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Playing By Ear's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Style | #13 | 4.735 | 4.735 |
| Creativity | #98 | 4.353 | 4.353 |
| Overall | #110 | 4.176 | 4.176 |
| Enjoyment | #1249 | 3.441 | 3.441 |
Ranked from 34 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?
Toys are built, and are playing musical scales!
Development Time
96 hours
(Optional) Please credit all assets you've used
https://www.1001freefonts.com/digital-play-st.font
https://www.fontspace.com/musical-tone-font-f103067
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Comments
Woah! This is one of the most unique games I've played. I'm not great with music so didn't get much of the gameplay, but I do draw, and the visuals here are amazing. The game looks like a page from one of those "I spy" books, or an old hidden object game, I played both a ton when I was young so the art here just feels really cozy and nostalgic. Also MINIDISK WALKMAN SPOTTED!!!!!!!! I have 2 MD Walkmen, sadly only one works :(, but still I love old tech! I have a whole webpage dedicated to old tech! Seeing something I recognize down to the exact model feels so good! Great job, one of my favorite games so far!!!
Thank you so much for playing! I'm really glad this game resonated with you. It does have that hidden object game vibe! I had sensed it, but I hadn't been able to give a name to that feeling. The art is something we put a lot of care into, so we're all pretty happy with the results and the reception it's been getting
Composer from the game "Crescendo" here! I found the game pretty simple and extremely fun once you figure out how to play. The visuals are among one of my favorites from the jam so far! The music is very chill and fits the atmosphere so well. I'd love to see a full release of this game and think it's got a lot of potential for success on being unique. I did find the knobs to be a little difficult to adjust sometimes, the main problem being that sometimes my cursor would go off the hitbox of the knobs when adjusting, but it didn't seem to be an extreme issue as I did manage to quickly adapt to it. The other issue I ran into was that when selecting the level, it was kind of hard to see which level I was selecting since the hitboxes also seemed to be off, but I imagine you probably didn't have the time to implement a highlight. Overall, this is a very unique game, and one of my favorite visuals mixed with a very chill soundtrack so far! Definitely incredible what you were able to accomplish in 96 hours!
Thank you so much for taking the time to leave a review! We've definitely been considering polishing the game up a little and were thinking of the possibility of adding different characters to have a greater variety of instruments, but alas even with all this time, we still rushed to get our idea out haha! We'll definitely fix the knobs issue, and we'll definitely take into consideration highlighting the levels when selecting them! I'm glad you enjoyed our little band despite these hiccups in our game <3
The visuals are really good. I liked the mixture of real world stuff and very good character designs. I particularly like the purple mouse that uses his whiskers to strum. But I'm not quite sure how to play?
We put a lot of love into the visuals and the characters <3
We’re sorry we couldn’t make a tutorial in game. Here’s the gist of it: if a character begins shaking, make sure to click on them only when the sparks come out, otherwise they will mess up anyways. In case they mess up, you can re-tune them on the knobs at the bottom of the screen (if the light dot is white that knob is good, if the light is out, that needs fixing) . There is a known issue that the panel may hide on the web version while trying to turn a knob.
Thanks for trying to play anyways!
Thanks, that helps! I'll give it another go and rate it!
And the love you put into the visuals and characters reaaaaaally shows. Good job.
I didn't understand the idea very well, but the designs and music were very nice.:DD
We’re sorry we couldn’t make a tutorial in game. Here’s the gist of it: if a character begins shaking, make sure to click on them only when the sparks come out, otherwise they will mess up anyways. In case they mess up, you can re-tune them on the knobs at the bottom of the screen (if the light dot is white that knob is good, if the light is out, that needs fixing) . There is a known issue that the panel may hide on the web version while trying to turn a knob.
Thanks for trying to play anyways!
What an adorable game with some lovely music, I found the menu hiding itself all the time to be a bit annoying, I wish I could have kept it open all the time and just played the adjustment game. The visuals are incredible, I love immediately eye catching!
It's a web version issue that the menu hides unfortunately, on the downloadable version it was fine. You can also avoid using the knobs by clicking on the characters right when sparks come out, succesfully parrying their mistakes! I'm glad you enjoyed the game anyways! Thank you very much for trying it out <3
The art is on its peak ! Really amazing work, great game. Well done !
