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Song Bird's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Sound / Music | #1 | 4.095 | 4.095 |
| Innovation / Originality | #2 | 4.381 | 4.381 |
| Overall | #6 | 3.524 | 3.524 |
| Graphics | #9 | 3.762 | 3.762 |
| Game Design | #12 | 3.286 | 3.286 |
| Gameplay / Fun | #29 | 2.714 | 2.714 |
| Theme | #31 | 2.905 | 2.905 |
Ranked from 21 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
The player has one day (timed) to complete the game. On top of that, once the player figures out the melodies, they must input the correct notes at the correct time in order to progress. The idea of the game is that different birds across day/night and throughout the seasons will teach you songs. Given that this was made from scratch in 7 days though, I could only implement daytime of one season for this submission.
Did you use any assets?
No - everything in the game (programming, music, art, etc) is my own creation, specifically for this jam.
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Comments
Congratulations, you made it to the 6th place!
I'll write to you via Discord, so you can let me know, if you want me to send some free stickers to you! :)
Cool! Thanks again for hosting the jam :D
I love the idea and presentation! Cool idea and submission. Too bad I suck at it, haha! Maybe make it easier in the beginning or do something tutorial-y?
Thank you!
Yeah, if I continue work on this game I definitely plan to make it more accessible both in difficulty and actually implementing a proper tutorial.
I'm fascinated about your idea and the Design!
Thank you :)
So cool that you were able to make such a unique game in such a short period of time. I love the overall presentation of the game. If you continue development I would maybe suggest an easier onboarding tutorial. I struggled with the controls. Still, amazing work for such a short time.
Thank you!
I do plan to continue development and implement tutorials as well as other tweaks to make it more accessible.
So cool that you were able to make such a unique game in such a short period of time. I love the overall presentation of the game. If you continue development I would maybe suggest an easier onboarding tutorial. I struggled with the controls. Still, amazing work for such a short time.
I love it! Very impressed, and very pleased with playing this. I would play endless stages of this, why not? It reminds me of all the educational games my piano teacher had on her computer. This game is great for musicians!
Playing by ear is fun. The trick/challenge, to me, is figuring out the Game Boy controls. Once you expand with more stages you could keep things even fresher by changing up the controls for a whole new challenge! But you'd probably want a clear break in the narrative of the game - "the character is playing using a different instrument now", or something.
Great idea! That would be a good break to change the tone of the instrument as well and perhaps apply a more complex and capable control setup like the one that juzek mentioned in the comments here.
That's nice to hear that it reminded you of the educational games - your game reminded me of my time I got to spend learning the basics of an old apple IIe when I was young (not a GUI system like the one in your game but still a similar experience).
Were you able to figure out either or both of the melodies in this game (or maybe get them by chance)? I do plan to do a longer version of this game with day and night as well as multiple seasons with different tunes, but after the feedback I've received here I am considering making it a longer and more drawn out experience. That will give ample time to ease the player in as well as get good use out of the mechanics.
Thank you for your engagement with the game and the feedback; much appreciated :)
Thank you for checking it out :)
I agree; I'm going to do some testing and see how I can strike that balance of accessible but not too easy. Definitely needs to be more accessible right now though hahah
And I'm glad you enjoy DE '22! I'm looking to do a 2.0 update for that soon ;)
I really liked the originality and art for this game!
I'm not a musician, so it took me awhile to grasp the controls and figure out what note I needed to hit (I was playing on keyboard).
I was able to get one of the bird melodies, but that was through messing with controls and getting it by accident. When I saw the scene with the melody's notes and practiced with that I was able to figure out the melody and controls better in the next playthrough.
The conversation in the comments remind me of a video I watched from 8 Bit Music Theory (while trying to learn music theory) about how Koji Kondo wrote the LoZ: Ocarina of Time music with N64 system restrictions and the goal of gamifying music to be played with the c-pad and A and B buttons.
Having a tutorial showing each button and their corresponding note might help visual learners like me pick up the controls.
Thank you for the kind words, I am glad your enjoyed playing!
I remember watching that 8-Bit Music Theory video way back and thought it was a really interesting and creatively-smart choice Koji Kondo made. His scale is a bit spicier and allows for songs that use notes outside of the standard major key which is great for OoT's atmosphere. Similarly, I wanted to make a practical scale for this game's atmosphere which is much more vanilla, hence sticking with the standard major scale notes.
This game definitely has a lot of additions that can make it more accessible and friendly to all players! I especially want to make sure it is fun for those with little to no musical experience. I appreciate that you spent the time to dive a bit deeper into it despite its currently more vague state!
Thank you for the feedback :)
Hi I am a musician and I found it very interesting. Maybe an easy tuto before playing to learn where are the notes.
Thank you for playing!
Yes, I plan to have a proper tutorial and introduction to the controls in a more developed version.
I'm curious, as a musician, how easy or hard did you find it to hear the bird melodies? Were you able to play back the two melodies and win?
