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My Zen Meltdown's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Creativity | #3 | 3.450 | 3.571 |
| Use of theme | #4 | 2.898 | 3.000 |
| Overall | #4 | 2.806 | 2.905 |
| Playability/Entertainment | #7 | 2.070 | 2.143 |
Ranked from 7 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
It's insanely impressive that you managed to make, yourself, music that dynamically changes with the gameplay. With that being said, the game mechanics aren't exactly clear (not even with fayedamaras explanation). I just ended up spam clicking the notes and it worked out fine. The minimalist theme and UI you were going for is inspiring, but I think the notes and blocks(?) could really benefit from some smoother movement or animations instead of just "glide to random position" or showing and hiding over and over again, since they're really the only things on screen.
Good idea - note animation would have been a relatively simple way to spice it up visually! Smoother movement would be a good way for me to learn something :) Thanks!
You shall now address me as Maestro.
Certainly, Maestro.
I had to play it a couple times, but I eventually got the concept. If you're very deliberate with which notes you absorb and when, you can actually make a pretty peaceful melody (barring the mic problems). I think the biggest thing that could be done to improve this game is to program a lot of control over when the sounds come in/out. Instead of repeating to the exact moment the player 'got' the sound, round that out onto a fixed timescale (you could even let the player adjust this manually for faster rythyms) that actually guarantees a consistent zen melody. That way, the players can still control when sounds come in, but it will naturally integrate into an actual thing, with plenty of variation still. The current build is kindof guaranteed to just create an admittedly unpleasant cacophony of noise for new players, but I think this change could improve it tenfold
Also, side note, breathing into a mic never works to achieve that 'wind' effect you were going for. often times sounds like that are replicated through other means. look up "ways to replicate x sound", and you'll find a lot of clever practical solutions to this problem. something as simple as dragging one piece of paper over a certain surface may create the sound you're looking for. (not to mention the added flair that organic sound would provide a project that is trying to be zen, after all)
Yeah, sorry about the wind. It was a late night Scratch fix after bandlab kept crashing and I just needed one sound. Probably would have helped to move further back from the mike, but looking things up is a good idea.
I thought it would be interesting to give the player some control over which sound was played but leave a randomness to when the sounds were played so that different soundscapes were formed organically over time. For me it’s interesting to hear things blend and change in sort of a sound generator (like throwing sound into a boiling pot), but I appreciate that others might be less into that. I should probably inject more silence into the recordings to cut down on some of the cacophony. It was principally a programing project, and I am pleased that I managed to program what I wanted to do without too much trouble while having fun. What you propose could be an interesting further programming challenge, sort of building a Scratch synthesizer instrument.
Thanks for taking the time to play it and share your insights!😊
Of course! Over all, very cool idea for a project :D
I did not like this submission. The "music" was an interesting idea but was horribly executed. I wanted to turn sound off because it was so bad. Also I was unsure on what to do and when I figured it out I was underwealmed. I did not like how you could only collect the notes once they stop with their movement cycle and overall it was just bad and unpolished.
Thanks for your invaluable feedback.