Thanks a lot for trying our game!
Really solid entry. Hats down to all of you. I especially loved the bassist mouse, playing on its whiskers.
Only nitpick I have is that i found it hard to turn the knobs on the pedals. Maybe locking and hiding the mouse when holding down left click would help.
Other than that, good job! :)
We’ve definitely been considering on fixing the knobs. We may do that after the jam is over. Thank you so much for playing! The rat was definitely interesting to animate thanks to its whiskers
This is definitely the best visual I've seen :)
Thank you! We worked really hard on the art!! <3
lovely fun game! stunning visuals...(love the take on the theme):D
Glad you enjoyed! Thanks for checking our game out <3
I like this game, it somehow reminds me of fnaf. I feel like there should be more things to keep an eye on for the gameplay, but the art is amazing!
I can kinda see what you mean with the fnaf vibes, haha, though I don’t think it was one of our inspirations here. We did have the idea to add extra hazards around the screen at some point, but decided to concentrate on polishing up our main mechanics. Thanks for playing!! <3
The style here is absolutely wonderful and leads to wonderful vibes. The knobs are a bit annoying to control, I never really understood how to turn them properly after playing around a bunch, but the game has good enough vibes and music that I still had a good time. Nice work.
The knobs took trial and error and we still didn’t reach that perfect point for them. They’re definitely buggier on the web version as the panels go down if you get too far from them when adjusting. They should stay in place as long as you’ve got a knob selected (works like that on the downloadable version). I’m glad to hear we were able to compensate with everything else! Thank you so much for playing!
I like the style of combining real-life photo with cartoony characters. Really love that rat playing strings with its beard! I'm not even sure if the music is playing correctly since I have numb ears haha.
Our little rat was fun to animate playing his whiskers! You can check if they're out of tune on the knobs below (if the little light under them is black, they're playing wrong) or you can try to observe their poses! If they look like they go too high (very overconfident) or too low (where they also look a lil nervous) they're playing out of tune <3
Very good game. Nice job!
Thank you for trying it out! <3
That was wonderful! The characters are so charming, and the measured abundance of color set a carefree, feel-good mood without distracting from the important gameplay elements. It took me a minute to get in the groove, but I was smiling for the entire play session and came out the other end feeling like I'd just experienced something really special.
I’m glad to hear that the background and the lil lights weren’t too distracting as that was a point we discussed. We figured the movement of the characters would help bring focus to them and away from all the extra detail! Thank you so much for sharing your sweet thoughts!
Awesome game but I wish dragging the knobs didn't feel so clunky (maybe it's a me problem?)! I really love the concept, wild mix of art styles, and the music. Y'all have something special here!
It definitely is not a you problem! We had a few iterations on how the knobs worked, and we landed on this after getting some feedback, but I do wish I could have improved their feel to make them more intuitive for sure. We’re so glad you enjoyed the art and the music. Everyone on the team really put their hearts into the game. Thank you for playing!
A Toy Story Orchestra!
10/10 on creativity, 11/10 on style!
10/10 comment <3
The most stylish game I've played by a mile!! I love the character animations and the realistic background and the sound design and everything about how it looks and sounds!!!!
On the gameplay side, I wish there was more to plan around, as it felt like I was just sitting there waiting for something to go wrong or something to click on. I was vibing the whole time though!
I had the pleassure of animating the characters, so I'm glad you liked the looks of everything!
We did our best to keep things simple and on a sort of middle ground, that's why we have both the parry mechanics and the knobs! And for less skilled players (my family) they struggled a lot more and were constantly trying to get the lil guys back in tune haha. Also, the first versions of the game were way worse on the waiting side (there was a song that only had like 5 mistakes and they were way easier to avoid).
Thank you so much for playing our game! <3
Nice art!
Thank you! We did our best as artists to make something fun and cute <3
Beautifully designed!
Thank you very much for playing! <3
AMAZING GAME, don't know how you finished it lol.
With lots of teamwork! Communicating so we know what everyone is doing and what needs fixing, as well as prioritizing our tasks goes a long way! Very glad you enjoyed it, we put a lot of love into it <3