gingerbill 2020-10-05 22:26
I am loving the shoot 'em up rhythm game hybrid, a clever flair to the genre and the this Ludum Dare's theme!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD47 → Space Drummer
By jrevel, Clement_Feanor, guilloteam, delphin-casado, A Jeannerod and Michael Assing
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 48 | 4.23 | 103 | |
| Fun | 75 | 4.12 | 103 | |
| Innovation | 30 | 4.27 | 102 | |
| Theme | 165 | 4.18 | 103 | |
| Graphics | 153 | 4.31 | 104 | |
| Audio | 13 | 4.52 | 102 | |
| Humor | 200 | 3.72 | 91 | |
| Mood | 149 | 4.04 | 98 |
I am loving the shoot 'em up rhythm game hybrid, a clever flair to the genre and the this Ludum Dare's theme!
This game looks so cool if you could port it to Mac I would for sure play it
Ok, I managed to make a drum loop that sounds badass... playing the game where you can have (part of) your own soundtrack in the background, and also influencing game play? Genius!
This is super fun and very innovative. I love it!
This is a very cool idea and a great implementation. Add another menu to exit the game by pressing "Esc"
Good game .. hard to avoid enemies. The drum loop is really innovative.
For those interested, we just added an HTML build of the game :)
Great take on the theme. I was torn between tactically placing my beats and making it sound good. The color choices on the art makes everything easily identifiable and were great picks.
Geat work, it's very fun to play!
Awesome concept! I loved that you can make your own drum loop, and that it changes your attacks and stuff. :grin:
Super original, I love it!
The rythem customization at the beginning is awesome, also props for the pixel art portraits!
This is incredible! Love the innovative build-your-own-drumset idea, and the art and sounds are fantastic. Great stuff!
Really fun game! Making your own drum loop and putting it together with the music and the attacks is really well done.
I did find a fun bug tho. If you alt+tab for a while and come back into the game, you'll get a minigun xD
Very cool concept! I always love it when gameplay and OST are interconnected. Could easily see this become a commercial product some day!
This is awesome! Good job :)
This game is fucking awesome! I am so in love with it, played it for a good half an hour and I am still blown away by the soundtrack, the makings.. Great work! The only thing I would love to see added is a point / scoring system. At the moment there's really no incentive to kill the space ships who are just flying by. Give it a point system and this game is absolutely awesome.
This is the most fun and good-looking LD47-game I have played so far. The music, graphics and gameplay are great, which really allows me as a player to get in the game-flow. Kudos!
Awesome game! I love the idea of a drum loop acting like a weapon! 10/10 would explode spaceships again.
Awesome concept, great execution. That level of polish is amazing, I love that you can customize your loop and then attack with it. It would be cool to have a point system, and also to be able to set a tempo (just to make a sick beat).
Absolutely loved it. The soundtrack is great, awesome idea and amazing implementation. Good work!
Amazing! We try to break the game by making a fake rythm, and it still worked well with the background music ! Gameplay is a bit left behind, we focus a lot on the music (but it's the point of the game so...) I would like to see the ship a bit faster, and see some specials attacks if you press buttons in rythm !
Really good job, well done ! :smile:
What a satisfying Shmup
The music is awesome. Really nice idea for the theme.
Always good to see a rhythm game that doesn't skimp on graphics, this game looks, sounds, and feels incredible, and leaves me wanted to experiment with drum patterns to unlock optimal strats. :)
One word : Awesome !
Thanks for this, music is so good and train in the game. (Can have link to level music to listen it ?)
Played this live on https://www.twitch.tv/fatsheep__ Really enjoyed this, good art and nice music. Was a bit hard considering there was no invincibility frames, but i was able to beat it after finding a hilarious bug after tabbing in and out of the desktop version.
Don't think I did all that well, I'm not much of a bullet hell player... But I really like the idea of combining these two genres! I love the idea of a rhythm game that lets you get creative and make your own music, which then actually has an effect on the gameplay too. Really neat game!
