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A jam submission

TetratonicView game page

You are the melody.
Submitted by Hal9007, sevenextra — 6 minutes, 4 seconds before the deadline
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Tetratonic's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Audio#34.3574.357
Overall#283.8573.857
Innovation#343.7863.786
Gameplay#473.6433.643
Graphics#973.7143.714
Theme interpretation#1863.1433.143

Ranked from 14 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

GitHub repository URL
https://github.com/Tetratonic-Game/Tetratonic

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Super slick and fun game. Really nice to see a rhythm game in this jam. The tracks you used for the songs are really cool too.

It took me a second to figure out how to play (even with reading the tutorial). But once I figured it out I had a lot of fun.

Great work!

Developer

Hey, glad you enjoyed our submission! We are definitely on the same page when it comes to a better tutorial -- this is something that we will keep high on our priority list if we choose to keep pursuing the concept post-jam. Thanks again for commenting! Best of luck to you!

Submitted(+1)

Very polish visual and menuing, good music too.

I was a little bit confused by what I had to do, I read the tutorial, but I still had some trouble understanding. I think the arrows on the note coming at me was what confused be the more, I thought they would help me know what direction to hit, but they don't. I think having some sorte of indicator to tell you what you'll need to tap is required, else you leav your player doing some live calculation at all time and it ends up being a frustration when you fail, cause you don't know why.

I think this has potential, it only need to be a little more clear. Keep it up!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the feedback! We totally agree -- I think the onboarding experience for our game could definitely use improvement. Unfortunately, we decided to cut an interactive tutorial map out of scope for our entry in order to fit more maps / tracks into the game. Spending some time on a proper tutorial will definitely be on our roadmap if we decide to iterate on our entry.

Thanks again for playing our game! Loved your entry -- best of luck to you!

Submitted(+1)

Song choice is great, along with clean visuals and fun game play. The light beams are super punishing and I found it easier to ignore the extra points it might give over self preservation to make it to the end. If you toned down the damage of the beams or gave the player some invincibility frames so they don't immediately lose half their health bar it would incentivize players to play less safe. 

A very strong entry for the jam, Great work!  

Developer

Thank you for playing our game! I think toning the damage / damage tick rate is a great idea; we will keep that in mind for future iterations. I appreciate you taking the time to leave a comment. Good luck on the jam & all of your future endeavors!

Submitted(+1)

Fun game - many things to like: combination of tactics and rhythm, tone that change based on position lets you create your own melody and fit with the music, challenging but not too punishing. 

At first I assumed that you have to move position just at the right time to hit the passing "note" but then realized that I just have to be there before the note comes to hit the "perfect" - IMO that moves the game away from rhythm and more towards "dodge projectiles while gathering powerups". Also consider more visual effects on hitting the note and/or moving.

I thoroughly enjoyed playing, thanks!

Developer

Thanks for playing our game! I think we're on the same page when it comes to the timing -- we struggled to come up with ways to make the game more rhythm oriented by adding late timing judgments, but we also didn't want to make it too strict where it diminished player expression while generating the tones that mapped with the backing track. This is definitely an area we will have to spend more time exploring on future iterations. We appreciate the feedback!

Submitted(+1)

I loved how the game feels very intuitive and, at the same time, novel. The track choice is great and the game already feels very polished. I especially liked that the game is not too punishing unlike some rhythm games that won't let you listen until the end of the track.

Great job!

Developer

We're glad you liked it! I think the game is a little mind bending on first glance, but it has a nice flow to it once you become more familiar with the mechanics. Nailing the difficulty curve of the game will probably be one of our bigger challenges moving forward, I'm glad that you found it manageable! Thanks again for playing and we appreciate you taking the time to leave a comment!

Submitted(+1)

I love the combination of style, music and rhythm you added to this game. Congrats!

Developer

Hey thanks, we appreciate the kind words and the time you took to play our game!

Submitted(+1)

Really cool take on the theme! I will admit that I like rhythm games but I am also tragically bad at them. Overall this felt very fluid and nice. The biggest issue I had was with the note icons. The arrows tricked my brain into pressing the direction on them rather than the part of the grid that they fell on, so my first playthrough ended abysmally. I was able to get a hang of it later although like others have said, I found the beams to be very punishing. Otherwise, really enjoyed it and definitely didn't expect this kind of genre with the theme. Awesome idea!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing our game! We actually got the same feedback on the directional arrows from a friend who tested the game. It's definitely something that we will have to look into in the future. Thanks again for the important bit of feedback!

Submitted(+1)

I like the game very much.UI was slick , music and sound was perfect.  

Rhythm animations was also very good and make playing a rhythm game much more easier.

The beams were a little too much punishing.

Developer (1 edit)

Thanks for your comment & complements! We definitely agree that the beams may be a bit too hard to play around at times. If we plan on continuing on the game, it's definitely something we will be taking a look at.

