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Tune-Up Tonic's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Graphics | #7 | 3.800 | 3.800 |
| Gameplay/Design | #9 | 3.600 | 3.600 |
| Overall | #10 | 3.400 | 3.400 |
| Audio | #11 | 3.200 | 3.200 |
| Fun | #14 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 5 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
What would you like feedback on?
We would like to know if the players are better equipped with information to play through all the levels of our game, and if there are any other bugs that we may have missed. We would also like to know if the overall experience has improved compared to our previous upload and if there is anything we can do to make it even better.
What did you update?
There are now proper tutorial levels for basic player movement, tutorial dialogue from a new character, improvements with the harp mechanics and collision bugs, a saving and loading feature that will keep track of which levels the player collected coins in; and the soundtrack now changes key each time an instrument's note is updated.
Name of updated upload (if downloadable)
TuneUpTonic5.0_WIN.zip and TuneUpTonic5.0_MAC.zip
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Comments
I love the idea. At first, I was very much not sold on the idea of a platformer without a jumping as that is what the game most reminds me of. But the combination of platforming and puzzle gameplay makes this game really shine. I love the overall aesthetic too, its quite charming. For the specific feedback, I think you actually nailed it with the tutorial. I found it very easy to follow and it taught the mechanics well over time. If there was any improvement to make, I would say it would be to add more of an indicator to talk to the professor guy in further levels as I was confused at one point because I forgot to talk to him. That's mostly on me but might be better to beat people over the head with it. Really fantastic game on the whole!
Well, we only put the conductor in the first three levels as those are the levels where players need to learn the mechanics - if you didn't have trouble learning the mechanics you don't need to talk to him, lol
Interesting concept, I like the idea of a musical puzzle a lot.
However, I feel like something in the core mechanics should be changed. I find difficult to tune intruments, I always hit one by accident and lost my note. This make the puzzles much harder to play in the wrong way, I know what to do but I'm struggling to do it. The best example of this it's the level full of harps (level 12), I can never tune the harp I want, and if I came to the wrong angle I get launched miles away. Once I also get trapped in a loop, looking the poor Tonic be a pinball ball for quite some times (it was pretty hilarious, though XD).
In my opinion, another thing that can be improved is that the game is full of noise. Both literally and metaphorically.
Literally because all the sounds made by the game elements don't blend well with the background music. After a while, it becomes rather annoying.
And metaphorically because the level desing is full of stuff, somtimes that's not helpfull to solve the puzzle at all. I may suggest to reduce the number of game element in a single level. I play the game to the end and some levels were cool btw, I had fun playing them. Some others were a bit frustrating, like levels 12 and 13 for example.
Aesthetically, I really liked the game. The art style is pretty cute and the character is well designed.
Overall I had fun playing your game! I think the concept is very interesting and there is room for improvement ^^
A bit confusing entering for the first time but I got the gist of it as a puzzle platformer. I like the idea that you have a general list of platforming mechanics you can interact with which you "adjust" or "tune" with notes you found around. Some thoughts:
- Tutorialisation is pretty spot on I think. You introduce all the mechanics pretty well and all in all, while there's a bit of a bump in the beginning in trying to understand what the game is about, the average player should be able to pick it up after a bit.
- The way notes interact with the instruments is in general, quite rough though. And I find myself being fling by the instruments as opposed to just wanting to change their tuning. The tuning itself is also somewhat confusing and I find myself unsure which tune colour is the strongest or the weakest. Maybe you could consider simplying the number of tuning you can do to just 3 colours? I imagine that would also make your level design simpler.
I think the messaging and the game presentation can overall be improved to say that this game is a puzzle platformer. The art aesthestics is actually quite unique and I find myself intrigued, only to be mildly dissapointed it is a puzzle platformer. That said, the unique twist of being able to "tune" platform/level mechanics to varying levels of strength is quite nice. There can be much much more polish added to really emphasise on this tuning mechanic.
My 2 cents.
Wait, what genre did you think the game would be just looking at it?
Haha, something rhythm based at least, as someone coming from an avid rhythm game genre. So I was mildly dissapointed
To be honest, only by the presentation I also thought the game was some sort of musical puzzle where you have to tune instruments to make an actual melody XD
Cute game! Reminds me of playing inside an EyeSpy. Nice entry!
Small Comments:
The coin collection is just a little bonus challenge - for now, it changes what ending you get.
Was the running speed too slow, or just the walking speed?
Ahhh gottcha!
I was referring to the walking speed! The running speed was fine for me.
I really wish I could say I enjoyed this – it's a really cute concept that reminds me of Captain Toad, and the puzzles themselves were well-designed and required some thought – but the lack of polish really dragged it down for me.
My biggest problem is how you both insert the music notes and interact with the instruments automatically by just walking into them. I would often insert the note when I just wanted to interact with the instrument, or vice versa, and it eventually got to the point where I was screaming at my monitor because I kept bouncing off a yellow harp when I just wanted to put an orange note into it. I'm not sure what the best solution would be (maybe letting you throw the music note a bit in front of you, or exchange the notes with a button press), but it's something I thought really needed to be addressed.
There were some other physics issues that resulted in things like notes occasionally getting out of range, or puzzles being solved in ways I didn't think were intended; and the UI could use some improvement; but those are relatively minor compared to the aforementioned issue. Again, I wanted to like this a lot, but the problems irritated me more than I expected.
Out of curiosity, is the $1.64 in the top right corner at the end supposed to be some sort of ranking?
Hm... yeah, that's tough. We tried to make it so that you could put notes into the harps from the sides (i.e. not the part with strings, the solid part), but if that's causing you to bounce too we'll have to think of something else.
Making it a button would fix the problem of accidentally placing a note when you just wanted to use the instrument, but it wouldn't fix the reverse... maybe we could have a button that makes Tonic lean forward a bit so you can place a note without your collision box getting near the harps?
The money at the end is how many coins you collected in the levels - depending on how many you collected, you get a different ending screen, but we're working on different uses for the coins for future versions!
I like the toybox aesthetic. The models fit the artstyle well
The jump is hard to gauge due to the camera perspective. It wasn't a huge issue since the game doesn't have that many tricky jumps.
The note properties/jump distance is only indicated by the color only. Which makes it hard for color-blind people. It'd be good to differentiate the notes visually on the ground and on trampolines.
The BGM is good but gets a bit repetitive over time.
I liked the different mechanics. In instrument that grew in size was pretty cool.
Overall, it's a solid entry.
For the jumping, was it an issue even if you pointed the camera to the side to line up your jumps?
It's a bit better when you do that. But the game occasionally wants you to jump across the xy plane instead of just the x or y axis. The side cam doesn't work for that so I wasn't incentivized to switch. Maybe a 90 cam rotate button would help.
Hm? The camera isn't locked to specific angles, it's freely controlled with the mouse. Which button are you pressing to lock the camera to the x or y axis in the first place?
I meant that a button to rotate the camera by 90 degrees would make it easier to align the camera for jumps.
I'm still not quite sure what you mean by that, but I'll look into games that have that feature?