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Echo Command (Development)'s itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Bug Free | #15 | 3.400 | 3.400 |
Overall | #19 | 3.150 | 3.150 |
Likely to Release | #20 | 3.100 | 3.100 |
Aesthetic (Art & Audio) | #23 | 3.300 | 3.300 |
Interesting Gameplay / Fun | #24 | 2.800 | 2.800 |
Ranked from 10 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
I think I have the same opinion as most people here, I went to play without reading anything and was lost and even thought that the game had a bug.
After reading a bit I switched to my controller and headphones (they are on mono) and I was still lost, I managed to score 100 once by kinda predicting that an enemy would spawn in a position close to me vertically, (I was assuming the Ikaruga like layout)
There are a bunch of assumptions I'm making like ship's velocity, enemy's velocity, enemy spawn position, ship's spawn position, do my projectiles or the enemy ones follow a target, or do they follow a direction? how long is my fire rate? does the ship has acceleration or not? these things I can't tell just by audio cues as I don't have a reference to draw front and visualize it
I think you got a great unique concept that if polished can be an amazing game, but right now it does require more design iterations to improve accessibility
This also reminded me of a talk I saw long ago about audio design in Overwatch, in case you haven't seen it:
Its such a cool idea and such a never before seen idea!
I had no idea what I was doing most of the time as the sounds were a bit difficult to distinguish them from one another but it was nice whenever i did something right and saw the score go up! xD
The style is really cool and all looks so polished given the time worked on it. Congrats on getting the game done! :)
I like what you're trying to do, and I like the idea behind the game. However, I'd need some significant hand-holding, training, or a visual component to even start to understand what is happening. Something like a short intro with an audio track that provides instructions and explains what's happening while an enemy ship follows a preset pattern around your ship.
Was not sure how to get points but, the sounds effects, art, and animation are fire.
Interesting incursion into audio games, I thought I had good earing, but turns out I have none, since can't go above 0 score. Anyway, I had some fun trying to find how it works and how I should interpret the sounds, distances, angles... Hope to play the final build soon!
The tutorial does a good job of explaining the concept, but the problem is that I have no idea what is happening when I am actually dropped into the game.
I got a score of 1000, but I have no idea what was really happening in-game. Is it like Tempest / Gyruss? Am I in a tube... or is it like Space Invaders? Are my enemies in front of me? To the sides of me? As far as I can tell, enemies and sounds pan left and right only, so I have no idea. I know it's not relevant information, but I don't have enough audio cues to really piece together my surroundings, so my mind jumps to these questions -- and while it stems from an issue with the game, I really think that mystery of not knowing your surroundings is what really makes this game so intriguing to me.
My issues are that, as stated, there's not really enough information to play the game, and with what little info I have, the sounds are too similar, and I frequently get audio cues mixed up. I'm no audio designer, but:
EXTREMELY fascinating concept, but it definitely requires some serious reworking. I think that an arcade game like Galaxian where enemies simply swoop down from formation and divebomb the player could totally work as an audio-only game already, so I think you're onto something really cool here.
Was able to play it this time, with the web build :) My experience was similar to some of the ones below. I found it difficult to figure out what was happening, and what the result of my actions were. There are a lot of sounds going on in the game, but mapping it to what that means was hard. Maybe have a visual of the player and enemy ships in the tutorial. That way the player can associate the sounds, and in actual game be able to play without the visuals. It's just a thought. For pure-audio accessibility this solution will not work anyway. The concept is promising though, and also challenging to pull off. Wish you the best to take this forward!
I think that this game could be cool, but it requires a tutorial to tell what is going on. Any new player has no idea what any of the audio cues mean, and given that there is no visual indicator for what is happening (even how much health you have left, which might be a good idea as some kind of feedback for getting hit), you can't really figure it out yourself either. I think it really has some potential and even this genre itself has some great potential but it is impossible to understand what you need to do as a player without some guidance. I got score 100 a few times and had no idea why. I couldn't really tell when my gun was charging either, though I heard some sounds a few times that sounded like it could have been that. Really want to see what a finalized version of this game would look (or sound) like!
I ended up playing this some more.
I am not 100% sure but I feel like I understand whats going on a little better when I flip my headphones; put the right speaker in my left ear, left speaker in my right ear. I think that means I am 'visualizing' what is going on completely backwards?
I'm not sure what would be best to help that situation, or if its just me.
But some thoughts:
I second the idea of training the player. Something to provide audio context, even if there ends up being no visual component.
I tried playing this for a while, with my eyes closed and headphones. I couldn't ever really figure out what was going on. Played about 10 times and never got a score above 0. It is interesting and I think audio only games are cool. I rated 'Bug Free' as 3 stars as I honestly have no idea if it was functioning correctly or not. But it didn't crash and seemed to run fine.
Interesting but I think I probably just suck at it.