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A jam submission

The Endless ChorusView game page

Mad Libs meets music trivia meets rhythm game! :D
Submitted by Drixxel Soft — 4 hours, 1 minute before the deadline
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The Endless Chorus's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Innovation#93.5863.586
Visuals#153.3103.310
Music#253.0693.069
Overall#292.8972.897
Fun#462.2412.241

Ranked from 29 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Please mention below any pre-made music or art assets you used.
Sprite fonts & SFX carried forward from previous projects. The chiptune in here was written by me a long time ago but dusted off and touched up for the purposes of this game jam :)
* transformable chorus text sampled from Iron Maiden *

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

This is a neat idea! I enjoyed the under pressure mad lib mechanic. Being able to share the text of a game play lyric set after a playthrough would be fun.

Thanks a lot for playing! Glad you had some fun word swappin' to the countdown :)That's a good idea to make the final text output shareable! I've been toying with this more over the past couple weeks, most recently to see how setting this up with trivia questions could play out. That might ultimately be the direction this goes, but the mad lib aspect would be a shame to lose.

(+1)

This is something special. I could see this being in a Jackbox Party game, where you can play with other people couch co-op.  I had fun with this.

Thanks so much for playing! Really appreciate the feedback and kind words, glad you see some potential in this little thing and had a bit of fun. If there were a collection of modes available that each changed up the mechanics in some novel way, yeah, it's possible to imagine this working in a couch multiplayer party game context. I'm picturing a free-for-all of 4 people all able to key in their answers simultaneously and in competition to be the first to snag the "?" blocks in a line to outlast the other players. Cheers for checking this out and sharing your thoughts! :)

Submitted(+1)

Oooh, it took me a while to figure out the timing system, but once I got it (hum, I mean, once I read more carefully the rules), it was nice!

I didn't know the lyrics at all, but the system is great. I love the presentation, the UI is intuitive while having some personality. That engine alone is pretty cool.

Mixing quiz with timing is a nice idea. Maybe the stamina decreasing is a bit too punitive (especially on my first try where I thought I was losing because of my wrong answers). With a selection of songs (so that players can find some they know), it could work really great!

(1 edit)

Thanks a lot for checking this out and sharing your thoughts! Really glad you've had a bit of fun and like the presentation and concept. Agreed that the ever-decreasing stamina is maybe too much right off the bat, I've been trying to think up a way to soften that a little without removing the pressure entirely. Something as simple as awarding a stamina point for a correct answer regardless of how it's timed might do it. And yeah, a nice selection of songs to play would be key! In the downloadable Windows build, I reworked things so that the game now reads all of its song data from a set of easily editable INI files and whipped up the stuff to make 3 additional playable choruses. For something different on top of that, I wanted to see how this would feel with straight-up trivia instead of song lyrics so put together a couple video game trivia levels, one about the Mega Man series and the other Castlevania. It kinda-sorta works! Thanks again for playing and cheers for your feedback :)

EDIT: Just made a tiny little difficulty tweak to the latest version, correct answers now award 1 stamina point and hitting "?" blocks now award only 1 bonus stamina rather than 2. Makes for slightly better balance, IMO!

(+1)

Very interesting concept! I included it in my Music Game Jam compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :)

Thanks a lot for checking this out and giving it a spin! Something I hadn't considered until seeing you play was how the extra "?" blocks in a line on Easy difficulty could be confusing, they're not meant to hint at the character length of the missing word but instead are there to offer a larger target to hit with a well-timed click. A little change I might make here for clarity is using a single, triple-wide "?" block instead of three blocks in a row. You nailed the timing on a few selections but the game grinding to a halt had to do with your stamina meter hitting zero. I really, really ought to have a "stamina drained" or some such message appear when your stamina meter hits zero to accompany the stopping of the music and text scroll. Anyhow, really appreciate you sharing a look at this on your channel, cheers for spending time with all these submissions! :D

Submitted(+1)

I like the concept, but I think for the actual jam you didn't bring much to the table, if the gfx/sfx and music were all already made, and you only have a few lines of 1 song. 4-5 timing based guesses at lyrics for 1 song I don't know didn't really engage me as a player. That said, it is a nice idea, and with a little more time, development and maybe a wider array of more commonly known songs it could grow into a nice project. Also, if the arrow could some how be a little bit synced to the rhythm of the lyrics coming out I think it would have a better effect. As it is, sometimes the arrows passing by just as the blank is becoming visible, you have to (or can) wait for a second or even third pass before making your selection. It's less fun/challenging with so many opportunities to think about your choice. Hope you continue development though, it's a great idea.