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/762553836?t=01h43m03s
Very cool idea! Love how the drum loop sticks in the background. Excellent job.
One of the best entires I've seen yet
This is phenomenal. Would love a full version, this whole idea is so innovative and incredible. Different ships with different time signatures, upgrading weapons? Love it, my fav so far.
THis was amazing, congrats to the whole team. Thank you for making this :)
This is great. I think this is my favorite yet.
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if this won first place in at least 1 category. Very well executed, makes me want a full game of this!
Very good game! Original, addictive and completely in the theme! It's a 5 stars for me! :smile:
this is awesome! I really like anything that's music + action-y, and this is a really nice rhythm/shooter combo :D I also like how the game mechanics are generally really self-explanatory. the graphics are also very very nice -- great aesthetics but also just really crisp designs.
I was initially going to make the complaint that there's no enough incentive to create loops that are musically nice/interesting, but then I realized that the process of trying to find a powerful loop means you get to experience a lot of drum patterns that you'd never key in yourself. which is actually super super cool.
it's also quite hard! how many levels are there?
some criticisms:
- often felt a bit like the drum loop was disconnected from the music; generally I don't think my rhythms matched super well to the backing track.
- gameplay readability could be better. in a game like this where there's a lot of action and different things going on, keeping the visual noise low is important imo. of course the graphics do look very nice, and these two things make a difficult balancing act. I think I'd be happier just with a bit more contrast for the projectiles.
- in theory you don't have to use 4+1+4+4, but as far as I could tell there was no gameplay reason not to max out. there's already a decent bit of space to play around with those beat numbers, but I think I'd prefer some more flexibility. a couple of obvious ideas off the top of my head: you could have some direct flexibility, where you have a total of 16 points and can put them where you want (if ride "costs 4"), or something similar; maybe with beats after the 4th costing double (so you could sacrifice two snares for a kick, or whatever). another idea is having fewer beats gives you a faster tempo, etc. I don't know what would actually be the most interesting though ^^
- it's a direct use of "loop" but I didn't really feel "stuck" in the loop, you know? the loop was my friend :P I can't blame you for taking this concept and running with it though!
all in all though, I think this is a really cool design :) I've wanted to work on a rhythm + vertically scrolling shooter myself for a while now, and this is good inspiration+proof that it's a cool design space ^__^
This was a great game and very innovative. I had one thought (not a criticism), maybe you could create higher difficulties. The higher the difficulty to more you can add into the drum loop. Super neat idea, fun to play, and great graphics.
This is fantastic, easily one of my favorite games in this jam. It's way too hard for me at the moment, but I could see it working great as a full game as well with some neat options for progression systems.
Really, REALLY liked this idea. I have a couple nitpicks, but this is really well implemented overall.
The drum sounds do feel like they have a bit of a delay to them at the starts of the audio files, which is slightly off-putting, but it doesn't actually matter in the game. I can also see just spamming notes being the ideal win scenario here, so it's nice that you limited how many of what you can place. It does still mean you need to place the maximum allowed to be optimal, though.
I'd really like to see this made into a full game, especially with a progression system of some kind to help fix some of that. Inventive idea overall that I think you guys did a great job on.
This game is awesome, I really loved the music and the screen shakes! The introduction is short and funny Congrats!
@snowinn If you haven't yet, you can now play it thanks to the HTML build we implemented !
@guilloteam nice concept, great implementation of the music, it lacks some powerups - musical of course. An idea ability to save the music to post for fb tw, etc and get viral :D You should continue this game :)
Thanks a lot for every feedback, let it be known that we read each and every one of em, those are really heart-warming !
@nillard That comment couln't make us happier, you've totally understand everything we tried to share through this short game ! Thanks a lot !
@mimir Thanks a lot ! Glat to know you liked it that mach aha ! Yeah, score system is one of the things we planned but couldn't do in time, you're totally right about the lack of incentive to destroy eneemy ships ^^
@wouter-deferme Glad you liked it, thank you so much for your feedback !
