Wonderful idea. I never expected to see a dancing simulator. The art is also great. Unfortunately, I haven’t made it past the first dance. Maybe I got something wrong, of course… But I think some slow-paced tutorials would be VERY helpful here. Also, you may show keys (in a moment when you need to hit them) on the screen for dummies. There is enough empty space. Sometimes, the character just refused to move, and I couldn’t understand why. Maybe the initial position was wrong. Dunno. After all, I got around 8/16 by trying to do it correctly, and then on the next attempt, I started hitting keys like crazy ‘a’, ‘d’, ‘a’, ‘d’. Etc. The character moved seemingly randomly, but the score was high 15/16. I would definitely play more if the learning curve were easier.
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Thanks so much for playing and for this feedback! At one time I had the idea that the character's grandfather would show him a first dance as a kind of tutorial at the start, but over time it became clear that I didn't have time for it if I was going to finish the main gameplay -- the tutorial is a good idea. The game has a time window, lasting from 0.15 seconds before the beat to 0.15 seconds after the beat, when pushing the keys will move the character; during the other 0.2 seconds for each beat, it will do nothing (i.e., it will refuse to move). From jam player feedback I realized that if you rapidly press all relevant keys, then when the movement window opens, the script will detect the correct key and give you credit for it, even if you're also pushing wrong keys. I didn't anticipate that to guard against it, so that was my design mistake -- and thank you for pointing it out! Out of curiosity, if you're on a PC, have you tried using the arrows? I haven't been able to have a PC playtester try playing with arrows vs. WASD to see if it makes a difference, and I seem to hear more feedback about frustration with reference to WASD keys. I can't imagine why that would make a difference, but I'd love to rule it out! Thanks again for playing and for noting the parts you enjoyed!