This game is very original. the idea of playing music along birds in the forest is great, and the graphics are really pretty and set the mood perfectly.
A couple of things made the game very hard for me. mainly, the birds sing too often so it was hard to figure out what notes i was playing, as many times it would overlap with the birds. maybe longer periods of silence between each instance of the bird singing could make it easier for the player to practice and be able to try different progressions.
Also I found the learning curve too steep for me, i think the second combination was way more complex and fast-paced than the first.
It's a great concept, that probably could benefit from being easier in the beginning and progressing to more challenging progressions.
Thank you, I appreciate the kind words and the feedback!
It's very helpful to hear your experience with it; these are all concerns I had while making it and figured they would need tweaking for future versions. In general, I definitely plan to implement tutorial sections and ramp it up in a full game. They player is certainly tossed into the deep end right now!
While deciding on the tempo of the bird songs for the jam, I wanted to make them faster in order to sound more like actual bird calls and therefore help add to the atmosphere. But, in the interest of not going completely fashion over function, I put the songs at different octaves as well to hopefully help make the tune more easy to grab on to (though, I realize that this could also make it sound like there are more melodies than there actually are). I will experiment and try to make them fast enough to sound like birds but slow enough to be practical!
For the timing of how often the birds sing, my goal was to not have the player need to wait too long to hear the tune again, especially since you don't have all day (literally) to learn it. But hearing that you felt it was too fast, I'm definitely going to look at extending the wait times!
I'd love to know if you're a musician or are a very active music listener? I showed this game to some people who have a developed musical ear (but don't read notation) and they seemed to be able to hear and replicate the appropriate pitches (not without some difficulty). I feel that it's very tough right now even if you have a developed ear, so I'm trying to figure out what people's experience with this game are like in relation to their experience with music.
Thank you again for the in-depth feedback!
Yay, I got to practice my aural skills today. I find the game boy to be a rather unintuitive musical instrument, but this gets full points from me on originality! Cool concept
Thank you! I'm glad it was a fresh experience :D
I want to build it out and make it a little bit more accessible than it is now, but regardless, it would involve learning the gameboy as a pseudo instrument. I designed the specific button layout to have the 6 buttons be a pentatonic F major scale. Then I chose to make the major third and octave of the scale be the A and B buttons so that you can raise and lower those notes by a half step by holding down Up or Down on the d-pad in combination with them. By choosing those two scale degrees, the player can now play a full F major scale as well as play the minor third too if they wanted.
Sorry if that's a bit too much in-the-weeds info, I just had a lot of fun designing it and am excited to talk about it!
From my experience with the accordion, I would recommend making the D pad the major triad + octave, because you can only push one at a time, but it's fast and easy to spin, have the b button change the d pad to the major 4th chord, and the a button the major 5th. You can cover the whole scale that way, while still being fast and intuitive. Let the select button switch everything to the relative minor, and the start button turn on and off a simple drum machine.
I love the weeds.
Well hot damn!
That'd certainly be getting a huge range out of the unit. For this game I'd ideally want it to be as accessible as possible while still being involved with actual music and not totally just hitting buttons and hearing sounds (though, a somewhat developed musical ear is necessary for replicating the notes that the birds sing so that would have to be made a bit easier I think). Your idea would definitely help it be a more comprehensive musical tool/toy, but for what I have in mind right now, I think it might tip the scales to be a bit too complex on that front.
Ultimately I figured that the single scale of from F to F (F# if you raise that octave note, but that's a pretty useless note unfortunately as I don't plan on doing any flat 9 chords) is the best option. By having each button be a single note, I thought it's easier to remember the controls. And the only notes that are not a single button are hopefully intuitive since the player is pressing up or down to raise or lower that note's pitch.
Having A and B switch the the 4 and 5 triads+octaves would be more easily grasped for musicians, but I think it would be a bit tough to understand if the player doesn't know any music theory. Musicians would know how those notes are relative to not only the chord but the key as well and would have an easier time grasping what combinations are needed for a melody, but I imagine non-musicians would be confused as to how to put those all together. Regardless of musical familiarity, having the range of notes from say F4 all of the way up to C6 would invite a wide range of melodic options and anyone would be hard pressed to learn all of those different combinations, especially when 2/3 of the available playable notes are a combination of two buttons.
Keeping the available notes (mostly) contained in the octave allow for a set of less overwhelming (though certainly more restrictive) options. I imagine it'd be more comfortable for newcomers seeing as there isn't a plethora of puzzle pieces in front of them when attempting to hear what notes the birds are singing. And as a musician, this octave restriction certainly made for a more challenging writing task! I wrote out the melodies and counter point for the fully designed game where the player learns new melodies during the day and night of each season (day is melody, night is the counterpoint).
Since we are well in the weeds at this point, I'll post the notation of the composition here below so you can see what I mean. I tried my best to replicate the melodic lines from actual birds of the respective seasons.