I really enjoyed your game as well! Best of luck to you!

Submitted(+1)

Found out I'm not good at rhythm games, Only 67% accuracy.

Developer(+1)

Haha, yeah. Our game is a bit of a departure from traditional rhythm games, so it's a bit of a brain twister even for more acclimated players of the genre. Thanks for taking the time to play our game! I really enjoyed your submission as well.

Submitted(+1)

Works well, great concept.  I like the way it plays and it's pretty.  I do feel like certain things were holding me back from continuing such as how exactly to do held notes, but it was fun to play for a while.  I'd be interested to see how it turns out if you continue. 

Developer

Hey thanks for your reply! We definitely agree that some of the mechanics could be reworked / better explained to the player. If we decide to continue, then we will definitely spend some additional effort on onboarding the player via a tutorial map.

I liked your game as well, good luck in the jam and your future endeavors!

Submitted(+1)

Dude. Super cool game, you gotta get more players for this. What engine is this? No way to do some kind of Web-playable build?

I thought the polish was on point and the vibe was immaculate. I liked the tracks you chose and how the arrows would kind of bop their way into place. I was hoping to find a game in this jam where someone decided to play around with a musical scale, and I think you executed it quite well. I played each level more than once.

Okay, some other things. I got some "Perfect"s that I definitely don't think were actually perfect, so I'm not totally sure about the timing, but that may be me. I think the synth tone for the player could be a little richer, fuller, but I'm not enough of an audiophile to better explain than that.

So, I think the danger bars are interesting in how they block off the player, but I think ripping someone out of the level and the song is just a little too harsh, it doesn't fit with the rest of the chill vibe. Instead of negative reinforcement, I would suggest finding something positive for rewarding skilled play. As a couple examples for what I mean, perhaps hitting both ends perfectly shatters the bar with a cool effect and gives a generous score multiplier, or maybe you could slide down the bar from one end to the other hearing a unique synth while having to exit with the right timing for a solid score bonus. While running into its middle just breaks the score combo and doesn't let you move over to the other side. I'd remove health entirely.

Anyhow, I think this was a really cool project and is one that I would have frankly no idea how to put together myself. Well done, and I hope you get some more players in here soon. Keep rating games, most people oblige with an unspoken rule of ratings exchange. Wish you all the best in your game dev futures!

Developer

Thanks! The game uses Unreal Engine 5 - probably pretty overkill for a game of this type, but it was what we had the most familiarity with going into the jam. While it had its obvious downsides in not being able to target the web, it did end up paying off a bit by having a relatively new audio synchronization system (Quartz) which really reduced the overhead for us on the actual "rhythm" part of the game, as it handles most of the latency compensation under the hood and follows the beat/bar pattern that we wanted for the game.

I really like your idea of tying more audio/visual effects to the sliders; we originally wanted to get more player-driven audio elements into the game, but ended up getting pretty bogged down by the main audio component, which was a lot trickier than we originally imagined. Also agree on the positive reinforcement aspect - we really wanted to encourage open-ended/exploratory gameplay, but felt like score/accuracy alone might not be engaging enough for a subset of players;  as you indicated, there's probably a better solution to that than the health system we ended up going with.

Thanks for the detailed feedback!

Submitted(+1)

While this doesnt seem like a 100% fleshed out game, thus only a 4/5 rating, i absolutely love this game as a concept. As someone who plays A LOT of different rhythm games, both hardcore and casual, this seems like a good mix already familiar concepts and new additions. The sounds feel nice, though the sound-on-field-change sometimes removes from the experience even when playing the chart properly. The graphics are prefect, simple but effective in conveying the required information. The gameplay is really fun, i like that you can hit certain notes at two different timings, the diagonals really complicate the reading in a nice way. Two small things i have an issue with: first of, the long evade notes are confusing as heck. Having to hit the start and endpoint only doesnt play all that well. Maybe regular red notes that you are not supposed to hit would play better? The other issue is the lack of "early" timing punishment. You can essencially just wait for a note to fly into a field and get a perfect timing. This just doesnt work to well, but it is not exactly game beaking and is still really fun to play in general. The one thing that confuses me a bit is the interpretation of the theme. Scale of notes? Scale of music? Maybe just something i am not familiar with... Still a really fun experience, eagerly waiting for a new version with more songs!

Developer

Hey, thanks for your comment! I really appreciate you playing our game!

We definitely felt some of your pain points with the game while developing; we are considering making changes / additions to the game after the judging period (i.e. different kinds of avoidable notes, better readability, better timing judgements, etc...). We'll definitely take your feedback into consideration if/when the time comes!

As for theming, we interpreted scale by aligning the tones played when moving around the play field to the tetratonic music scale, hence the name of our game!