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A jam submission

Staircase of SongView game page

Use a musical scale to build a staircase out of the underworld.
Submitted by obna — 4 hours, 44 minutes before the deadline
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Staircase of Song's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Audio#123.8573.857
Gameplay/Design#163.8573.857
Overall#193.6433.643
Fun#243.5713.571
Graphics#363.2863.286

Ranked from 7 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

What would you like feedback on?
• How fun/viable is this the overall concept?

• Right now the game is in between a skill game and a puzzle game. Would you like it better if it leaned more in one of those directions?

• Are the controls for playing notes intuitive? How might I change/improve the control scheme?

• Would you rather have direct control of the player characters? (I know this would be a big change, but it would create lots of design space for different kinds of puzzles.)

What did you update?
I updated the visuals, added in-game tutorial text, made a bunch of "quality of life" mechanical changes, and improved the design of the first level.

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

beautiful game, beautiful music, definitely one of the more memorable games I've played on GMTK game jam.
if I had to critique anything it would be the controls... I must praise the fact I can just press the on screen buttons, but when trying to use my keyboard its always me figuring out which and where the buttons are.
⸜(。˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡

Submitted

Very unique idea 

Submitted

Very cute game! I love how puzzle and myth are intertwining, it is such a cool way of tellyng the story of Orpheus and Eurydice :)

A couple of points that I'd like to give feedback on:

  • I would love to see more of the characters in the game! I thing it would be cool to have some voice reactions maybe, or some intro...
  • or even their interactions! This could add a bit to the immersion and overall impression, imo :) Or maybe there could be the gameplay reason why there are two of them? Like now they are climbing the ladder but in terms of the gameplay there is no difference if there was only one of them going up. If there were puzzles that included both of them doing something different, that might be fun!
  • I think it is a perfect combo of skill and puzzle. I only got a feeling that the last level seemed a bit harder compared to the other ones, especially because there were much more notes available. Maybe a smoother transition to this last level would be nicer. Or maybe fewer notes to choose from :)
  • I think it would be easier to get used to the controls if they didn't change completely every level, but rather that we used the same keys every time and some new keys would be added to them. Apart from that everything seemed quite intuitive :)
  • I felt a bit unsure about moving your screen up and down, maybe it would be better for every puzzle to fit into your screen? 
  • The tutorial was very nice btw!
  • You can see the "well played" text before you actually finished the game, as you accidentally get a look at it at some point :D To me it seems better to get it only after completing the last level, as after I saw it, I got really impatient and a bit confused, as I now more concentrated on this writing instead of listening to the notes :) 
  • I liked the visual style, but it appered to me that the characters got a bit lost as their outline is not that thick as the outline thay you use for the other elements. Maybe if it was the same for everything it would be more balanced :)

Great game overall!

Submitted

Wonderful concept, deceptively fun as well.

Seems to have struck the perfect balance between skill and puzzle, personally leaning one direction or another would detract from the fun for me. Greatly enjoyed figuring out the puzzle aspect of this game while playing the notes to slowly form a song throughout the level. The controls are rather intuitive at first, however for some stages the controls feel a bit too spread apart. Perhaps either condensing the keys down to be closer or sticking with a specific set of keys would help with this. The gameplay loop as it is though feels amazing, having the player take control of the characters I feel would detract from the game at its core and end in a less fun final product.

All in all a lovely experience, can't wait to see where this goes!

Submitted

Interesting concept and beautiful implementation.

Controls are good, but probably it would be ok to use same keys (same row of keys) every round.

About balance of skill game and puzzle game - for me it's just in balance now, you need to think a bit and then make a couple of tries to pass.

Direct control doesn't feel necessary (it even could ruin the atmosphere a bit; for now it's just you and music and it feels just right).

Thank you for the experience, I really enjoyed playing the game.

Submitted

The overall concept is really fun and innovative! Congrats! I think it is a quite good balance of a skill and puzzle game. the only thing I noticed is that i could not see the last few tiles on the right and on the bottom of the screen because the game was somehow too large for my browser window, but I was able to play anyway.