@geryon-games Thanks for your feedback ! A tempo setting would be a really nice feature indeed ! We also though about a bonus system that you could catch, which would acclerate the beat for a short duration ^^
@ethan-losten Thanks you so much, means a lot ! :D
@rodgems Glad you enjoyed it, thank you for playing it !
@indivicivet Thanks a lot for this in-depth feedback, and for all the tips and great ideas ! Glad you liked it !
really cool concept, the art is also super well done, interesting take on space shooter genre.
just one thing ive noticed about the notes although they were fixed to a quarter note grid, the music felt like it was dragging.
Really like the concept! It was really fun making drum beats and seeing how they felt to play with :)
This is absolutely brilliant, managing to be innovative and adhering this well to theme? Amazing. Really fun to play, it's a bit hard but that's fair I think. Well done!
Wow, really unique idea with the whole drum thing - I love it. Also the fact that you can shoot down other bullets is a nice touch - allows you to do better once your skill improves. A score system would be nice, and an indicator of how much damage each attack type does. Also some sort of regen after you beat a level would be nice - I always end up with about 2 hearts by level 3 so far. All in all very fun game :)
Screenshot_2020-10-07 Space Drummer by GuilloTeam.png
Cool animations/graphics and really interesting concept. Althougt the musically thing doesn't change much on the gameplay itself, it feels great and its a nice touch. You took something that alredy existed and then reinvented in a better way, loved that
Really innovative concept. The game is fun and challengin. Loved the art and music. Maybe you could regenerate at least one heart after each level, it is not easy to get to level 3 with more than 3 hearts
Loved making my own beats, a full game of this could totally work if done right, maybe rightyms can combo which each other ? Had a lof of fun! Thanks for submitting it! -PomoTheDog
Wow, what a great idea. I love that I made my own beat at the beginning and it affected the game. The level of polish and attention to detail was excellent. Great job on this one!
The game is INCREDIBLE ! I like it a lot ! The concept, the gameplay, the music, the graphics, the little joke when you start the game, everything is amazing ! Want to see a full game with this mechanic ! Amazing job !
Hey, I played your game on stream! Here's the vod if you wanna rewatch; https://www.twitch.tv/videos/765076622
Thanks for submitting your game!
Wow ,this game sets the bar to a new level. The art is as good as it gets. All the rest fits perfectly. I'm expecting to see this game in the top lists. AMAZING... (/stops drooling)
Very fun and interesting concept, you should definitely expand on this in the future!
@saunik Thanks a lot for your feedback! Maybe someday...? :D
@justcamh Thanks a lot, I just saw it, glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for playing it!
@roidz Thank you very much, it means a lot!
Ok, so while I was making the first track I saw the ship and thought "oh this has potential". Started the game and I was not wrong.. Great concept. Enjoyed it! :)
I absolutely love this, I love how you were able to tie the theme into such a creative premise. 5 stars for days on this one!
Really good submission! I didnt actually know i could move using arrow keys until 3 rounds of failure haha, maybe you should make that clear somewhere :) Otherwise, very good, cant' really make any recommendations as to how to improve it
@blue-pin-studio Hey, thanks for your feedback ! The controled are mentionned on both here and itchio at the top ;)
Thanks for submitting your game for me to play on my livestream!
If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/767511277?t=1h32m56s
Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D
💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin
Excellent game overall! Only thing I wished for was customizing my loop between levels, maybe even with small upgrades? :drum: Everything else was top notch!
Nicely polished experience! The concept of different instrument = different shot type scores high on my innovation list :metal:
The only thing I would suggest as an improvement would be to allow players to change their beats (aka strategy) at least after each stage, perhaps even more frequently.
Almost shameless plug - check out [our experience](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/stuck-in-a-loop-station), you might find you like it. While the beats are not so woven into the core mechanics of the game, it is similar in some aspects!
Nice concept! Good job on having whatever arbitrary beat combination actually work with the BGM. The graphics are solid and give the game a really good feel - it seems impactful when the enemy ships blow up. Thanks for sharing it with us on stream!
I'm really impressed with this one, as a concept it has lots of potential.
