FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD59 → Smoke Show

Smoke Show

By bumble, crygos, Lehmy, Strawkur and Doa

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall3323.6965
Fun2903.5865
Innovation624.0464
Theme1114.2665
Graphics4623.6965
Audio2473.7063
Humor3123.0858
Mood4733.5562

Comments

500 2026-04-21 14:35

The art is so simple hahaha, but the gameplay is quite interesting

carterjbx 2026-04-21 14:39

I don't usually play rhythm games, so at first I thought the control scheme was too complicated, but once I got the hang of it it felt really good! this is a great use of the theme. One gripe I have is that I wish you started slightly above the smoke signal, but I understand why you designed it the way you did.

2026-04-21 14:39

Awesome gameplay. Had a lot of fun!

jnur 2026-04-21 14:40

Looks really charming and I want to try it, but there's this big black box blocking a part of the screen and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do :sweat_smile:

Screenshot 2026-04-21 at 17.39.28.png

crygos 2026-04-21 14:47

@jnur Interesting. Could you share what browser you saw this on? We will try to figure out what causes it :) Thanks for letting us know!

jnur 2026-04-21 14:55

@crygos Sorry, should have mentioned that straight away! MacOS, Firefox. But I tried again on Chrome, and that works fine! Really fun and inventive, and the vibes are perfect. I lack the rhythm and coordination to be good at it, but it is the comfiest rhythm game I remember ever playing.

nullmoxy 2026-04-21 15:32

Very Unique Gameplay and Artstyle. Takes a bit to get used to the controls but does work well. Scoring feedback could be improved a bit, I still get good and great even when not pressing any buttons.

tay-elenberg 2026-04-21 21:52

The concept feels fresh and interesting, and the visuals support it really well. Great work!

fullmetal-automaton 2026-04-21 21:54

That was really cute. It took a while to understand how to actually get accurate smoke signals (i should have read the instructions :) ). But after that it was pretty fun.

stepanoff 2026-04-21 22:00

This seems like the most unusual interpretation of the theme. I've seen all sorts of signals, but I've never seen a campfire signal! Excellent! And the gameplay is engaging.

ranarh 2026-04-22 02:48

A neat idea! I could never get the first line but that's on me, rhythm games and me are a bad combo. Lively and fun, good job!

blue-pin-studio 2026-04-22 04:54

Fantastic entry! Really clever programming execution and really clever desing. The art and audio are great too, all around great!

tosmaster 2026-04-22 16:06

Ouf I am so bad at this game haha. But I had a lot of fun! I was halfway looking at my keyboard and the screen and got so overwhelmed but laughed all the way to the end, thinking about how noone can decypher my smoke signals hahahahaha. Like, the dude at the other end getting so confused and being like "no idea what this guy wants, let's just smile and wave". :rofl:

Here's my miserable best score for the world to see: ``` AQAAAAAAAAAEDQYGAAAAACAoAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIDAwMDg4ACAAIiEhACAQEAAAPz4PwAAAAwSEgwAHgAhKg43MDg4BwcHBwcHMDg4Pz8cHhwMNz8cDBIe ```

[E] Before I forget! Sharing codes is suuuuuuuuuuuuch a cool idea!!!! LOVE IT!!!

lehmy 2026-04-22 16:42

@tosmaster Hi, Thanks for the comment and code :smile: Could it perhaps be that you missed a character at the end of the code ?

This is a working code. (A added for it to work again) >AQAAAAAAAAAEDQYGAAAAACAoAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIDAwMDg4ACAAIiEhACAQEAAAPz4PwAAAAwSEgwAHgAhKg43MDg4BwcHBwcHMDg4Pz8cHhwMNz8cDBIeA

tosmaster 2026-04-22 17:43

@lehmy I used the copy function at the end of the game. Perhaps I lost a character when trying to format it? Sorry, I cannot recall how that could have happened. :(

byte-bark 2026-04-22 19:12

Love the concept! Took me a moment to understand the control but after all I enjoyed playing it (and being bad at it). And I like the idea about robot + ancient times :laughing:

phoenix-fireflower 2026-04-22 20:12

The art is charming and the gameplay, while simple, is engaging once you get the hang of it. I agree with the others that the controls take some time to get used to.

