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Boris' Big Day's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio | #9 | 4.348 | 4.348 |
| Game Design | #100 | 3.870 | 3.870 |
| Fun | #125 | 3.783 | 3.783 |
| Overall | #131 | 3.721 | 3.721 |
| Innovation | #157 | 3.696 | 3.696 |
| Graphics | #245 | 3.804 | 3.804 |
| Theme | #982 | 2.826 | 2.826 |
Ranked from 46 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
In what way does your game fit the theme?
You have to help Boris succeed with his piano performance by collecting green notes and encouraging him with kind words, while also avoiding foul notes that negatively affect his performance! Only through teamwork and friendship can you succeed! :)
Did you write all the code yourself and made all the assets from scratch?
All assets are made by me, including sound and sprites.
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Comments
Poure Boris, His perfomanse was a failure :D
Fun game, Boris can play better than I :)
Scary character) But nice take on piano roll game! It is actually hard to play I should say.
Very good game! Soundtrack is one of the best in this jam! Art and font is good, some pixels are misplaced, but you barely notice it. Fits the theme, and it is very fun. Tutorial is not big fat wall of text, so I (and most other people) didn't had a problem understanding the game. It is nice that you have random spawning system and notes aren't the same speed. Green notes aren't too common and too rare. Movement feels very responsive and player isn't slopping like a fish all around.
Because of the thumbnail, I thought that the game is gonna be kinda creepy, but nice Boris' perfomance caught me. Interesting game idea and music! Loved it, bro!
Well done <3
Fun and challenging game!
Visuals were great and worked well during gameplay. As someone who is colorblind your shades of red and green worked great for me. Boris looks great!
Big props to the sound and music! Kept me going and excited to try and finish the game. As another user mentioned, having some indication of progression would be nice, as I also thought it was an infinite game.
Gameplay was pretty solid. I love this balancing act of keeping the audience happy while also retrieving words of encouragement to keep the ever-increasing stress levels down. Without having the two, I think the game wouldn't have been as challenging (and depending who the player is, not as fun).
I did find myself getting close to the words of encouragement and hitting spacebar, but not registering the hit. Of course, I may not have been close enough to it. Is there a reason for needing to hit spacebar to get the words of encouragement? Was this to add variety to the gameplay?
I did wish player movement was slightly faster compared to the notes. Seeing a green note pass me and trying to chase it upward proved to be hopeless. It looks like this is something you noticed as well based on other comments, and I think it's definitely worth trying to tweak.
Overall great job!
If you happen to have someone to play a local co-op with, check out my game for an asymmetric gameplay experience.
I'm glad you liked it! :)
The reasons I chose to make the player have to hit spacebar to collect the wordboxes are twofold:
If the collection is not getting detected it might be a collider issue, I'll look into it. In the meantime, though, I can tell you that the game checks for the spacebar being held down, not for it being pressed. So you could theoretically play the entire game with the spacebar held down, or more realistically, hold it down a bit before you reach the wordbox. That might help. :)
As you say, player speed could use a boost and a progress bar would be nice. It's in my list of planned fixes.
Thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback!
Forgot to put a hint in during the opening dialogue as to what to do when first gaining control of the player. I'll definitely try making the intro more clear after the ratings are over, but until then all people can really do is trial and error. I value any feedback I can get, though!
Also, the context for how it fits the theme can be seen in the intro dialogue or summarized in the description of the game. Thanks for playing!
Very cool game! I lost my first few times, but quickly got the hang of it! My only suggestion would be a bar that shows the overall song progress, because towards the end of the song, I was nervous that it was an infinite game.
Good idea, should be easily implemented. I'll look into it when ratings are over! Thanks for playing! :)
Very interesting game! A bit spooky but also kinda cute? lmfao I really liked giving words of encouragement to Boris
I love Boris! :)
Sorry, i didnt really enjoy this game because of its difficulty and got annoyed. Otherways, well polished, with great graphics and idea!
It would be nice if you could rate my game too :)
I'm sorry to hear that. I've had a lot of people saying it's difficult, but when you're the one making the game you eventually know it like the back of your hand which makes play testing really hard. I have a lot of things I want to fix after the ratings are over and I can edit again, and implementing difficulty modes might be something I could see to. I'm glad you liked the concept though. Thanks for the feedback! :)
Really nice concept! The only idea id have to improve it was, if the hands would move to where the notes are spawned/played, but that might be hard to achieve without looking weird.
