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Harmony's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Theme - How well does it incorporate the theme? | #7 | 4.448 | 4.448 |
Overall | #25 | 3.693 | 3.693 |
Audio - Does the game have nice sfx and music? | #42 | 3.638 | 3.638 |
Completeness - Is it an unfinished tech-demo, prototype or a complete game? | #46 | 3.759 | 3.759 |
Gameplay - How fun is it to play? | #77 | 3.224 | 3.224 |
Graphics - Is the game aesthetically pleasing? | #104 | 3.397 | 3.397 |
Ranked from 58 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
You definitely nailed the theme! It was nice to see a more puzzle-focused game here. The only part I struggled with figuring out was when it told me I had to use the yin/yang runes on the sol/moon portals, since they were white and black so I assume they were actually yin/yang portals instead.
I had a good time with it, even though I died a couple times in the combat section because I kept messing up the strafe and turn buttons. My biggest suggestion is that you speed up the text boxes, as they were a bit on the slow side. Also, you got some reflowing issue with how you animated the text boxes (it going to the next line mid word) which, assuming you're using TextMeshPro, you could have used the maxVisibleCharacters property to animate without that issue. Just a minor quibble.
Good work!
Wow! We are so happy to hear you made it to the Mind and Body temples (using the Yin/Yang runes).
Agreed that the slow moving text is definitely an issues. I (the programmer) feel quite bad that I didn’t make it so the text completes with a mouse click.
Also, the game is using the new UI Toolkit and I couldn’t quite figure out the weird scrolling issue but felt it was small enough to just move on.
Thanks again for checking it out AND for playing long enough to fight some skulls :D
It's tricky to balance puzzle games for jams. Some gamers (like me) just aren't likely to get very far, because we're not good at puzzle games.
On the other hand, if you make the game too easy, it won't appeal to people who love puzzle games. It's a dilemma.
Seems like a nicely crafted puzzle game, but I ragequit after the 4th or 5th return to the lobby.
Thanks so much for taking the time to play, rate, and leave a comment! It is very much appreciated <3
We completely understand where you’re coming from. Unfortunately, I (the programmer) failed to make the game approachable. The mechanic is really quite confusing up front and the learning curve is steep with hints that are far too subtle.
Thanks again for checking it out!
Really interesting mechanics in this game with the rune based magic system. It was pretty tough to manage the balance at the beginning but I got the hang of it, and the puzzles were an interesting application of the system. The sound design is also great in this game, the ebb of the background music adds a ton of tension to the dungeon.
The biggest issue for me is that I finally unlocked Yin and Yang runes after figuring out how to balance my energies and use the magic and then accidentally went out of harmony and then spawned outside of the map before I could figure out what to do next! I would have liked to fight some enemies as the ice and fireball spells looked like another interesting extension to the magic system, so I may come back and try again.
Great use of the theme as well.
Really interesting entry with good visuals, unique mechanics, really impactful sound design. Fantastic work!
Thanks not only for taking the time to play, but the time to provide feedback!
The game should automatically track and save the runes you’ve collected and allow you to “Continue” from the title screen. This should work in both web and Windows version. Would love to know if it works for you.
I’d also be very interested to figure out how you spawned outside of the map. I have not yet seen that one.
Unfortunately, it does seem that there is a bug where you can accidentally bring yourself out of harmony using the yin / yang runes to restore other elements. There is supposed to be a check to prevent it but, for some reason, it doesn’t work.
Thanks again for playing, I hope you will have a chance to fight the enemies in the Temple of Mind!
Ahh it did save my progress, nice! I was able to get through to the next area. I'll give it another go.
Here is a screenshot of the bug where I was out of the map:
Thanks for the screenshot! It looks like you’re stuck casting a spell as well (thus the “You lose concentration…” over and over in the bottom left.).
Much appreciated!
Glad to hear your progress was saved :D
Good luck with the rest of your journey in purgatory <3
An absolute gem of a game and one of the most commited to implementing the theme. This is honestly impressing.
The start was a hard balancing act but I love how little handholding there is, despite how cryptic the game looks. Reading the spellbooks gives all the tools needed to understand how to approach each puzzles and encounter, it's absolutely lovely how you made such a complex system without needing a tutorial.
Movement feels great, the camera position and fov are expertly set up, this is one of the very best in this regards. I did feel that the game lacked some landmarks to make exploation easier, the minimap never showed for more than a few step and getting to the latter parts required quite a bit of memorizing (or drawing an actual paper map).
