FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD59 → Finnicky Fourier Toy

Finnicky Fourier Toy

By nathmate

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall1273.5464
Fun1843.1565
Innovation683.7166
Theme194.3764
Graphics2083.1365
Humor1642.2654
Mood2462.7959

Comments

2026-04-19 19:54

Funny to play for a while!

absolute-garbage 2026-04-20 02:30

This is fun. Initially I was like I feel I know what I'm doing but I can't eyeball the result, then I realized I did not connect the other end of the cable to the device lol. I played twice and both times the game got stuck after the second match (maybe a browser issue). Fun game! I really want to try the logic gates.

kzw 2026-04-20 02:45

It's a fun idea and the controls are intuitive, unfortunately my game also froze after the second match and I wasn't able to see the other levels.

nathmate 2026-04-20 04:04

@absolute-garbage @kzw Whoops itch didn't have the final version, fixed now.

tolviere 2026-04-20 11:39

I had kind of a similar idea to this for my game, but I decided pretty quickly that I couldn't handle anything beyond sin waves. I can't even get past level three so I think I was right 😓 I love zachtronic-like games though, so I'll probably come back to this eventually.

fredrik-andersson 2026-04-20 11:50

Holy sawtooth, if this is not the perfect game for this theme, I don't know what is! Ingenious!

oadt 2026-04-20 12:17

A fun interface to experiment with, but I also had problems getting past level three :sweat_smile: Maybe some explanation on what the gates do would be nice (I was able to derive some things from logic gates, but would be nice to know how they apply to curve exactyl)

nathmate 2026-04-20 12:36

@oadt @tolviere I would've liked to tutorialise each of the components instead of dumping them all at once, but I also intended to leave it a bit mysterious to encourage playing around with them. It's a hard line to balance. I'll add a hint for three to the Itch page.

@fredrik-andersson Thank you! I was originally going to have a sawtooth as one of the base generators, but then realised how silly that would be.

bereg 2026-04-20 13:31

Interesting concept. I never thought I’d end up playing an oscilloscope simulator. Hook coin payouts to the graph’s peaks and you’ve got an incremental game! I enjoyed it.

frowsyfrog 2026-04-20 14:14

I liked it! It’s a fun game that uses the theme in a creative way! Having sounds would have been great, though it might’ve driven me crazy! XD Great job!

akihirof 2026-04-20 14:29

Good game!

mrmastin 2026-04-20 14:44

I played this to long because I got stuck on 4 puzzle and was surprised that it wasn't round+triangular wave lol. I like this game

0x0961h 2026-04-20 14:51

I would say that is a very nice take on such a puzzle. My biggest critique is that connecting devices together doesn't feel _that_ good. I think that "borrowing" the idea from Unreal Engine's blueprints could be a better way for allowing a quicker iteration and snappier controls. Also not gonna lie, also the second puzzle already like threw me off, because the wave looked weird and I had no idea that that new tool is a modulator. Labels on knobs would also be nice!

With that said, I really like the premise of the game. It could be a very nice puzzle if you will continue working on it, but even if not, it's very well done within the time limits of the jam. Good job!

kristinamay 2026-04-20 15:12

this is a really cool game! I can't get past the second level, it looks to me like I have it correct but ... red lights all around and no amount of slight tweaking was slight enough to get me there! in any case, I love Shenzhen I/O so I loved this. I played it for way longer than I intended. I mean, I did a bad job, but lol I had fun doing it!

Screenshot 2026-04-20 111046.png

manabreak 2026-04-20 15:20

Cool! I was just a bit too tired to play this one and gave up on the second level. :D The wires were a bit wonky to attach, but it was just enough fun that it didn't really bother me. Nice work. :)

richjbaron 2026-04-20 19:49

Really great concept! I found the knobs super finnicky but otherwise quite liked it. The knobs could've used some labels too bc I spent a lot of time ruining my correct settings lol. Great entry!

tenthousandfireants 2026-04-20 20:27

Absolutely fun to play! really cool ideas had to make me think it was deceptively easy at first, the next signals i had to match were more difficult lol

maggardjosh 2026-04-20 21:45

I love Zachtronics games! This is really impressive, unfortunately my brain couldn't make it past the second level :sweat_smile: The knobs were definitely a little wonky when dragging them, other than that super cool entry well done!

frib 2026-04-20 22:53

It's a lot of trial and error :D I gave up at puzzle 5 as I was getting close, but couldn't get it right, and apparently I needed another extra signal source somewhere in there lol

I love the concept of this game, but my biggest gripes are managing the wires and turning the knobs. I'd rather just click and drag from output to input, instead of having to get the rotation of a connector in the right direction while dodging other potential holes to put it in. And the knobs would sometimes shift an extra step unintentionally. This made controlling the game a bit tedious, but other than that I enjoyed playing around with it :D

Great job!

nathmate 2026-04-21 01:19

@frib UI is always a weak point of mine. I wanted it to be skeumorphic as well which does also decrease the user experience on top of my weakness in that area. The wires don't actually need to be oriented correctly to connect, that's purely visual, the hitboxes to connect them might be a bit too small however.

@maggardjosh @richjbaron I did notice the knob step-skip in dev and made it a bit less egregious, but didn't have time to completely prevent the issue occurring. Thanks for playing!