petr-vejchoda 2026-04-22 20:30

Oh I love Base64ing data. We made a game where you could share levels via Base64. Sadly, the game didn't caught up that much. This looks awesome instead ;)

mortith 2026-04-23 11:08

That's so nice! Really nice use of the smoke signal thing, i love it ! :O Probably my favorite entry so far

venomousmouse 2026-04-23 13:32

I like the coziness of the art, very cute game. Good job!

snk 2026-04-23 20:01

Nice work with this game. I started pretty good but the 5 star level is just... another level haha. I could score around 82% of that. However was very funny, and also I could select the purple smoke color :3

thomas-gelman 2026-04-23 20:05

Cool and charming game! Had fun playing it, took me a second to get the hang of it but once I did I had fun playing all the levels! My only real note of feedback is that it felt somewhat strange whenever it started on one of the patterns instead of one beat ahead of them. That may just be me, but it was something I found a little troublesome in my playthrough regardless. Other than that, solid game. Good job!

valentinwb 2026-04-23 20:25

Awesome concept guys ! Very well done

mamboman 2026-04-23 20:47

smokin hot game! :) it took me a few rounds to find out how to play but then it was a lot of fun!

yuriscat 2026-04-24 09:00

A pretty fresh take on a rhythm game. I didn’t expect it to use smoke to convey the signals, which is a really cool idea. I only tried one song and had a bit of trouble keeping up with the rhythm, but with a little more time, I think this could be pretty good.

fassenberg 2026-04-24 11:56

I liked the cozy visual style. At first, I didn’t quite understand that you need to press the buttons not only in rhythm, but also to draw a shape — it ends up feeling like a kind of piano. It’s fairly challenging, but I really liked the idea.

Thanks for the rhythm game! I made one on this theme too, so feel free to check it out if you’d like 🙂

oxnh 2026-04-24 12:56

Really nice art and integration with the theme. The window for hitting the note on the beat seems quite difficult, or maybe it's a skill issue, or maybe I'm having problem playing offbeat. I think the first track has a lot of syncopation that makes it difficult.

lllarso 2026-04-24 12:59

Nice theme interpretation, which is also used for the gameplay. I like that. I also like that you put in a score system and that there are different difficulties implemented.

denikk 2026-04-24 15:07

Very nice color palette, I love the sound and game design. Was a bit unexpected that I have to hold buttons before the game started. Very self explanatory game. Sounds are nice and visuals are cozy. I like that project!

kr4ft3r 2026-04-24 16:17

My, what inventiveness, I'm speechless. I hope you guys get to top 10 in Theme or Innovation.

For those who are up for some groovy new shapes:

AwAAAAAAAAAHCwYGIQwhDB4zADAYAAYDKBIoEgUSDBIhDCESIBAIAQIkABIMLT8tITMhMx4tAAkkCSQJABwZHBkcISEeHgwhJBMJNiQJ

bumble 2026-04-24 16:29

@kr4ft3r thank you for sharing your signals! We hoped more people would do so. Because we were looking forward to playing those messed up signals (shared from standard runs). But it seems you actually created your own map with hand crafted signals, which is even better! :eyes: (my first try got me a smokin' hot 95% :fire:)

2026-04-24 16:31

great concept!

universeflow 2026-04-24 16:33

a really interesting way to make a rhythm game (we also made one, nice to see that there are so many rhythm games in this jam, I love it!) and a very innovative interpretation of the theme. it's not that easy to get into, I didn't realize that you have to hold the buttons, at first I thought you have to press them on beat, but once I got the hang of it it was fun :)

jahwffrey 2026-04-24 17:26

Nice! That took a genuinely surprising amount of focus but after a few tries I was getting the harder ones somewhat reliably. The music is nice and the challenges get interesting without being frustrating, and that one of the funnier color pickers I've seen. If I have any complaints, it's that 'Miss' vs 'Good' vs 'Perfect!' didn't really seem to line up with what was happening alot of the time - it took a while to get the hang of things because it kept telling me I was doing pretty good while I was barely doing anything. Maybe it counted all the blank tiles I didn't put smoke on a hits? Either way, Good job!

eric-nguyen 2026-04-24 17:31

Love the art and music! The gameplay itself is super unique too. Sometimes I would get surprised when the line would start on top of the first row of smoke but that's probably a skill issue haha. The code sharing idea is also ingenious as well, way to get people involved in the comments. Awesome submission!