Nothing too major but I also though it would be better if our energies harmonized by themselves after every death, I kept forgetting to re-harmonize when respawning and ended up dying quite a few time when going back through the portals.
Fantastic entry overall, top notch on every aspect.
Wow! Thank you so much for not only taking the time to play our entry but also provide such a lovely response.
We are well aware that the beginning is quite cryptic and confusing but are very happy to hear that you were able to figure it out (sorry for all the reading!).
Very glad to hear you enjoyed the camera positioning as it was not as trivial as some might think.
I hope the lack of mini-map was not too frustrating; it is definitely something that should have been added or at least been an easy click on / off option.
The energies harmonizing on death is definitely something that should have been added. You are not the first person to not harmonize before re-entering the portals.
Once again, thank you so much for taking the time! We truly appreciate it <3
Great game, took some time to learn all the spells, but when I figured it out it came natural what next spell combination will be.
Not without bugs, obviously, but I want to point them out, as maybe they're specific to my machine config. First of all text flickers on Safari, making it unreadable. On Chrome game runs fine, except that some of the effects and enemies are missing when you go to the second portals in Sun and Lun. Like after killing enemies in the second portal Lun portal they still shoot at you once or twice.
But overall I really liked how you need to keep track of a balance of dualities and how you solve puzzles with clever use of relevant spells.
Thank you so much for sharing this feedback. It is greatly appreciated. I thought that no one would make it to the second Lun / Sol portals as the beginning of the game was too confusing. I’m glad efforts were not wasted in creating those areas :)
I also appreciate the feedback regarding Safari, this must be a Unity WebGL build issue but I’ll investigate further.
With the enemies missing, is this only after having defeated them? This was sadly a quick hack to just get them to not appear the second time. I’m glad there was nothing game breaking.
Again, thank you so much for playing. We appreciate you <3
I'll describe in more details how do I get to invisible enemies and invisible effects/closed gates.
I went to the second area, did part of the job (opened one of the gates or defeated one of the enemies) and then went out of balance, returning to the necromancer. Then if you proceed to the second area you'll get an invisible enemy or a closed gate (which is actually open, you can go through it). Though enemy seems to attack me only once/twice, it was relatively safe.
Loved the fight with Sol (Lun is similar I guess?). I panicked several times during a fight, keeping a constant look at the balance and where the enemy is now, but eventually I've beaten it.
Fantastic! I’m glad you were able to beat the game. The fight with Lun is (unfortunately) identical with a swap out of textures. There is also a third ending you can get by freeing the Necromancer from purgatory.
Thanks again for playing, makes all the effort feel worth it :)
Oh, there's a third ending? I will try to figure it out after voting will end (still need to rate quite a lot of games).
It took me a while to get used to this but I did enjoy the unexpected ways I was solving puzzles. Like flying over spikes and the such. The mood was very strong.
Thank you so much for taking the time to play the game! We know it is a bit confusing at the beginning and appreciate your perseverance in reading and learning how the game mechanic works.
That's an amazing level of polish for a jam game, I getting strong Myst vibes, which I love. It took me some time (and reading the comments) to get the hang of it, but once I did, I had a great time.
Thank you so much for playing!
Very glad to hear someone mention Myst. Definitely a huge inspiration for this entry. Glad the reading didn’t deter you away from picking up the spell casting mechanic. We know it is a lot at the beginning.
Beautiful game! I love the ambient morphing music, especially the cello section, music and art worked well together. Loved the ambience of the background art. The text moved at a fairly natural speed for me (good internet) and enjoyed the puzzle basis in the story and interaction.
Thank you so much for playing, the team greatly appreciates your time <3
We are happy you enjoyed the game and music! Also quite happy that you didn’t find the text annoying. We will have to find a better balance on future entries.
The rune concept has some potential, casting the spells to float over the spikes or the density spell to trigger pressure plates is very crawler like.
All in all its an interesting combination of a rune system and retro crawler elements.
Any plans on extending this?
Thank you so much for playing, we appreciate it very much <3
We actually have a ton more story which we would love to implement but not sure how much time we will have to dedicate / interest may fade.
At the very least, we are planning to release a slightly cleaned up version after the voting period with two introductory areas (one for acquiring the sun run and one for acquiring the moon rune).
I actually had 4 more areas drawn and planned out which included a rage / calm rune areas. I would love to implement them… but no promises.
