for the second part of this comment i agree especially the first level is REALLY hard but for the first part of the comment, in the old demo they had an npc explain how remixing works and i assume so will the full game. as for the most resent demo if you read the itch page you would know about all the criteria the game ranks you by, it literally says "Expression - This will increase every time you gain points from remixing the suggested line" and if that's not "good info" then the Rhythm would probably let you know that you need to remix on Rhythm so you can get a better score :|
Viewing post in Scratchin' Melodii [DEMO] comments
Explaining on the itch page is good and all, but that doesn't replace explaining it within the game. A player shouldn't be expected to learn something from outside the game in order to know how to play it, that is not acceptable.
Along with that, this description of "remixing the suggested line" is actually STILL really vague and it doesn't get across well what that translates to in gameplay. What is "remixing" a line? That could mean a lot of things, and it's not an obvious conclusion for it to mean "make up notes that don't appear in the song", especially when the game trying to do that tends to sound bad unless you're already really good at making it sound good, and the game has already explicitly told you to play the notes that appear on the screen.
It's very strange they would remove that NPC, and it's really concerning to see them commit to doing that considering that while yes, having an NPC just describe textually what a mechanic is not good game design, just removing ALL explanations of the mechanic without replacing them is infinitely worse. I wish I could assume they will just put it back but I cannot imagine a reason for them to remove it to begin with.
I appreciate addressing that, but I feel hugely compelled to highlight that teaching the game and getting the player to the skill you want them to have should be something far more prioritized than it is being right now, honestly even more so now knowing that there was an NPC that explained this and they were not the first one to be put back after the hub was remade. It is sincerely a very alarming mistake that this demo, which would be the first time of so many people playing this game through SAGE, seems to put this off almost entirely. At the very least I very strongly want to suggest a more thorough tutorial process, as someone that has seen fun games die by their onboarding. Ideally working more advanced aspects naturally through the experience past just the one single tutorial song is a good place to start.