Post by srpent in Design Discussion: What do you SPECIFICALLY want feedback on?

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Hi everyone, thanks in advance for taking the time to help other people, that's super nice and what it's all about! :)

I'm not too sure about the main mechanic of my game here https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/461157. I think it may be fine for people who do music or rhythm games often because they may be used to multitasking/automating a repetitive pattern/melody, knowing when to press the buttons and memorizing it really fast (please correct me if I'm wrong though). I'd like some feedback specially from people who aren't too accostumed to musical notation and/or playing an instrument, on how does it affect the gameplay (and how easy/hard is it to get to play the game due to the mechanic, if it was even possible at all for you). Also, does it make it tedious?

I'd also like to know if the level design achieves its purpose. I wrote down some stuff on the game's page that came to my head while publishing it for the sake of documentation, and along other stuff, it kind of outlines (even if vaguely) the purpose of each room in the game, and I'd like to know if I achieved it and helped the mechanic shine through the level's design. (I also forgot to mention the introduction's purpose on my game's description, but I think that it's pretty clear)

The goal of the game is to experiment and find possible new tools/techniques that I can possibly use in the future, and learn how far can I push some different skills into games, while keeping them enjoyable. In other terms: knowing if I can rely on some memorization, rhyth, multitasking, or whatever skills are needed to play the game as the basis for my mechanics, and knowing if I'm pushing them too far or making the game too crowded by having all of it. It's not (at least in the forseeable future) for something commercial, but rather for basic research/experimenting purposes.

Side note: If you're attempting to play the game and hitting the notes seems kind of out of place, or delayed, or buggy, or unreliable, or whatever; try downloading the game (bottom of the page) and lower the rendering clarity in Unity if the problem still persists. (Sorry, it's a bug I couldn't fix due to time constraints. It's most likely frametime fluctuation related)

Thanks a ton!

(Sorry for the huge wall of text, and I'll get to test some of your games in here and give feedback another day because it's pretty late at night already here)

Crime Dog5 years ago

So for context, I used to play guitar and I've studied music a little, but I'm by no means a musician.

I also play rhythm games a bit, and I'd say I'm neither great-nor-bad.

Your game is soooo bruuuutally haaaard.

It took me about 15 minutes to play THE LICK even once, and admittedly some of that was due to frame skipping, but still.

I think part of the difficulty there was due to the fact that I couldn't rest my hand, as I had to play five notes. This required me to shift my hand up one key to hit 5, then back down to reset for 3-12, which is quite tricky as is.

Add in movement and it's very, very hard.

I was able to defeat the first demon, but I feel like your mechanics are fighting each other a bit. The mouse movement doesn't really add anything to the game, perhaps the game could function more like a movement-less battle game?

I really, really like the idea of using music to fight and I understand that the one lick, one measure thing as to keep it on theme, but I think only being able to have the one lick affect gameplay gets in the way of being expressive with the music.

That said, having to actually pull of THE LICK does have a certain appeal.

What if instead of having to move around, each note of THE LICK did something? One note blocked attacks, one note attacked, etc. But you could only *finish enemies off* using THE LICK, otherwise they get some health back and get back up?

That way, you have the satisfaction of learning to play a piece of 'music', as well as some of the free expression of just hitting notes and grooving out on devils.

(as for the technical issues, I think there might be some pre-existing unity plug-ins which help with syncing game-play to rhythms and stuff, you might be able to find something there that helps with future rhythm games.)

srpent5 years ago (1 edit)

Hey, thanks for the feedback! I guess you're right in that it offers way too much challenge in different areas (movement and playing the lick) at the same time from the very beggining. If I ever decide to touch up on the game again, I'll definitely make for better introductory material and add better cues to show the player when and how to perform the lick to make it less daunting, maybe animating the next key to play in the lick pulsing to the beat or something (and also the technical stuff...).

I like the idea of making different notes have also different purposes, (stunning and parrying come to mind) but finishing off with the entire melody, although I'd maybe change it to make small three/four-note-melodies (easier and maybe slower ones) take that role in order to add diversity and expression as you said (which I wholeheartedly agree on), but keeping it to the 'performing melodies' core and sort of learning something that could work musically if you were to go to a piano or something and give it a go, I feel it is more rewarding to do something right and get rewarded for it than just pressing a button for an advantage in this case, plus you still get to kind of improvise and groove by choosing which smaller melodies to use, kind of if you were improvising a solo by stitching together particular techniques to your heart's content and give it a different feel depending on the intervals chosen; maybe one of this small melodies could be a diminished triad arpeggio back to the root, or maybe a suspended first triad, or a II V I but in notes only, and so on... (oh man, your idea here really rocks and it's making my imagination run wild haha thanks)

That being said, maybe having a small and weaker-than-playing-the-lick visual effect unique to each note would add a lot for the 'hitting notes and grooving out on devils' you mentioned too (and actually... that gives me another idea... if I map the notes you're playing correctly to the chromatic wheel, it should look good if you play something harmonious due to ratios and stuff and could probably help by giving more cues to the brain on what to do and make it create stronger connections/associations and have a higher aesthetic appeal while playing it).