I think right now the most important issue to tackle is finding how the beats that you craft actually matter in the moment to moment gameplay. As of right now it's sort of decorative, as your fire rate is pretty high. If the BPM was lower, as in music generally, the intent of each note/beat would be much more pronounced, and I imagine it will affect gameplay in the same way. Tactically at least.
I would try lowering the BPM and increasing the damage of each individual projectile and then see what happens. Also, maybe try looking into different kinds of projectiles/abilities that somehow interact differently with each other, so that you can craft your own combos and get in a rhythm with them, as most combo-based games want you to do anyway.
All in all a solid entry, I'm encouraging you to keep working on it!
Thank everyone again for all the sweet comments and all the good tips and advices! We are so glad that our little game generates that kind of interest and makes people want to see more.
Our great dev @jrevel did an amazing job at updating the game, fixing some bugs and improving the general experience of the player. You can find this update on the itchio page linked above.
Thank you guys very much!
I'm gald you want to work on the game more :D It can easily turn into a full game. I thought I'm gonna play a space shoot em up game but it turned out to be a much cooler game. bravo :thumbsup:
That was really cool :) Thanks four commenting on our game so I was able to find and play this. I'm a sucker for good vertical shoot 'em up and I loved your twist on the genre. Introducing a custom drum track that is synced to you Weapons was a cool idea. Not only did you tackling the theme by that but at the same time you innovated on a super old game play formula. This idea could fall flat on it's face if the music sucked but I am happy to tell you, that the song was awesome as well. The game play and controls worked as expected and I didn't have any problems regarding bugs or other stuff. The only thing that could've improved the jam version would be sound effects... I know that the drums are basically the shooting sfx of the spaceship, but it still felt like sound was missing. The explosions felt flat and the enemies didn't have any shooting sound effects either, not even in drum form.
The art is awesome, by the way! It's heavily animated and there's a lot of variation in the enemy ships and backgrounds. The UI was well designed as well. It feels really professionally made in this regard.C ongrats to the artist(s), good job!
All in all, a nice twist on the vertical space shooter genre! This has a lot of potential, if you ask me :)
@duke Thank you very much for this detailed feedback, it's much appreciated ! You're totally right about sound effects, we lack some intradiegetic sounds to make the world feel a little bit more alive !
Keep up the good work, see you at next jam ! :D
[Thank you for submitting this to the stream!](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/780628065?t=01h32m50s)
This game was just a straight-up delight. I love the mash-up between rhythm game and SHMUP, it's genuinely something I had never seen before. I would love to see this expanded to include new instruments and backing tracks. This game has a bunch of potential for the future!
The way you meshed the drum loop in with the shots was brilliantly done! Even though I didn't make an "optimal" loop, I loved that I got to just take my creation for a ride and see how I did. Like others said, after playing this version you can easily see how this game could be expanded with metasystems and upgrades to keep tuning your loop. Really awesome potential on top of an already fun game.
This is your first LD game but it seems like you guys have more experience than that. You have a decent sized team and a lot of polish, so have you all worked on projects together before?
Really impressive overall and it's one of the few music looping games I played this LD~
So good music! One of the best use of the theme that i have seen this LD47. Congrats!
Everything about this game rocks!
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While space shooters are a tried and true staple of LD games, teams like yours that can bring fresh things to the table continue to amaze me. Needless to say, the implementation of music as a mechanic as well as the actual music of the game are delightful. And the puns at the start of each level? Very well fitting! The rest like graphics and polish are great too. Not much to say about those, other than as a whole, everything synergized quite well!
Space Drummer is a glorious experience! Your team must be very proud of it, and well earned. Keep on drumming! :whale:
This is a top notch "rythm" game. Super original idea, and great execution, art, story. I can tell you're using FL studio, I instantly recognized those Sytrus synth x)
Cool and innovative concept. Fun to play. It really brings new ideas into a space shooting genre. Good job!
