Cyndermine Mail Delivery Service

simmo 2023-05-01 00:05

Micro post mortem (take 2, thanks bsod), more so for feedback's sake, so I can be upfront with what I think sux.

The GFX lack any sense of polish (the menus are literally straight up just buttons-on-blue, and the levels themselves are very bare). The game would have benefitted from some nicer FX too (pulsing on the beat etc., that kinda thing), as well as SFX for keypresses.

I would have also liked a micro-story/an NCP to at least give context to the levels and their gimicks. E.g. I think it's hard to tell that the levels are supposed to be Plains, Desert, City, Space, Sea etc., and the '''''smog'''' / short-range visibility at 'night' gimicks are just entirely uncontextual. Some nonsensical NPC one-liner would've probably helped clear them up.

I think generally the game just needs a proper polishing and expansion upon 'the usual stuff', and originally the game was supposed to be for Jam, to give me an extra day to do that, but I could already feel silly-adhd-brain kicking in, and I know for a fact that if I had left it 'til tomorrow, I would've ended up losing all enthusiasm, not being motivated, and not submitting anything at all, even for Jam.

That said, I'll have to come back to this in the future as, for one of my first actually 'playably-complete' (if that makes sense) games, I'm pretty proud. :)

defrag 2023-05-01 17:22

Hey, congrats on finishing one of your first 'playably-complete' games - no small accomplishment in just 48 hours.

I played in WebGL via Itch.io. I tend to shy away from downloading .exes, even for LD entries. I played the first level, and then jump-cheated to one of the space levels.

I like the general concept of this: a mail truck delivering packages to people in time with the beat. Not an obvious interpretation, I think, but it pairs well in your game.

I would have liked to have heard some kind of feedback for when I nail a beat. I never heard anything other than the normal gameplay music- hitting everything and hitting nothing sounded identical to me. There also didn't seem to be any penalty to hitting buttons too soon. You touched on the polish items yourself, but, honestly, the polish stuff can take just as long as the core gameplay loop itself. We should dedicate an entire jam just to polishing our previously submitted games...

Nice work!

didine-sama 2023-05-02 11:18

Its so hard hahaha

sodoj 2023-05-02 12:09

A lot of work has gone into this in such a short period of time, I really appreciate how there are different background gimmicks for each world even though the perspective is super weird. The ability to add custom tracks is also really neat!

Also, like @defrag mentioned, don't worry too much about not being able to polish your game, you have already done hell of a work with this game!

josephgallear 2023-05-02 16:15

Great game and very ambitious for a game jam, especially if you made all the music in this time too, and including a custom chart creator is very impressive. I liked how there seemed to be a narrative between the levels; the van going into space was a great surprise along with the change in perspective.

I did find the game quite hard, especially in the later levels, and generally it was hard to tell whether I had successfully hit a note or not. I also got a score of -1 a few times, which I'm guessing is a bug?

Overall, I would say it just needs polish like you said, but in terms of the technical implementation, this is very impressive for 48 hours; I haven't even dared to attempt making a rhythm game outside of a game jam!

simmo 2023-05-03 20:08

@defrag Yeah, I also avoid .exe versions where I can, and those that I do play I put in an isolated VM... shame the internet has to ruin the fun things along the way :pensive:

But thank you, I appreciate the feedback! Absolutely agree on the audio-feedback of hitting notes: that and having the boxes/truck/etc. pulse or beat when you hit too, but I ended up spending too much time trying to get the truck to beat in time and ran out for adding audio cues....... and I never did get that truck bouncin right :rofl:

simmo 2023-05-03 20:15

@josephgallear Thank you! :smile: I'm glad you picked up on the narrative I was going for... I had this idea in my head to add this very eccentric NPC 'boss' guy to actually deliver whatever silly narrative I came up with via one-liners at the start of each level, but just didn't have time in the end aha

Yyyeeeaaaaahhh guess I did make it a little hard huh :sweat_smile: I'm so used to being terrible at rhythm games I just set my score as the pass mark, but I guess I didn't account enough for the fact I recorded the beat maps :rofl:

I'll definitely have to test some more to see if I can get that -1 score bug (definitely not me just excusing the fact I'm low-key addicted myself lol)- My guess is that it's something to do with Unity not saving the PlayerPrefs properly/in-time, as the score always starts at zero, and it never goes down; but the score screen after each level is in a different scene, so it should save the score to PlayerPrefs, and then Score Scene just loads that back :thinking:

simmo 2023-05-03 20:16

@sodoj Thank you, I really appreciate your feedback, and I'm glad you enjoyed :smile:

twobitadder 2023-05-04 01:53

Congrats on your 2nd or 3rd complete game! It's no small feat, especially for a jam. I like the loop of the game, and the aesthetic was super interesting. The keys were wicked confusing, though I think that would probably be attributed to me jumping from Level 1-1 to Level 4-1 to get an idea for how the game ramps up :sweat_smile:. I think other than echoing the sentiment that some more feedback would be helpful to get a read for how you're doing and just generally more polish, I think it's in a very solid position! Nice work, and I hope you continue to participate in future jams!

thomas-bringer 2023-05-04 14:48

Nice game! I like the concept a lot. Two ideas to improve it: add more feedback to the player when he misses a button, or succeeeds (maybe messages Perfect/Good/Missed or something), and polish the visuals of the menu. Good job!