Ideally, if I had all of the time in the world to make this game, the family band would play together and would play all of the parts that the player is able to learn during the timeframe. A hastily put together version of this was made for the end credits song of the jam version of this game. So if you got to the end, this is the song that plays:
Ooh yeah, you are right to keep it more simple and accessible for this game, I was going off to try and instrumentify the Game Boy, but that would be much better as a separate thing. I don't imagine the changing chords being too unintuitive, take a look at bisonoric accordions which produce a different chord with the same buttons depending on the direction of the bellows.
Anyway, all theoretical here, but I bet you could massage a part of your code from this to make something more for musicians if you'd like.
Thanks for your excitement, it made me happy.
I agree, I think that'd be a great way to make it more of a true instrument - I think something like that would be really cool to have as a fully dedicated tool with swappable sounds! I'm not involved in the gameboy music scene but I know that it's pretty hardcore so I'd imagine there's a lot of neat stuff out there already.
Likewise, thanks for discussing the nitty gritty with me! :D
I don’t know why but I can’t hear any music or sounds when I try to play it and when I play other things right before I can hear them. The game looks really charming and I’d love to try it with the music, I’m going to try it another way before I score it but I just wondered if anyone else has had any issues hearing the sounds in the game?
Thank you for your interest!
When this happened, were you playing in browser on a mobile device? I have no idea why this happens, but the sound seems to not work on mobile (a computer or a GBC should work fine). I had issues with it on mobile but I always seem to have issues with itchio on mobile so I thought it was just me! Thanks for letting me know, I updated the game page to reflect this.
Fun game, also i love the sound and music design!
Thank you for playing! I'm glad you liked it.
So it's very well done, it's very beautiful and poetic, but I'm French and I don't know the system of musical notation indicated ( we are "do, ré,mi , fa , sol , la , si" 😅 ). However I like this game very much, even if I really don't have a musical ear :) . Big sound performance to propose this during a week long jam !
As my game, I think it deserves a mode for "blind people" ? Your game would lend itself well in any case !
Very poetic in any case, I love it!
Thank you for playing, I'm glad that you enjoyed it!
Knowing musical notation technically doesn't matter for this game. The notes that you play do show up on screen, but you are not required to know if the note is "F" (or in the case of solfège for F major, "Do"). It is just there as a visual aid to help see the progression of pitches that the player inputs. Even the rhythm test of the melody has a scale below that shows the controls for each note, so in the case that the player completely forgot what notes they played to unlock that melody, they can visually match it up using that diagram. No need to know what the notes are called or anything (though familiarity definitely helps I would imagine).
I think that the visual impairment mode is a great idea and is wonderful that you included it in your game! For mine, a person needs to hit [START] or [A] twice before getting to the game, but after that, no visuals are needed! There are auditory cues that suggest progression to a new scene. However, for the rhythm test part, I should probably make the downbeat on the metronome sound effect be a unique indicative tone. Otherwise, this game was made with the idea of purely receiving necessary information through audio.
PS - nice lime green GameBoy!!
I hope that you will propose a version completely for blind people one day then, as said, your game lends itself perfectly to it :) . Thank you for the Game Boy Color which has been with me for many years now :D
This was really lovely. Quite mindful and I was reminded of games like proteus when playing. It's a unique concept, certainly something different.
It took me a while to figure out what I needed to do. Perhaps there are too many notes to start. It would be nice to deal with say 3 or 4 as a first session so that it's not too complicated while the player figures out what is required of them. I managed to guess the second song because I was struggling to figure out what I had to do and resorted to button mashing. I would chalk that up to too many notes to choose from before I comprehended what was required of me fully. So polishing the difficulty progression is something to consider. But it's a really wonderful little title. Very relaxing and playful. Great work, as always from you.
Thank you very much :)
As always, your in-depth feedback is very much appreciated!
This is my first time hearing of Proteus, but upon a quick google search I can see what you mean.
I was concerned that my game was going to be too overwhelming and vague for players (as well as tough to properly hear which notes are being sung by the birds) and should I develop this game further, I'd want to really focus on easing the player into it in an accessible way. Your idea about a few notes to start with is great! Ideally I can strike a balance of teaching the player in an accessible way without making it too simple / tedious to get through. As is the balance with all game design I suppose!
Thank you again for your comment, I look forward to playing Super Jacked Up Tomato Face Johnson when I play through more jam games today :)
Cool game!
Thank you for playing!
Uh yes, a music game! My main criticism would be that it's hard to memorize the controls.
By nature (no pun intended) of the game, the player is asked to sit with the scene and get familiar with both the sounds and their ability to properly reproduce sounds using the controls. Like you said, that can be a big ask though!
Given that within these seven days I could only build out a proof on concept, I want to build out a bigger game that treats the controls like a new instrument and eases the player into learning them while also making it fun and rewarding instead of an investment to learn.
Thank you for your feedback