Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD51 → Line Momentum
By itooh
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 407 | 3.67 | 47 | |
| Fun | 409 | 3.57 | 47 | |
| Innovation | 291 | 3.65 | 47 | |
| Theme | 1139 | 2.73 | 47 | |
| Graphics | 429 | 3.84 | 47 | |
| Audio | 24 | 4.38 | 48 | |
| Mood | 432 | 3.60 | 46 |
Not bad, but also pretty difficult! Kinda wish the level didn't restart all the way when I failed but other than that it's not a bad concept. Music was pretty good and I liked how it built up more and more as I progressed.
I don't quite see how the theme fits, but aside from that I love the music and the graphics in this
Really beautiful entry! The 2nd pattern was really difficult and took me waaaay to long to pass it, but I was glad I did because then I was able to finish the game, and it was a really nice experience. The music/audio is amazing!
Felt really polished. Progression was a little tough but that was probably down to my reaction speeds. Bonus points for a Linux port!
Really hard game but seems fairly interesting as a premise, timing between it ending and starting feel just slightly off, but otherwise feels decent
Looks really production ready as a solid niche hyper casual game! Both fun and challenging at the same time. Great job!
One of the best games that I've played this jam! The graphics are simple yet very effective, and the audio integration is amazing. The way the streak gets more difficult with the removal of visual cues and more instrumental layers is truly novel and inspiring! Gg, it was an awesome experience!
@mossgames Actually, it might not be just you! The Linux version seems to have a small lag input. Not big enough to make it utterly unplayable, but very noticeable compared to the Windows one (or if you're confident in your sense of rhythm). I haven't test on enough machines to confirm that it is not just my OS, but it seems likely that the Linux export is less performant than the Windows one. Thanks for sticking with it anyway!
@ritz1231 Weeeelllll... The idea kinda evolved along the way. ^^' Let's say that it started from "_The player has to count to 10 on each level_" to "_The player must succeeds 10 consecutive `[unit of time]`_". :P I still tried to keep the 10 seconds motif around, with a music in 5/4 almost sync on the second (almost, a bar is about 2.06 seconds, making it faster would have made the game too difficult), each bar being divided into 10 quarter notes! Yeah I drifted a bit I guess. ^^'
Thank you all for your feedbacks! :) I'm happy you enjoyed it.
I'm a big fan of DDR and really like this game. Simple concept but executed masterfully. Great audio and visuals especially considering how minimal the game is. Love the increasing difficulty and like other commenters found it quite challenging!
It's really difficult. I can't say if it's just me but I really had problems to success so many times in a row, particularly for the last and... the first. The piano lost me each time. All the "levels" between the first and the last were a lot easier.
Maybe allow to use the keyboard to "click". I am not really confort in rhythm game with the mouse.
I didn't totally have fun, I felt it like it was a challenge with good atmosphere and enjoyable rewards, but a little frustrating and exhausting. Probably less my type. Proud for finishing it.
As always, it's perfect for the sound and the design !
Very hard, but feels solid: graphics and audio are top notch! As @ritz1231 mentioned, theme connection is not so straightforward.
I really liked this game! How it seamlessly transitioned between the rhythms as you successfully completely or failed just blew my mind. At first I thought that each dot was a separate level and as you completed the line it would change but then it reset and I was like "Huh? Err ok?" But then I heard the separate thing going along with the notes I was playing and it felt like as I succeeded more and more people were joining my band. I could totally see that as a background animation, just like fade in more and more instruments. Funnily enough I did not notice at first that the dot had gone away, it does a great job getting you into the rhythm. But then I did and bam reset. Have you tried making an easy mode where it just drops you down one? Otherwise its very hard on people who are not super great at following a rhythm (like me). Other then that though, really good game, could easily see this as one of those mobile games!
Wow such a clever title! I really love this idea of getting into the groove and feeling the rhythm with this minimalist art style. It definitely felt a little punishing to lose all of your progress when you screw up once, especially when you have to do it 10 times in a row. But man did it feel really cool and interesting when youre going and you get the hang of it for the first time and the cursor starts to disappear. Great moment! Nice job with this!
I thought this was excellent, and appreciate the interpretation of "second". The instrument layering that unfolds as you get closer to each end of level is really satisfying, would love to see (hear?) more.
oh my god i was so excited to see a rhythm game here!! that was so fun and unique. a great idea for a rhythm game to make in a short amount of time. excellent visuals tying it all together, and i really like how the music changed and grew as you got further in the track. great job!!