2026-04-21 03:35

It was fun! Only thing that the controls were kinda finnicky and sometimes jumped to random different places, so it was a bit frustrating, the graphics were a bit lacking, but other than that cool! I enjoyed the puzzle of it all!

roboolet 2026-04-21 05:45

The controls are a little awkward but it's a very interesting game nonetheless. I feel like I learned from playing this.

brolga 2026-04-21 06:07

Fun game frustrating but also addictive a lot of potential to expand options, nice work

jiri-one 2026-04-21 08:08

Cool concept! I think there could be a bit more easy puzzles to get used to the mechanics

brucezoom 2026-04-21 13:39

Really nice implementation of the idea! Here are a few things I noticed while playing. - The wiring is not very responsive. Everytime it took me a few attempts to be able to connect. - The diificulty curve is a bit weird. Many levels feels like just try-and-error and not really a puzzle.

But congratulations on finishing the jam and keep on working!

crowelian 2026-04-21 14:50

Fun game and really cool game!

annie-owl 2026-04-21 15:07

Amazingly polished project, especially for a COMPO game! All the elements are very responsive, and it's fun to just play around with all the elements you have. I do wish you've added sound generation, it would have made the whole experience even more fun :smile:

dywanix 2026-04-21 17:05

cool idea, very enjoyable

avhatar 2026-04-21 17:27

This game is literally smarter than me — I only managed the first oscillation. But the concept is clear and it's all made with care. The sound is what's really missing though. There's something almost primal about it — when you see waveforms on screen, you almost reflexively expect some kind of howling or drone to go with them.

bonedaddy 2026-04-21 17:40

Took me a while to figure out, but this is pretty well done!

stormsword 2026-04-21 20:14

Really cool idea ! My IQ is not high enough to enjoy the game but you did a good job :D

lloydlobo 2026-04-22 04:52

Excellent way to show how waveforms interact!! Puzzle 4 was my favorite so far as of writing this (still grinding puzzle 5) - using just one signal to modulate itself and appear like a sine wave was used was mind-blowing!!!

I couldn't figure out stuff past puzzle 2 - the solutions really came in handy (thanks for that!)

This really has the potential to be a great game if you ever plan to extend it post-prod!! Few ideas/feedbacks for those extensions: - What if there were sound or visual feedback initially when getting closer to the target wave? Atleast, in the initial or mid stages as a bonus to the player? - I found a tiny little bug just after level 4. I disconnected the triangle wave signal source first, however, the signal was still transmitting to the output. I was like wow! this remembers stuff like a memory foam thing would do ^_^

Leaving the screenshot for reference, I assume that you know about it and that last minute "finnicky" bug fixes can be handled later nathmate.itch.io_finnicky-fourier-toy.png

someday-not-today 2026-04-22 07:59

nice puzzle with pretty creative idea, some levels wish be in the IQ test :D

kyanoss 2026-04-22 16:27

not bad! the tutorial and game flow is nice

daniserranu 2026-04-22 17:55

I love this idea so much, it's so fun!! It would be so cool to have some ui sound effects to sign when you got it wrong or right. Great work, I hope you can add some audio to it some day!!

fnelix 2026-04-22 22:35

Very cool puzzle game and signal toy! I for one would have liked generative sound. I like the clean simple look and potential for nice puzzles. Also fun to just play around for a bit.

clymm 2026-04-22 23:21

Great concept and loved seeing the screenshots here. I did horribly and didn't get very far sadly. But good job :clap:

nathmate 2026-04-23 04:57

@lloydlobo yes the way the signal-splitter was implemented was a bit hacky which leads to it having memory like that. I did initially want to have a latch-like memory puzzle, but there aren't actually enough features in the game at present for that to have an effect on the resulting waveform.

Also amusingly in dev I got some stack-overflows while testing the splitter to have input from it's own output, which I suppose is as close an analogue to a signal feedback-loop as you can get.

jerrywest 2026-04-23 09:30

This is a very difficult oscilloscope game. It reminds me of the analog signals course I took in college. Perhaps some interesting sound effects could be generated? I wonder how these wave sounds like

joegreen 2026-04-23 10:22

Phew, this is tough. There might be a pattern to it, but for me it just ended up being trial and error until something worked. Awesome variety though!

christina-antoinette-neofotistou 2026-04-24 12:48

So so smart!

commanderstitch 2026-04-25 19:03

We got most of them. There were a lot of different variations to achieve something CLOSE but not correct and that was the most difficult thing for my son and I as we tried to link up the various settings. :-)

thunderklaus 2026-04-26 20:43

The UI is quite nice :-)

btot 2026-04-28 01:04

Pretty fun idea and the matching of signals was a good challenge! Lots of trial and error but overall well done!

holysparks 2026-05-01 17:56

That's so crazy and has so much depth to it... Not my style but an absolutely impressive game nonetheless

deformhead 2026-05-04 15:52

Nice!

It seems like a nightmare to develop this gameplay, especially during a game jam, so good job for that!

I regret a lot the absence of sound design, but the amount of work for the gameplay explains the lack of audio.

Congrats!

jin9310 2026-05-04 19:01

This is amazing. Very nice take on the theme. I am gonna be honest, I have enjoyed the game, well lets say first 2 levels, but I was not brave enough to go further, but that is mainly caused by todays headacke and I dont want to tease my brain any more today :) But very cool, I will definitelly revisit this one. Great job