(1 edit)

Thanks for checking this out! Just wanted to say: the fonts and sounds were made by me previous to the jam, sure, but the /programming/ of the game engine here and all of the other art featured in the game is completely unique to the jam (the fonts themselves received a bit of editing, too). My friend was intending to produce a unique tune over the weekend but he got sidetracked by a family emergency, so this old chiptune of mine in there as placeholder stuck around. No different than a solo dev using open-source fonts and sounds for their entry. You're right, there's only a half dozen multiple choice selections to make, but better to keep the scope contained IMO for something like this when the mechanics are definitely not final. This is very much a proof-of-concept experiment and not intended as a complete game, I chopped down a ton from the original idea (which among other things includes making multiple passes of the chorus to progressively alter it) in order to make this manageable to complete and had the submission ready 3 AM Sunday night. I'm glad you see potential in the idea and I agree that the timing of the arrow and wide window to make a choice are things that ought to be thought about, and will be. Cheers for your feedback :)

Hey! Just thought you might be interested to hear that it's now possible to mod the text contents of this thing. While quite a rough implementation, the Windows build now comes with it's chorus data in an easily editable format and also includes 3 additional songs' choruses to play through (all Iron Maiden, I'm afraid XD). Also, in both the web and Windows downloads there's one tiny little tweak to the hard mode in that every single A-B-C-D selection subs 1 stamina so changing your choice or missing a "?" block  has more of a consequence.

(+1)

Looking at this, I really liked the music and the visuals, but could not wrap my head around the gameplay. After reading a comment, apparently we're supposed to fill in the blanks to the song? Specifically, an Iron Maiden song. (Which, I don't think I've ever heard.) 

That being said, I can definitely see this working. Good job :) 

(1 edit)

Thanks a lot for checking it out! Really appreciate your feedback, glad you dug the look and sound and see some potential in the concept. You got it, it's a fill-in-the-blank kind of thing and ideally there would be a selection of songs / nursery rhymes / famous quotes / whatever for the player to pick between or queue up rather than getting served the one set of lyrics. Die With Your Boots On is a really great Iron Maiden track with somewhat of an inane, rhyme-at-all-costs chorus and it was specifically what I had in mind when this idea sprang up. Thanks again for playing :)

(+1)

That music is tight! I like the vibe and feeling to it. I gotta be honest, I had more fun just cycling through the four options to the beat of the song than actually answering questions which made for funny lyrics. lol 

Haha, well hey, cheers for giving it a spin! Glad you're digging the music and thanks for playing :D

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

At first I didn't get the rhythmic aspect of the game and was left wondering what you could possibly have had in mind but once I figured the wave out it was pretty great :). Love the retro feel too!

Thanks a lot for playing! I'm happy to hear you got the hang of it, the importance of timing your selections with the arrow isn't exactly self-explanatory. Was going for an MSX-ish look, at least in the palette. Glad you had some fun and cheers for the feedback! :)

Submitted(+1)

Super cool concept, but it took me so long to understand how to play, and then I kinda got an easier time on hard mode?
I really liked to music-rythm-trivia mix, Wish the resulting word salad was actually overlapping the words precisely when we played them over the lyrics for a funnier payoff (I saw that glitch twice while playing and I actually thought it could result in laughable sessions where you just try to cover the correct lyrics with your chosen words whenever you want)
Good job overall, hope you had fun making it :)

(+1)