I also love the music and instruments! But it's very tough, I'm glad I managed to beat the first track haha. Once the visualization disappears I get really hyped, my heart beats a little faster, and I tend to lose. Feels brutal to get put back to square one. Really polished!
Really neat take on a rhythm game, the visualization fading away is genius it feels like when you're staring at a wall for long enough and the details start to fade away due to your visual system getting used to the stimulus. I had some technical issues though: The resolution seemed to be low full-screen on a 1440p monitor, I usually switch to full screen like this to avoid it:
```cs Screen.SetResolution(Screen.currentResolution.width, Screen.currentResolution.height, FullScreenMode.FullScreenWindow); ```
Also when making a rhythm game it's helpful include some kind of audio/input sync, my setup has quite a lot of audio latency that made playing very difficult as I have to hit the "wrong" times. Other than those issues though I love the concept and the progression of the music is amazing! Points for using WWise also, don't see that too often (I tried using fmod in our rhythm game last edition and it was *painful*, especially on the web)
It's always a pleasure to see rhythm games on game jams. Your entry is very nice, it kept me until the end of the game. It's very rare ahah. Music is very cool, graphics style also is very pleasant (despite of I played with closed eyes to feel the rhythm). I am not sure it fits the theme (for me ten tries != ten seconds). But overall this is a very pretty little game. I even want to see a full game. Thank you for experience.
Really cool concept, and the post about the tech was really inspirational. I struggled a bit with the game, and it might have been my hardware having a sync issue between sound / visuals . I was sure I was hitting on the correct part of song, but I lagged as pictured :smile:
Could just be my lack of practice.
fail.gif
@mcnuttys That's actually a thought I had after the jam: starting from zero seems to punitive. Removing one point is more fair, and even more intuitive. I intend to update the game this way. There will be a special reward for player who succeeds to win 10 loops in a raw. But it will be more accessible to just finish the game! I'm also really happy to learn that the dot disappearing was (almost) unnoticed! That's one of the goal of the game: make you learn the pattern until it becomes automatic. Glad that it works!
@bqq You're right, the resolution is stuck at 1280x720 ! The reason is that the game needs a 16:9 resolution to displays properly. I was expecting Unity to keep the ratio when going fullscreen or resizing the Window (like Godot does \*cough\*), unfortunately it either export in screen's resolution or a single one. This is definitely something I intend to work on for the post-jam update.
@johnnysix Input lag seems very likely! I think there's already some latency on the Linux export. But it can depends on the machine as well. In the future I'd like to develop a calibration plugin to measure the input latency at the start of a game, and adapt the tolerance margin to the player. In the meanwhile, a mental tips I can give is to try to aim with the click release rather than the click itself. It's a small brain twist, but it can work if the delay is short enough!
Thank you all again for your comments! I was afraid that the "dot disappearing" feature would displease a lot of player, I'm thrilled to see that you enjoyed it! :)
I love the concept of the game and i think that the idea of the dot visible at first and then invisible is very clever. The game is very polisehd, it felt very good to play, and i sometimes surprised myself closing my eyes. But i think the tolerence threshold should be more friendly because actually it's pretty hard and to succeed 10 times is very challenging. Musics are the main element of you game and i found them absolutly well designed. Also i'm interested in seeing what can be done with sound engine, and your game inspire me a lot! thank you ;). Good job!
Really like the concept and love how the music gradually builds, naturally makes me want to play again. Was very difficult though for me, might be that I am not that good at rythnm. But very good effort...
Nicely Done Bro. really nice concept and use of the 10 second theme. Would love to see this game developed further and released in a larger scale. Please do check out my submission as well.
Wow, nice polish, great mood and aesthetic. ( •̀ ω •́ )✧
Great entry! i was unable to surpass the first level, especially because the little ball goes away. I got pretty close but no cigar haha
I love rhythm games, and the moment the jam's theme was revealed I hoped this genre would spout at least a couple of 'em. This was a pleasure to play, so thank you for that!
