons I had from college, and performing operations on oscillator was like a total new field for me. Not that it's not the same with every new puzzle game mechanics, but here after three times performing a signal addition, I still couldn't foresee how it would work in a new situation. It seems that you've chosen a pretty hard topic to introduce to players, good point is, if you make it right, it may be used as educational material I guess.
-The platforms mechanics didn't feel to get along very well with the puzzle one, most of the time it only delays my trials of connecting two boxes, and when I had to time my jump + connect on a box that has no platform in front of it, it was pretty annoying to me.
-Sorry but this one hour general timer seems like a bad idea to me: it didn't impact the game before quite some time, and didn't get me to feel in a rush or something, but I imagine it could be veeery annoying if it made me fail the game if I was like one minute too short in the end.
-The graphics and music are really nice, but I got annoyed by the oscillator's disturbing sound and the glitch on their display.
I'm super sorry for being that harsh to the trememdous amount of work you seem to have put in this game, and if it wasn't clear enough in the review I wrote it is only my opinion and I don't expect you to rely on it too much. Just keep in mind that signal modulation could be pretty hard to grasp for some people.
You seem motivated to continue to work on it, so I wish you well.
@raaaahman thanks very much for the honest feedback! I was aware of a lot of these issues when I put it out but sadly ran out of time, spent too much time on technical details.
The timer thing is obvious in hindsight, I thought it would add some intensity to the game, but it was a terrible design decision.
Yep, i'm currently reworking most of it, hopefully the new version will be a lot better.
Great game,although it almost breaks my mind :d. I think the problem is that you need a little bit of knowledge from the outside world. Maybe a small tutorial could help (a not boring one, making good tutorials is tricky).
Anyways, when I managed to get a level done, it felt really great. And the art was so great.
5 stars! When I inverted a wave and combined it with another wave to open the gate I felt clever! If you continue to develop this, I would play more if I could figure out the fifth puzzle in about a minute.
Gosh. This is amazing. As someone who teaches synthesis, I want to use this in my classes. Super smart, and crazy good idea. Really mind-blowing for 48 hours. Congratulations!
Oh, and make a Mac version!
Really cool idea. I sometimes found it a little hard to determine where my input signal and the target output signal were going wrong. Stumbled on some of the solutions through educated guessing rather than being sure of myself. But I can easily see how it could be extended further and could see myself playing this more. Very nice job!
This game is Awesome. One of the best I've played thus far! Did you do this all in SDL2, and how did you learn to code this? I'm getting into SDL myself and this is inspirational!
Superb game! The mechanic is super unique and it left me feeling like I had learned something.
A lot of people have pointed out a lot of the critiques I had in mind, so I'll just mention a couple that I didn't spot while skimming through:
When working with some of the doors with higher frequency solutions, when I had a similar but different waveform it was often difficult to see how my own waveform differed. I think in these circumstances the low resolution worked against the gameplay. You might want to consider making the waveform window higher resolution than the platformer elements.
On one level I believe I came up with a solution which was identical to the expected waveform, but just out of phase. It's difficult to spot that your waveform has the incorrect phase until at the very end, since there's no real reference for where the wave sits on the timeline. You might want to consider allowing solutions regardless of phase, so long as the waveform is correct? (hopefully phase is the correct terminology here, I mean the offset of the waveform in time.)
Anyways, again, fantastic game! I really hope to see a spruced up post-jam version of this! I'll be recommending this to some non-gamedev friends because I thought it was so cool!
I think is game is slightly confused about what it wants to be. Connecting the different waveforms is fun, and reminds me of messing with MilkyTracker to make instruments. Having to do platforming to hook them up, however, adds some unnecessary difficulty in dragging wires around. If I were able to simply use a mouse, I could be solving the same puzzle without having to run around the screen. One level (4?) even had me drop down in order to reach the output side of a multiplier and then climb back up with the wire. The premise is fascinating, and I could see how the platforming could add to the puzzle aspect. Perhaps allow the player to click things within a radius of the player? SOMETHING to make it easier to move wires around.
I also agree that the waveforms would look so much better at a higher resolution. And the timer is dumb; this is a puzzle game.
It's a great game, your stuff always impresses me. I'll certainly be interested in any updates.
Such an impressive entry, liked the amount of thought you put into this and the whole mechanic was such a great interpretation of the theme. Did think it got a bit to hard to quick and I struggled with the later puzzles cause I don't think I'd completely understood how everything worked. Would be nice to see a further updated version with more of an ease into the harder parts but for a Ludum Dare jam with such a small time window, I'm extremely impressed at how polished this feels. Congrats on a great entry, one of my favourites so far.