Thanks for checking it out, really glad you enjoyed the concept! Some sort of in-game demonstration of what to do, plus a quick playable tutorial, would be musts if this thing goes any further. That's a great idea to have the selected word get inserted into the line immediately regardless it if's in the blank or not, and being able to replace any word in a line would be pretty amusing! Could imagine that also providing more to separate difficulty modes, being enabled on the harder difficulties only, maybe. Anyhow, lots to think about! I definitely had fun whipping this together last weekend, really appreciate your feedback and thanks again for playing :)

Submitted(+1)

Pretty cool game!  Innovative trivia / rhythm kinda feel -wouldn't have expected that!  Love the music too! :D

(+1)

Really appreciate the feedback and I'm glad you dig the tune! There's a heck of a lot more I'd like to do with this, not the least of which being the addition of more lyrics to play through with different objectives (intentionally wrong, rhyming but not a perfect match, and so on). Thanks for checking it out! :)

Submitted(+1)

The music was definitely nice!! But the game itself was pretty confusing--it took me a while to really figure out how to play it correctly, and I didn't really see the point of getting everything correct once I finished the trivia bit. It felt like more work with little payoff, all that happened was I saw the answers I had picked earlier again. It was sure a creative idea!! But maybe not one that's especially fun to play.

Cheers for your feedback! Really appreciate you giving this thing a spin, glad you liked the chiptune :) Yeah, it needs a better scoring system to give more  purpose to answering a blank correctly and there obviously should be more lyrical content to play. Lots of ideas that I wanted to include in here that got chopped out for time's sake, but ideally there would be several phases the lyrics get run through where you're tasked with, say, deliberately choosing only "wrong" words, stuff like that. Thanks for playing! :)

Submitted(+1)

It's an interesting concept. Not totally sure what's going on, but it's interesting.

Had overlapping sentences a lot though. Not really sure what I did to cause that lol



(1 edit)

Thanks for playing! Really appreciate the feedback, glad you found it interesting. Agreed that the objective is a little obtuse, but I imagine you got it. For the sake of overdone clarity, though, it's about getting your (correct) answer for the blank in on time while simultaneously trying to sync up your click with the arrow when it's over a "?" block which refills your constantly diminishing stamina meter.

And ah jeez, yeah, there are definitely some weird performance / timing issues I've seen in the tiny amount of testing possible over the weekend, the web version appears to be far from 100% consistent machine to machine. If you're on Windows, the executable is much more stable :)

Submitted(+1)

Yeah, I'll have to try the executable later. :)

Submitted(+1)

It's not exactly a rhythm game in much of any sense. The sounds were fairly nice, the metronome ticking got old fast, and the text wasn't too appropriate for the music itself. Also even though I read your instructions, I still found myself wanting to press a,b,c,d for the responses because that was what was on screen.

(1 edit)

Thanks for playing! The button just to the right of the volume '+' mutes the metronome, BTW. Ideally keyboard controls would be rebindable to user preference, setting actual A, B, C, D obviously makes sense but in a snap decision I wanted to make sure the 4 choices were grouped together (for QWERTY users at least). The scrolling text could be anything, I was thinking of Iron Maiden when the idea first came to me and wanted to see how it'd go. Having the soundtrack be chiptune covers of the scrolling lyrics was the proper idea but, y'know, timecrunch, so an ever so slightly Iron Maiden-ish tune instead. Cheers for the feedback on this experiment :)

Submitted(+1)

I think it could be a lot more fun if you made it more mad lib-esque. Could have like 'half-correct' answers that are joke responses and don't effect score negatively or positively. And the game kinda screams for original content rather than other lyrics. And I didn't even try the volume buttons haha :D

Oh definitely, 'half-correct' responses that do /something/ would be great. Setting up some reward for picking a word that rhymes with the original or that has a funny effect on the meaning was the original plan, but that got cut out for time. Original text would be better, yeah -- the thought here was to use something that might be semi-recognizable to help guide the player Guitar Hero-style where you queue up a song you know.

Submitted(+1)

nice music and an innovative concept... not too fun to actually play though.

Cheers for checking it out! Glad you liked a couple aspects of this little experiment :)