Anyways, thanks a ton for the advice, I felt that the difficulty was right when playing it and that made me suspect it was all kinds of wrong, thanks for giving your feedback on it, it's super appreciated. Also thanks for suggesting the plug-ins, I don't know why I hadn't thought of that, and I'll absolutely look it up.

(Edited the comment by dividing it in smaller and more digestible paragraphs)

H_Labs5 years ago

Back in middle and high school, I was in band, so I know the basics of reading music. That being said, I had no early idea how I was supposed to sync up with the drums (never played with a non-symphonic band to be fair) until I listened to your audio and started head banging. After almost 30 minutes, I pulled off the lick (twice, apparently, but I only remember doing it once). It was so satisfying~~, almost like it was the Dark Souls of rhythm games~~.

I think having eighth notes being the first thing you have to pull off (at the game's tempo) is too fast. To make things more difficult, it is hard to use the keyboard to play. I have to both scrunch up my hand and twist it to cover the keys. Maybe a numpad would be better, but not everyone has one.

The only real cue you had for when to play (aside from the subtle camera shakes and the drum), was the music at the top (only at the beginning). I can't see someone who is unfamiliar with sheet music being able to read it without it lighting up in time with the drum (like in other rhythm games). Just having that up there as a visual refer for when to play (pros could still disable it if you wanted) could help a lot. Options for changing the bpm might help as well (sort of like custom difficulty).

I'm going to disagree with Crime Dog a little here and say that I think the movement controls could work as long as players were able to fall into a rhythm with the lick. If they were able to do that, they could focus on movement more and playing less (sort of what you said). I think it would also help to make the circle around the player bigger. That way if people still had a hard time, they would have to move less. I'd be interested in what others think though.

Your idea on paper gets me excited, and I did really enjoy pulling off the lick, so I think you had the right idea. The issue (for me at least) was the barrier to entry being too high.

srpent5 years ago

Thanks for the feedback! I should add more cues to help the player get started quicker as you said, I dropped the ball there for sure. Something else that I found is that tempo is kind of hard to get right. I started by making the game go at a regular 120 bpm, however I found that by keeping it low, it's easier to teach the game, but at the same time you make the player have to spend more time for the same reward and the player must play safer and slower, making it more boring/tedious and having to plan from even further ahead, so I went with a 140 bpm which (I think) I once heard was about the upper limit on the speed that people normally talk at, but I do agree that it may be too fast to start off there, maybe have it ramp up alongside the challenge would have made for better balancing.

Also I have a small question about the hand position thing. How is your keyboard layed out, how big is it, about how tall are the keys and could you provide with maybe a drawing on your position? This part has me a bit intrigued because I never considered the ergonomics being too harsh here, I really just felt it like a small piano, but it probably is different on different keyboards and different hands. I absolutely should have designed around such cases because everyone is different and their keyboards are too.

The drum beat thing being displayed visually and such is a good suggestion. I got to be honest here, the only rhythm games I've watched (not even played) are Guitar Hero and Piano Tiles, in reality I just wanted to try something new, but in retrospect that was probably the biggest overlook ever haha. Thanks for making me remember the importance of looking what others have done before every once in a while to fix some issues I might not have seen.

Again, thanks for the very insightful suggestions. They will come in really handy if I ever want to make something like this game again or decide to make it a bigger thing. (I mean, some of them, specially when thinking about the moral of their story, will come in very handy for game design in general anyways, so thank you!)

H_Labs5 years ago

I have the Mac's Magic Keyboard with Numpad:

The keys are very shallow and each if about the size of my thumb. I play the game by placing my left hand so each of my fingers is over 1-5. The issues is that my thumb is much shorter than my other fingers. This means to hover over the 5 key I have to twist my wrist to my thumb is over the key (making it harder to hit the other keys) or really push my thumb forward (my thumb then ends up parallel to the key, making it hard to press down without hitting a bunch of other keys). This issue with my thumb exacerbates the difficulty of crossing your fingers (or whatever the actual name is when playing piano) when switching from 1-5 to higher notes and back.

Crime Dog5 years ago

It's crazy that this is a design consideration when making a PC rythm game; what keyboard is my player using?