Thanks again for playing :D
Hey Captain, I played your game :)
Overall, a great idea and execution and definitely deserves further development and more versions <3
Wow! Thank you so much for the kind words, it is truly appreciated. We are glad you enjoyed the game.
Definitely will add an auto-map feature / option in future entries… as much as I hate them. :P
I’m glad it ran well on your system! I would like to give all the credit to Unity’s ability to compile to Web Assembly rather than javascript.
I'm really impressed with this one!
Thanks for playing! We appreciate it :D
I really like the concept of keeping yourself in balance to be able to progress as well as the fuel for various spells and abilities!
I don’t mind needing to sit down and read for a bit. Only thing I’d change would be maybe a fast-forward type of button / “hold down this key” to make it go faster, kind of thing.
Controls were snappy and I enjoyed being thrown in a maze to figure out what’s going on! My favorite aspect would definitely be the rune collection and later combination for different abilities. That alone fleshed out into a larger game would be really fun to play!
Thanks for taking the time to play! We appreciate it very much. Definitely agree that there needs to be an option to click to have the text speed up / finish.
We’re glad you enjoyed the concept and we hope it wasn’t too frustrating.
Nice concept! One thing that occurred to me ... for future versions, it would be cool to be able to have a setting for turning off animated "self typing" text, if you know what I mean?
Thanks for playing!
Yes… I am quite sad that I didn’t add such a simple feature. It would have been quite simple to make the text appear on the first click.
Very nice! The spell system is interesting, if a bit confusing due to the two-way casting order and it was also hard for me to remember the spell costs or other requirements, resulting in a lot of trial and error. I managed to get the two runes in each portal, then continue into an enhanced portal to reach the puzzle with those ring pedestals, but at this point I'm starting to lose interest due to the complexity (if you can call it that) to try simple things, and I'm not hooked enough to continue playing.
Even though I lost interest, it's a very solid entry! Good job :D
Thanks for taking the time to get to the second section of puzzles! I honestly didn’t think anyone would make it that far given the amount of frustration it would take to get past the first areas.
That said, I do agree that the two-way casting is too confusing. In a future iteration (assuming one ever comes) that will be removed for a simpler set of spells.
Thanks again for playing, it is much appreciated <3
It took me some time to understand how I am supposed to play (not dying right away because its a darkness / light zone). But then I could proceed much smoother. I didn't mind the texts, its nice to have a story. Music and sound is nice. The maze was a little bit disorientating for me. There is a map, but only for a few seconds. :D I was constantly spamming this spell at the start.
I liked how there was some thought behind the rune-puzzles. If you like reading and puzzles, its enjoyable. :)
Thanks for taking the time to figure it out! We know the beginning is not easy / intuitive. Perhaps a “map” button should be added… I am just too big of a fan of original dungeon crawlers to even want a built in map at all :P Guess the programmer should have listened to the team mates who said there should be an on screen mini-map.
Extremely difficult for a casual gamer like me! But it compels me to try again and again which is a good thing! Congratulations on living through the jam!
Ha! Thanks for giving it a try. Definitely needs to have a bit of an intro to teach the mechanic. Perhaps we will have time after the jam to clean it up.
Check out my live review at https://www.twitch.tv/scalphamission
Thank you so much for taking the time to play and also taking the time to figure out the puzzle mechanics! I know the game is a bit confusing.
Fun Game, I think the text speed is fine but maybe I am a slower reader. I do agree with other comments I think there is a lot of reading involved just to play the game.
Thank you so much for taking the time to check it out! We appreciate the feedback :)
Hope you enjoyed the game!
Way too much text for a gamjam submission, I don't really want to HAVE to read an essay to play your game. The text scroll is also way too slow.
Music and sfx are great.
Your harmony time limit is way too short. I get like 10 moves into the labyrinth and then have to start over.
Thank you so much for checking it out! As per usual, my ambition is far too great for a game jam game making the mechanic far too complex for such a short project.
That said, if you happen to give it another shot, bet sure to click on the statues in the starting room to collect the Sun and Moon runes which give you access to spells that protect you in the labyrinth: The light spell protects you in the dark portal and the shade spell protects you in the light portal.
There is also a map spell (Harmony -> Sun) or (Harmony -> Moon) which will allow you to get through the labyrinth much easier and on to the next two sections (Body and Mind temples).
What is it with this game and vibrators?
A lovely entry. I get where it is trying to go. If I had more time to dedicate to it, I am certain I would figure it all out and get more traction than I did.
Thank you so much for taking the time to play. Hope you enjoyed the good vibrations ;)