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Note that this feedback is based on the build(s) available at the end of the jam.

Audible Dribble is, hands down, the most original submission this year. It is always enjoyable to come across unconventional, out-of-the-box, or subversive experiences that ask me to think differently about what games can be, and jams are a great environment to experiment and explore the space beyond games' typical identities.

There is some awkwardness present that goes beyond the unfamiliarity of something new. As noted in the "caveats" section of the game page, certain frequencies represented within the game are difficult for a human to make via phonation (larynx-produced sounds), and a lack of calibration options for input sensitivity/granularity could go a long way toward making the game feel more controllable and less susceptible to noise interference.

The gameplay as currently presented is limited to maneuvering a ball into a box by bouncing it off a segmented floor that acts as a historgram of detected sounds. The combinations of ball position, velocity and direction only provide a small amount of variation before exhausting what the game has to offer.

It would be interesting to explore these kinds of controls in different contexts, such as guiding the ball around obstacles, hitting a moving target, or rolling the ball to specific positions without exceeding a maximum height. I could even imagine similar controls being interesting for a "platformer" of sorts where every platform had a sound controlled surface that the player used to guide a ball through more complex environments.

I'd also be interested to see whether an interpolated curve gave more control than the discrete bars present in the game at the moment.

I've played and seen a number of voice controlled games before, but nothing that attempts to implement this level of vocal control over manipulating an in-game world to influence entities. What's here is still pretty rough, but it's inspiring!


I'd also like to do a short interview with you for an article I'm writing on the 2018 Linux Game Jam. Shoot me an email via cheese@cheesetalks.net and I'll send you through some questions!