The graphics were excellent, the platforming super solid and the controls never ever got in the way of what I wanted to do. How did you even have time to implement all this <3 The modular synth is what shines of course, this is a brilliant idea, with a brilliant execution! <3
Wonderful concept! I included it in my Ludum Dare 39 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XAlLzxVYeo
Fantastic entry! The graphics were simple but it's clear that care and time went into them, plus, they convey the needed information very well. The soundtrack was nice and ominous and the sound effects were servicable. I will say, while I think the sounds being emitted through the blocks is a great idea and it eases the puzzle-solving experience, it does get a little annoying after a while; perhaps only play them when the player has pressed the C key. I also would have liked a bit more time spent on being taught the mechanics, but the lack of that is 100% understandable given the time limit. Other than those two relatively minor complaints this was a great entry with a fun and creative mechanic that had a lot of polish behind it. Good work!
I saw your game in @jupiter-hadley video and immediately wanted to play. Very good and clever game! Though, it has some issues. At the 3rd level it's quite inconvenient to get to the 2nd door's input. At the 4th level scope of the upper multiplier covers player. Scope itself is glitching constantly. And quit button doesn't work. But still, it is a very good entry! Good luck!
Played some time ago and just replayed the postcompo version for a bit now, but basically still has the same kind of trouble to me. It's basically a guesswork. But I love the concept and how, you'll polish this further into something wonderful. It's great already.
The idea, graphics and overall feeling is great. It's just a little bit hard to understand what the result of combining some waves will be. Maybe the problem is the pixel-art graphics, or maybe it's just not very intuitive :) Anyway I enjoyed the game a lot. Great job!
I really like the idea, great work.
Really nice concept. I had a lot of trouble from level 4. There were so many possibilities and I had no clue how to go about narrowing down the solution. But I did learn that signal feedback loops are fun! Also, I was playing the postcompo version and it crashed after level 4 the first time, but not the second time I played.
Very interesting concept, but the time limit and platforming really work against the cerebral nature of the game. The three-wave modulation puzzle kicked my ass---looking at things and wave equations on paper, I got a feel for how phase modulation would work (and came to the conclusion that you couldn't escape the two-lobe pattern without using feedback loops). The graphics were clean and effective, the audio sets up an interesting atmosphere, I liked the presentation.
Good work, I just wish I had time to internalise the concepts during the game!
Amazing compo entry! Graphics, sound, and music are all very fitting and really well-done! My biggest complaint is the controls - I didn't enjoy the fiddly jumping mechanics and selecting the right connectors was sometimes frustrating.
The concept is really good, I would say the the difficulty probably ramped up a little too fast. Later levels were mostly "try and error", the pixely display made it somewhat harder to recognize the waveform. I really enjoyed that you can hear the waveform, that was a cute little gimmick! :)
I saw no connection to the theme except for the hour timer, as the story wasn't explained inside the game.
I loved this game! On my first run I ran out of time, but it was so fun for me that I decided to try again. I managed to beat it, although the last level took a while.
The filters are a bit inconsistent, I had a cable going from one filter to another and the door didn't open, then I swapped the order of the filters and it worked (it was highpass to lowpass, or maybe vice-versa, can't remember). Also on one level, a door was spazzing out, even though I had the right solution (I think), I just had to wait until it opened properly so I could pass (this was also because of filters probably).
Anyway, this was probably my favorite entry out of all the LDs I've participated in, I can't even believe this is a compo entry. Really well made, great work!
@icylava thanks for playing all the way through! Order of filters is actually important, however the levels are quite rubbish and don't introduce this well. And yes, the spazzing out is a problem, mostly due to the boxes processing samples in a different order which means theres slight differences in the output, i didn't have time to fix this so i tried to make the testing quite generous, however it seems it wasn't always enough.
Nice idea and great execution of it. Graphics and audio were great. You could spend more time on instructions / showing what different elements do. Awesome entry.
I liked it! The idea seems fun, the puzzles are nice and the whole game feels completed! The graphics look great, the music is nice, and the sound effects are good too! Just a little bit sharp on the sharp waves but that is to be expected I guess!
Overall, awesome game! I have no idea how you managed to make it just 3MB, so that is an achivement all on its own! Well done! :smile:
It amazes me how a single person can do all this work in just 2 days. The idea is great and really well executed, the art style is simple but works perfectly with the mood of the game and the good sound effects. One of the best ideas I've seen in this jam. Congratulations!!
Very impressive entry ! Great concept, with a great realization. The synthesis system seems to work fine, the graphics are great (love the cables). The only disappointing thing is that audio doesn't matter that much when solving the puzzles. Anyway, amazing work, well done :)
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