I feel the feedback loop between the beat and the battle can be improved. Like the real influence of your beat design on the battle... You can experiment by adding new samples/weapons, more limits on samples or maybe even removing the ability of the player to move the ship (e.g. the movement will be determined by the beat itself). And then, given the short beat/battle cycle, you might improve the importance of the beat for the game outcome.
Really cool idea. I like when the music is attached to what happens in the game, and I really like how you can control the music to influence what happens in the game. The first two times I tried, it felt really hard, since I didn't realize I was supposed to create the drum loop at the start. I think it would be nicer, instead of front-loading all the drum loop creation, if you could add an extra beat or two every level, so you get the feeling of levelling up, and so you can ramp up the difficulty and the player's abilities at an even rate. It would also give variety to the music, if it changes every level as you add to it. If you do a future version of this, I'd even go past the drum loop, and maybe layer the music together, so you can add the music in over time and make that also go from a basic bassline or something to a sonic wall. The concept kind of reminds me of how some games, like Sunset Overdrive, layer in their music based on the action (just in this case, it's the other way around, which is really cool).
Cool game! I like the idea here, but think that the order of play is backwards. I think creating a ship/beat and then starting to play the game suffers from a similar problem of playing and RPG and choosing a character/race before ever understanding the mechanics affected by said character/race. I think you should open the game to a short intro level, get the player familiar with at least a subset of the sounds/weapons, and then let them choose how they want their ship to be after understanding the context of those choices.
Cool combination of rythm and space shooter, gives the urge to change the beat at some time, but... guess your stuck in your loop. Nice one!
Definitely one of my favourite entries this jam, class job.
I suppose one should definitely expect something marvellous with a team as large as yours, but you certainly exceeded my expectations, especially with only one programmer on the team. I absolutely adored the concept of mixing my own drum loop and having that affect the weapons. Wonderfully executed and I always have a big soft spot for rhythm or music-based games.
I think the two things the game was lacking most was feedback and variation. The enemies were nice and effective as they were with multiple angles of attack and different projectile types, but hitting them didn't feel super satisfying. I agree with your comment that it's definitely difficult to strike a balance between useful feedback and distracting from tracking the enemy projectiles, but I'm sure with a bit of iteration you'd be able to find it. With regard to the lack of variation, I wonder if you might consider perhaps building multiple different kinds of drum loops you can switch between for different kinds of enemies, each with their own stat build - perhaps difficult stages increased the tempo or something, there's plenty you could do I think and it would be super fun.
Wonderful music, very catchy, found myself singing along to it. Loved the level names, even if I only technically made it to level 3 Ior 2nd level boss) I'm sure the post-jam version is even better and I'd love to know where you go with this game.
Thanks for hanging out on stream and well done on the excellent entry.
Great work! Super polished, drum loops are so much fun, very cool to mess around with that and then jump into a decent game experience with your creation. Def my fave entry that I've played, you guys executed on a phenomenal level, so congrats!
Oof. This game has sooo much potential, but it's missing quite a lot of stuff I would have expected from a schm'up. First, the good parts: presentation, including graphics and music, is absolutely excellent. The use of a drum loop is a genius customization measure that adds a lot of freshness to the tired genre. The controls were perfectly fine as well.
For a game that has an immense amount of polish in art, I was actually surprised at a seeming lack of satisfying juice to give that crunchy feel that makes your weapon fire feel powerful and satisfying. Firstly, hitting and destroying ships has no sound effects associated with it. The color blinking is too slow to be noticeable: a larger, more exaggerated animation would have helped. I would also add an explosion effect on where the bullet collided with the enemy to signify a successful hit. And of course, I'd add a good dose of hit pause for successful hits and defeating enemies.
I also thought the game could use some more balancing measures. I often felt enemies had too much health. I also felt my ship was too large, and all the bullets appeared too small, making it easy for me to get hit. It would have also been nice to slowly introduce the weapons as upgrades, and add some risk vs reward measures like a shared resource meter on all the weapons when allocating their fire timing on the drum roll.
I look forward to the future of this game, there's a lot of cool stuff I can see coming out of it!
https://youtu.be/vvR6P6ZVvL4?t=7489