It was a fun play, great job!
The hands are currently running on static animations that just loop over and over again. Since the notes are randomized and are spawned pretty fast it would probably make the hands really janky if I pulled them towards where the notes appear. I was however originally planning on integrating a midi system where the notes being player are the actual notes being played in the song. It made it a bit too easy, but I might be able to do something with it in the future that could possibly support your idea of moving the hands appropriately.
In any case, thanks for playing and I'm glad you liked it! :)
I am not very good at this game, but it's a great concept. The words of encouragement are a wonderful little mechanic and I would love to see a wider variety of them. Making the notes a bit more distinct from each other would also probably be good just in case someone is colourblind. Still, lots of fun!
Variety is always good. I just have an array of phrases and it picks a random index each time, so I'd just have to add more phrases to it. The wordboxes automatically fit to the content, so it's an easy fix. Colorblind modes are also something to consider, I'll look into it when ratings are over!
Thanks for the feedback and thanks for playing! :)
Great game with a super catchy music! The difficulty is just right, not too little to make it boring, not too much to make it frustrating. However, the I found the link to the theme a bit too weak, but that doesn't stop it from being a great game.
Great game with a super catchy music! The difficulty is just right, not too little to make it boring, not too much to make it frustrating. However, the I found the link to the theme a bit too weak, but that doesn't stop it from being a great game.
Glad you enjoyed it!
The link to the theme is definitely more story related than gameplay related. Although there is a bit of it in the gameplay as well, what with collecting wordboxes to encourage him and bring down his stress level etc.
In any case, thanks for the feedback and thanks for playing! :)
Boris is a pretty chill guy even with the audience booing him. Narc? probably no. But happy? Yeah. I had fun!
Oh, that's cool! Thanks for the showcase! :)
Boris has achieved the ultimate level of happiness.
That was some pretty spunky music. I really like the overall setting of this game. There's a lot of charm in helping a skeleton ease up during his performance while you're dodging piano keys. I also like how you added in the green keys and the words of encouragement boxes, because they incentivize players to actually move around instead of standing in one spot.
The gameplay itself does get somewhat repetitive after a while since the keys move in the same direction. Maybe add some horizontal or diagonal moving bullets, but that wouldn't really make sense with the piano aesthetic. I would decrease the speed of the green keys though, because oftentimes I would chase them but they'd exit the screen before I could collect them.
Great job on the game overall, I really like the song!
I'm glad you liked the song, it was a blast to make! :)
Decreasing the velocity of the green notes is a good idea. After playing it a few times since the submission deadline I've realized that I think the player moves way too slowly as well, and when editing is enabled again I'll probably upload an update with a greater player velocity (if it feels like an improvement when play testing). These two fixes should help mitigate the issue.
Being repetitive is also something I'll try to do something about. I have some ideas that don't break the piano concept, but I had to balance making the game with university, so I didn't have the time to make anything too advanced.
Thanks for the feedback, and thanks for playing! :D
I really liked the game. The music was nice and the gameplay was fun. I liked the words of encouragement and Boris's personality. This was a really good game!
Really clever/terrifying/smart game, the artstyle reminds me of undertale quite a bit especially with the heart player icon, very challenging and addictive game and very well explained mechanics and what to do/how to play. Great game overall, gave me nightmares :) 5 stars across the board ^-^
https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-5/rate/927683
This game was amazing! I really liked how it made the UI made it clear if I collected green, white, or red notes. I think something you can do is add a green screen pulse when you collect a green note and the same thing for a red one. I really liked the dialogue Boris has when you collect words of encouragement. The song is also amazing, I love when it reaches the part where a bunch of notes just fly out of the piano, it's overwhelming but not overwhelming enough to frustrate em. Overall, I think it's very fun :)
I was thinking I might make the player sprite flash green when collecting the green notes to make it more obvious. It might be a bit disruptive to make the entire screen pulse green, especially considering how much is going on around the player at the same time.
Thanks for the feedback, though, and I'm glad you enjoyed it! :)