AQAAAAAAAAADDQYGAAEAAAAAAAAeHh4AAB4SEh4APz8zMz8/PyEhISE/AAQMDAAAAAweHgwAAAwSEgwAHhIhITMeODg4BwcHBwcHODg4Pz8eHgwMAB4MDB4/

bumble 2026-04-24 18:02

@jahwffrey yeah we count the empty spaces as well. We realized too late, that this looks confusing, but we use that information in score calculation as well so we don't want to change it now :sweat_smile:

bumble 2026-04-24 18:08

@eric-nguyen thank you for submitting a signal! Yeah we thought it would be nice to get some engagement going in the comments. But at the moment it looks like just sharing scores is way easier to get people to engage and works better. Still, we really like this feature and will probably do it again!

captandrey 2026-04-24 20:58

very cool interpretation! Was pretty fun, and challenging. Only one thing - the "perfect" mark appeared even i missed almost all lines on empty figures, was kinda confusing sometimes

eeva 2026-04-24 21:35

the game looked and sounded good and i liked the interpretation of the theme! the ui was a bit jank as other commenters have mentioned - it said "good" or "perfect" even when i clicked nothing so it was hard to understand how to time the buttonmashing to succeed

trexxak 2026-04-24 22:23

oh, that's such a cool idea! :D If you keep working on it, I think multiplayer rooms would be a natural next step! Imagine versus-ing smoke signs on those webgame binges with friends!

fadex 2026-04-24 23:45

Very fun, great concept. It was super cute.. really enjoyed it. My only thing was the timing of placing the smokes felt a bit off beat.

kassanu 2026-04-24 23:48

nice idea, love rhythm games and this was a fun twist on it

I had the black box bug as well on Firefox, but i could at least get half the signal right :laughing:

guitarbro 2026-04-24 23:59

Interesting interpretation of "signals"! The gameplay is definitely Guitar-Hero-adjacent, but I like the way you used the six fingers to draw the signal patterns. Definitely a bit jank, but it was still enjoyable to try to get a high score. Honestly, I think the biggest detractor in it's current state is just how similar all the tracks are, since that really is the key focus of the gameplay. At least changing up the synths and percussion would go a long way to making each one unique to go along with the different shapes that each level has. That said, I feel like they were all reasonable lengths and didn't overstay their welcome, and the level sharing is a pretty cool touch for a jam game. Overall, a pretty solid entry!

2026-04-25 05:43

cool concept, but I would've wanted notes to have some sounds too. I still don't get if all those buttons actually do something different or not...

2026-04-25 10:02

很温暖可爱的画风,被色调吸引了进来,但是上手难度有一点高,一开始并没有按按钮.....

coderaurus 2026-04-25 10:29

Good take on the theme and very intriguing gameplay. I was somewhat struggling with the controls kind of got the hang of it eventually. I wonder if the game would be easier with controls that are lined up next to each other. I think the separation threw me off a bit.

Nice work!

flameseer 2026-04-25 11:36

That is a very fun game that I'm very bad at XD Love the idea and the execution

papaver 2026-04-25 18:44

Very cool game! It took me some time to understand how it worked, but it was really fun when I got the hang of it! Nice music to play along to.

