Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous.

• I will preface this by saying I am very bad at this type of game in general, so my skill might not reflect the target audience. I really liked the concept of using piano keys to solve musical puzzles. It was a little weak on the application of the theme, but the gameplay was fluid and simple. Because the style is also very simple, I would advise against only using a slight increase in width on the white keys to show that they are being played. It was very difficult for me to see which ones were moving, and the instant I paid attention to another part of the screen either because something was moving on the upper half or the bottom, I missed notes. Making it a bolder change, like with an outline or a different color, would help the player see better and remove a chance at frustration when having to restart from not knowing where to go. The immediate increase to having the friend die if taking too much time to reproduce the melody was a bit stark, I would try to make it a smoother, slower curve before getting to that point — but you did mention it was a bit crunched due to personal time constraints, and the level wasn't bad, it was just a bit of a rapid escalation from the first. I was still getting used to the controls and suddenly I had to go faster — give your player time to learn every bit of the controls before adding things like speed or obstacles to the equation. Simplicity here played in your favor, it meant the concept and controls were relatively easy to grasp, there just needs to be more time with each control in order to master them before moving on. It could be a me thing, but having the space bar not be for jumping caused me to fall to my death countless times… maybe map what is currently on the space bar (continue) to the enter key, and change the upwards jump to the space bar. Sometimes, classic controls are there for a reason and changing them can be confusing HOWEVER, it's very possible that using W to jump is a common thing in a genre of games I am not familiar with. This game has a lot of growth potential, from you spending more time to add levels and mechanics to it to simply be reworked in order to create a more forgiving experience. Unless the goal is to be mean to the player, I'd highly recommend balancing the learning curve. I got frustrated quickly but not to the point of no longer wanting to play — it actually made me want to complete levels more (and failing again). It's a very very strong prototype that can only get better, and I hope to see it expand from this starting point!