A couple notes: * I loved the way the game teaches you to work without the cue - how it disappears in the middle of a bar - very graphically subtle, but once you notice it, it's very pretty. In general, the graphics were very fun to look at. I'm a fan of minimalistic graphics, and they suit this game very nicely. * The music is absolutely fantastic! The pacing of the instruments is such that the mood completely changes from the first bar to the last, and that was awesome to hear. * The progress bar on the bottom was nice to look at, but it slightly confused me at first. When I was on the 10th bar, the progress bar was completely filled - and so I thought I had beaten the level - but not realizing the level was still going caused me to mess up a bit, and then I had to repeat the entire level again. Of course, doing as you mentioned in your reply to @mcnuttys any only taking one point off when making a mistake would greatly help this issue be less punishing, but I'm not sure this is solving the root of the problem. Possibly what's missing is a slight change in UI? If you could make the indicator clearer as to which of the ten steps you're on (and which you're about to complete) I think that would greatly help me understand what's going on. A possible implementation would be to have *three* different colors for the dots on the bottom instead of two: One color for completed bars, one for incomplete bars, and one for the bar I'm currently at.
I'd love to see more of this, if it ever comes about. :P This game was clearly put together with a lot of musical care, and I'm eager to hear more!
Trying this game was miserable. One of the most frustrating gaming experiences I've had in recent memory. I'm not very good at rhythm games, but figured I'd try this one anyway.
The setup is simple, the expanding audio is really cool. I liked the way the light moves with the dot. THEN THE DOT DISAPPEARED.
At this point the game became impossible for me. After 10 minutes of practice i was able to sometimes get 1-2 invisible sets in a row. i have a terrible sense of rhythm, i rely on visual information to help me play rhythym games. Trying to burn the timing into my mind was so hard. Even if i got it once or twice I'd go straight back to 1/10 after that. It doesn't help that i'd still sometimes miss hits when the dot was still visible
I probably should have stopped playing immediately, but I wanted to finish at least 1 level/set of 10. I tried for a bit but couldn't even do that. As far as I'm concerned the core idea of this game {getting familiar with a beat to be able to do it by memory} isn't even accessible to me. I almost feel bad rating this game.
Amazing little gem of a game. I'm a drummer so I love rhythm games. I played the linux version.
I had a problem with delay, I tried mouse and keyboard separately, ended up using keyboard but the delay seemed to be the same. Trying very low latency on different platforms, using Unity, would have been impossible, so I don't blame you, it's a hard problem. In my case the clicks "hit" when I released the spacebar. By this I mean, the game registered the key down, but the delay made it feel like it was the key up that made the hit register.
Having played rhythm games before, and being a drummer, I adapted quickly to the delay, so after a couple of rounds of the same rhythm I just got the groove and could finish the rhythm without issues.
As a programmer, the way I'd solve it is by having some kind of calibration step beforehand. I just happen to have thought about this for a while because I was thinking of developing some software that would have these same issues with delay. My idea was to have like a "sync" step where a metronome is beating, and you're supposed to hit the key at the same time as the metornome. You don't get any audio feedback from your hits, but the game tells you that it's registering them (so that you know that they're not lost), with like a progress bar or something. But you don't hear a sound when you hit, because that could throw you off. The first few beats are ignored (they probably aren't very accurate), and then you save a list of the delays between each beat timestamp and when the user key events are registered. If everything goes well, and you average them out (also removing some outliers), that gives you the offset that you should apply to the game detection. If you repeat this process with different metronome BPMs, I think you'd get very reliable delay correction without the user having to input random numeric values via trial and error.
That's what I always had in mind which could work while being pretty user friendly. With good user experience tweaks the calibration step could be a mix of tutorial and calibration, making it seamless for the user.
In any case, I loved the game, the way the music builds up as you nail the rhythm is very satisfying. I wish it was longer, but it's a jam game!
@blue-pin-studio Your not the only one stuck at the first level! :sweat_smile: Expecting 10 consecutive suceess ws definitely not a good design choice, even if it "fits" the theme. I intend to fix it in an update.
@beetlebox Interesting comment about the UI! I actually hesitated between starting with zero validated dot, or one (the current one being shown as "active"). I chose the later because otherwise the player would never have the satisfaction to see the 10 full dots (as the level transition immediately). But this is not a great compromise either. The solution I'm working on is adding a transition time between two levels. This way we can start with zero dots, and when the level finishes there's time to display all the 10 validated dots (and for the player to just enjoy the music)!