Would have been nice to see my scores for each sequence, to know which ones to try again, and to see which ones I've already done in general :wink: (Because I didn't play them in the order that they are listed)

At first I was confused what the codes meant. Then I tried @kr4ft3r's code, and got 95.71%! Then I had some fun making up my own sequence, by iterating on my own code:

AQAAAAAAAAADDQYGAD8APwA/ABUqFSoVMDAMDAMDPj07Ny8fKioqFRUVAAA4OAcHMBgMBgMAISESLS0SJxUNFScAISEzHh4zKBINEigAAAUKFCgAHj8ePx4M

bumble 2026-04-25 19:16

@coderaurus thank you for the feedback! We separated the keys because that is what most rhythm games to so that your hands rest on the keyboard markings on the home row. The one thing we forgot to do was to mark the separation between your hands in the play field with a line. So yeah sorry the confusion is our bad :sweat_smile:

bumble 2026-04-25 19:19

@papaver You actually went all in being seemingly the only one to complain about us not keeping scores, trying all the levels AND playing the levels of others :smile: Thank you for your code! I got 98.5% on my first try. I really like the 'alien'-like shapes you created with our limited 6x6 grid :fire:

egrassah 2026-04-25 19:39

Nice concept, and i like the art ! i struggled to press the keys at the right time hahaha

coderaurus 2026-04-25 20:45

@bumble All good, especially if the layout is standard for rhythm games :grin:

senso 2026-04-25 23:28

Oh I like this game. Super smart game design ! Art and sound is well executed, super solid entry.

cedaoan 2026-04-26 10:17

Very interesting concept! I didnt understand how to play it at first but figured it out later. It's def innovative, very cool gameplay design!

My code XD: AQAAAAAAAAADDQYGAB4eHgAAHh4eHh4AAD8eMjMePz8zMz8/AD8hISE/AAwMDAAAAAwzMx4AABIzMx4AAB4zMzMeODg4BwcHBwcHODg4Pz8eHgwMPx4MDB4/

gilgadev 2026-04-26 12:38

Awesome concept. At first i didn't understand how to play it, because i was expecting a regular rhythm game where the keys slide up / down to the mark to be pressed. Great game!

nondev 2026-04-26 12:40

It took me a while to get what was going on and not have my brain frazzled, but once I got it it was very compelling! Really neat idea for the theme. I'm not great at rhythm style games, but bumbled my way through. Such a nice job!

bumble 2026-04-26 16:16

@cedaoan thank you for your code! It is always interesting to see which icons made people struggle the most AND then trying myself not to struggle with whatever icon was created from your struggle :smile: (I got a 99.15% :fire:)

aurel300 2026-04-26 19:31

Fun game! I wish there was a 100 BPM track, since 80 feels a bit too easy and 120 still a tiny bit too hectic. In particular I wish there wasn't as much stuff obstructing the next signal during countdown -- there is the previous cloud fading out, the letters + line underneath adding some noise, and the 3, 2, 1 countdown distracting while this is going on ^^

lehmy 2026-04-27 10:37

@aurel300 Yeah, we had a 100 BPM track in the pipeline, but as it always happens, there was too much else to do to add the track in time. (We don't want to add it after the fact since the jam time is over. (Might add it after the voting is done.))

Same goes for the visual clutter a bit more time to polish this up would have been nice. Thanks for playing and for the feedback :smile:

aniretti 2026-04-27 18:33

a very interesting game with unique gameplay! i had to play a few rounds to figure it out. it was a bit confusing when to press the keys, and also that you had to hold them down, not just press them. but once you figure it out, the gameplay really opens up! it's cool that you even added some customization options

pipetto 2026-04-28 09:35

The idea is really cool, although my fingers aren’t used to this kind of key layout at all

zathnic 2026-04-28 18:08

Unique concept for a rhythm game, with a nice presentation! Once I understood that you need to hold the keys, not just press, it felt quite natural

ao-85 2026-05-07 01:27

Nice theme interpretation, which is also used for the gameplay. I like that. I also like that you put in a score system and that there are different difficulties implemented.

sarah 2026-05-08 15:35

This is very cute! I like the graphics and overall feel to the game. It's light and happy but it's challenging to get right each time. I did struggle with getting both hands to work together in this particular key setup but once I got the hang of it, it was really fun. Great work!