edit: I forgot to mention but the soundtracks are really great gg!

droiddare 2023-05-04 14:53

I enjoyed playing this for a bit, but as the levels went on the controls seemed a little bit off - I'd maybe look in future using sequential keys instead, but feel free to ignore this if it isn't meant to be played on a QWERTY keyboard. I agree with @defrag, some feedback when you're nailing it would be great. Maybe even a combo meter? Nice job though!

milano23 2023-05-04 15:09

Nice game. To me it didn't seem like the input lined up with the beat of the music. Could be the graphics of the van but it seemed like I was off every time. Controls were easy. Sound was great. Great idea.

x16 2023-05-04 15:45

Thank you for the "unlock all levels" option! The view of the gameplay screen felt a bit strange, I think that's the reason why I skipped so many buttons haha. Good entry! You also managed to add a record option, omg.

simmo 2023-05-04 17:07

@thomas-bringer Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed the music aha - it's normally what I enjoy doing the most so I'm glad it lived up to it! Totally agree with your suggestions, thank you :smile:

simmo 2023-05-04 17:09

@droiddare To be entirely honest, the keys were chosen based solely on which ones my smol brain could figure out how to do the shadow on the letters in the way I wanted them ngl LMAO - but yeah, I agree in hindsight it might have been worth figuring out some more sensical keys aha. Love the combo meter idea, no clue why I didn't think of myself lol

simmo 2023-05-04 17:12

@milano23 Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed! I suspect it may have been that the inputs were slightly out -- even though their position in the world, and the player's position in the world is all literally calculated mathematically (so not tied to framerate or anything like that), I found that depending on browser, or if you played downloaded (or even in the Unity Editor) the amount they were out by varied, even tho math is math :shrug: I had hoped to be able to put in one of those tools where you tap along and it calculates the offset/compensation needed to make it all line up in the levels so this was less of an issue, but procrastinated too hard and ran out of time lmao >.>

simmo 2023-05-04 17:15

@x16 Yeah, ngl the perspective was an accident when I rotated around the wrong axis, but bc I'm weird I kinda liked it in a strange way and stuck with it XD

The only reason the record option exists ironically is because I was lazy :sweat_smile: ... I figured it'd be easy to add a level recorder and use that to record the main levels than manually transcribe out the notes and stuff lol. At that point it was just a case of a few tweaks to make it into its own 'mode' etc. lol

simmo 2023-05-04 17:18

@twobitadder Thank you, I really appreciate the feedback! I do think I maybe could have chosen some better keys in hindsight; it was literally a mix of which keys I could make look how I wanted them to without having too think much, 9 to 6 *specifically* for the pattern in the 4- levels, and enter solely to annoy people out of nowhere :rofl:

blazerdom 2023-05-04 17:32

The perspective seemed a little strange to me and it would be nice to additionally visualize the correct pressing and not pressing. But you did a good job!

hakro 2023-05-09 21:06

Really cool idea you got there. I especially like the music an the chill vibes. My only nitpick would be that it's hard to understand exactly when to press a button. Sometimes the truc covers the whole thing, but pressing the correct button does not validate it. Other than that, great entry.

simmo 2023-05-09 21:23

@hakro Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed! Indeed, I definitely wish I'd added a sound effect, pulse, or something more defining of when you hit the notes (or an "EARLY!" / "LATE!" pop up to guide you etc.) - definitely on my list to add whenever I get some time to polish the game off aha

adjo 2023-05-10 22:31

The music in this is amazing, I had fun playing the various songs. I had the same issue as some other people where the inputs seemed to be slightly out of sync with the music but it was still nice to play.

cheesepencil 2023-05-11 00:08

i thought it was charming and a good execution of the concept in a very short amount of time, and it is a full package even if it's not frilly

agentparsec 2023-05-12 23:20

I appreciate rhythm games when I come across them, well done

simmo 2023-05-13 23:20

@agentparsec Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed! ^.^

simmo 2023-05-13 23:21

@cheesepencil I really appreciate your feedback! I'm glad you had fun :D

simmo 2023-05-13 23:21

@adjo I'm really glad you liked the music and had fun, thank you for your feedback! <3

j0ye 2023-05-17 09:43

This is a very ambitious game, I think. The game itself worked well (just the score was a bit confusing) and what looks like an ice cream truck going to space is a fun concept. And there were a couple of really great beatmaps, which in itself is already pretty hard. The only thing I can really recommend you, is to spend more time on polishing the look of your game. This was truly something else. Especially because of the hard colors you used for the sky and ground in the first levels and the style of the blocks and angle of the camera. I think there is a reason why most of the rhythm games look really similar.

poshdan 2023-05-18 14:44

I fumbled through this on stream a few days ago :D Shame about the timing option being a barrier for entry, but once I got it close enough, I had a good bit of success! My main problem was the difficulty jump once the tracks surpassed 3 different types of input, I simply couldn't cope with it. That said, it is my own limitation and rhythm games aren't really my thing. I almost missed the truck skin unlocks, I would recommend shoving that into the player's face next time, as it can be a motivator to keep trying. (ie showing them right after finishing a track) This type of game is difficult to make on such a short timespan, but you've done it for compo no less. Hats off to you!