@ninjacreeper47 Oof, that's tough to hear! But it's also very interesting to read, thank you for putting time to write such a constructive feed-back. It's very much appreciated! I'm sorry that the game was this painful to you. I knew it would be hard, and that asking players to rely on audio would not be equally challenging to everyone. But I also made some poor design choices that make the game too punitive, which as I can see now creates more frustration than an enjoyable challenge. As you correctly deduced, the intention of the game is to teach the player a rhythmic pattern by repetition. But the current game-design is quite a bad teacher, that just gives a zero for every small mistake, efficiently removing any motivation to learn! That's something I'll try to fix in the future. I believe that a game can be hard without being punitive, and that's something that I aim in most of my games! Your comment also inspired me to add an accessibility option to keep the dot visible, because even if I make the game easier, there's no reason to block players with something they cannot do if they can enjoy the game by the visuals and the music. Anyway, you had every right to rate the game even if you got stuck at the beginning! Making a hard game is one thing, but making it frustrating and inaccessible to some players is another. Your critic is absolutely on the point. And actually I'd be curious to learn your opinion on the updated version of the game, if that's okay with you (I wouldn't want to force you to play a game that was literally painful). :)
@sergilazaro Apparently we used the same technique to counter-balance the delay! When trying the game on Linux, I found that aiming for the release of the click (rather than the press) allowed me play almost naturally.^^' What you describe is exactly the kind of tool I also want to implement in my rhythm games! This kind of calibration is actually pretty common for rhythm games today. You never know the reaction time of the machine, or even the player, so it's better to measure it at the beginning of the game. I might try to implement something like that in a future game. And if I'm really motivated, maybe I'll try to make it a reusable plugin! x)
Thank you all for your feed-backs!
wow, the game is haaaaard x) nice tho ahah
Nice game, but too easy and, probably, not very scalable. You could add more buttons or mechanics and you'd end up with a minimalist quasi-Groove Coaster/Project Mirai, but you'd need fewer loops because 10 can quickly get repetitive. You got some flak for the game being too punitive, but trust me, you weren't even close to fucking up as much as the developer of ADOFAI, and that's a full commercial game with very positive ratings (for some reason). I loved how the visual indicator disappeared after several loops–it really made it a lot more interesting for a visual player like me. I know everyone has their own interpretation, but the theme is nowhere to be found
I really appreciate that you went with Wwise instead of Unity's built-in sound system. I've played commercial Unity rhythm games where devs didn't know what audio middleware even was, and the results bordered on unplayable. That said, there is still a noticeable delay as reported earlier (Linux), so an audio or a grade offset slider would have been nice to have
I haven't read your write-up in depth yet, but for some reason, the grader will occasionally grade notes on the other side of the line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDBpOQtCwXU
This was actually pretty sweet. I really enjoyed the simple nature of it. Nice job!
I like it, not too much difficult, but challenging (and I didn't had any sync problem !) The only thing I would change is to permit to press any key instead of just mouse button and spacebar ! I like the epurate style and the music is pleasant despite the fairly short repeat loop
Fun little rhythm game! That's awesome that you were inspired by Steve Reich, I'm also a fan of minimalist composers. I didn't necessarily mind having to start each round from the beginning, but I would definitely like to be able to use any key on the keyboard
Oh, that's a nice entry! I'll tell you a secret... on every ludum dare jam, I always have something in my mind: "someone will make a very simple yet clever game and win it!" And this is what I'm talking about: simple, 1 button, easy to learn and play, fun! Well done!!
@alaah Thank you! It's a relief to learn that's the game was not impossible to just everyone. You're right it's not very scalable, and that's kinda on purpose. I like making small and consistent games, this is one of them. Adding more complexity would alter too much the minimalist design of the game: I like single-button rhythm games for their intuitiveness and pure focus on the rhythm (rather than learning controls or relying on visuals). Speaking of which, you mentioned A Dance of Fire and Ice, and indeed this game is ridiculously demanding. But its creator then made Rhythm Doctor, and they might have learn from the first game, because this one is also a challenging rhythm game, but somehow less frustrating. It's the kind of game-design I aim for: rhythm game with very easy to learn mechanics, providing a tough challenge relying mostly on music, but still enjoyable by most players by being patient and pushing them to progress.
By the way, if you're interested in a more difficult rhythm game, I intend to work on a larger game than this one, for which I've made [a prototype](https://itooh.itch.io/one-colorful-grid) some years ago.
Also good catch on that bug! I've noticed it as well just after the jam, I was wondering if someone would see it. It was a tricky one, but I eventually fixed it!
@nilolo @blue-pin-studio @ninjacreeper47 If you ever want to know what's beyond the first level, I've updated the game so that it is less punishing and hopefully more enjoyable. I also added an accessibility option if you need the dot to remain on screen. :)
Once again, thanks everyone for your comments!