itch.io

Hi Chris,

I'd also be interested in receiving feedback if you have time to listen to my submission as well.  Thank you for offering!

https://itch.io/jam/ost-composing-jam-7/rate/2845256

Nice submission! Overall I quite enjoyed it, and thought that the production in Traveling Underwater was nice with the pizzicato strings and mallet melody. I also liked the title of your submission :)

I enjoyed the syncopated feel of some of the tracks. I was also super impressed that you recorded some instruments live, because the recording sounded super clean, I assumed that some of those were live midi input into nice vsts!

Overall great work! I think your music would be very fitting in the game you described!

Thanks for the feedback and for listening! I'm glad my mock-up is getting some attention, I've always wanted to try setting up a system like that in FMOD or some other dynamic game audio tool

I really enjoyed your melodic choices, especially in the epic Discovery! In addition I thought your use of atonal sounds added a lot of texture.

Like others I also liked the transition in Quantus DT83. I could totally imagine that some in-game event would cause you to kick the bgm into the up tempo part and ratchet up the feeling of excitement!

Great job!

I agree about the adversity theme. I didn't have as much time as I would've liked to work on my submission overall, but wanted to submit what I had worked on, so I just decided to finish what I could in the time I had, and put it out there. Thanks for the feedback and for listening!

I agree about the adversity theme. I didn't have as much time as I would've liked to work on my submission overall, but wanted to submit what I had worked on, so I just decided to finish what I could in the time I had, and put it out there. Thanks for the feedback and for listening!

This was awesome haha, I hadn't heard of Strudel.cc or Tidal before, but I'll need to check them out now. I'm a software engineer who is into trackers and the like, as well as algorithmic music, so I'm really glad you uploaded a video with your submission, so we could watch it all in action.

Super fun submission, may your cosmic camel find bliss 🐪 🐫 

Great submission! I really enjoyed the production, I thought your mixing, choice of instrumentation, and use of ambient noises in the background was really impressive. You wove such a nice narrative with your music, that absolutely fit the narrative that you described with your text.

Awesome submission! The music was great, right from the get go we have the tropical vibes, but also some slightly unsettling off key non chord tones that kind of convey the "uh oh I'm in trouble" feeling of being toyed with by the Queen.

I totally agree with a lot of the other comments here, and just have to say that the animations, song titles, and even music made me laugh. The composition and quality was enough to make this memorable, but I really appreciated the creativity and humor that also went into this submission!

Thanks for listening! I wish I could've fleshed it out more too, but unfortunately I only had a few nights out of the allotted time to work on my submission :( I had some ideas about writing a "flying" version of the theme as well, and would've liked to write some themes that were not as "bgm" style as well

Awesome work! My favs were Wistful Mistin (love that little dim chord you throw in, really makes the wistfulness hit) and the jazziness of Delivery! Overall super varied in the styles you wrote, it's an impressive amount of range!

My one small critical feedback is that in Wistful Mistin, when you use the woodblock, you could probably make the rhythm of it sound a little less robotic (it's a super small nitpick but I didn't feel that way about any of your other percussion, so I think you just need to add a little groove or human touch to it)

Also enjoyed your writeup of your hypothetical game :) and am impressed that you composed so much music in such a short time!

Wow the orchestral production on your submission was super polished! Agree with most of the feedback here already and don't have much else to add. Great job!

I also heard the Lena Raine influence, definitely felt like The Plunge's dark harmonic shift was similar to the musical changes when Dark Madeline came out in Celeste.

I thought your production and mixing was great, and it was a joy to listen to! Thanks for sharing :)

Temple in the Mind was awesomely funky. I'd probably not want to leave that part of the game just so I could listen longer haha

Overall great work! I liked a lot of the harmonic choices you made in your composition, they conveyed a lot of different shades of emotion, which really evoked a lot of the emotions you described in your hypothetical game description.

Thanks for listening! Definitely imagined a relaxing vibe when looking at the theme picture. 

Awesome work! I was very reminded of JPop/JRock style music that's used in Anime/JRPGs, which I think is super technically complex. The fusion of the rock and metal elements with the electronic ones was also great, and I thought that you did a good job of filling the sonic spectrum with different instruments without making things feel overcrowded.

Your cover art was also super cool! I'd give you bonus points for that if it was on the rubric :)

I specifically thought the transition cue at 1:55 of Soaring in Ambition (I think it's a reversed piano arpeggio?) sounded super cool! I may have to try to replicate that in a future composition!

Overall, I could tell a lot of thought, energy, and care went into making this submission, and I'm glad I had the opportunity to listen to it!

Thanks! and yes, thanks for pointing that out. I had noticed the clipping in the YouTube version and had posted a note about it on the Project page, but had forgotten to update the submission page.

Also yes, definitely a bit of an homage to the The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time opening theme, you're correct :)

I see, I went to your project page, didn't see the link on the submission page.

I think if you go to your dashboard (through the arrow in the top right next to your username), it should show the things that you posted on Itch. Once on that page, there should be an "edit" button that lets you edit the project (this is different than the submission page for the Jam). If you go to that page, there will be a field where you should add your link, called "Gameplay video or trailer"

Great job on the composition, I can feel a lot of emotion there. I'm so sorry to hear about your grandmother; I think that processing your grief and transmuting it into art is a great way to honor those who you miss. 

I like the choices of instrumentation, and especially liked the ending of the composition. I would highly suggest making a simple video with your composition on it (can just be with the theme picture) and uploading to YouTube and adding the video as a "trailer" (I think it is not too late for that, you can just click "edit soundtrack" on your page and paste the link.) A lot of people may skip listening to your composition because they don't want to download it, and streaming it is easier, and I think it deserves to have as many listeners as possible :)

Nice Composition! I liked the pads that you used. I particularly liked tracks 2 and 3, and found them fun to listen to. Some of the other tracks such as 1 were also interesting because they were much more atmospheric instead of melodic. It was impressive that, even though your production was fairly "minimal", there was quite a range of emotion conveyed by the different tracks.

Nice composition! I like the running melodic theme, and how your background harmony evolves around it. I also think that the evolution of your instrumentation choices is interesting, and that they definitely conveyed a sense of "ethereality."

This is very cool! I like the vibe of the video. I'm curious what sort of editing software you used to make the video? I'm especially interested in the waveform on the left side

Chill puzzle game. Reminds me of similar puzzles involving the same mechanic in Mario Odyssey. Enjoyed the chill soundtrack. 

Maybe more complex mechanics could be introduced to add another layer to the puzzles, something like blocks that push you without rotating you when you land on them, or blocks that rotate you a new direction every time you land on them? Just some ideas for how to expand what you already have :) I enjoyed what you had, and thought understanding the puzzles and objectives was very intuitive.

Awesome game, nice art and creative ability to both roll dice or use them as projectile. Challenging difficulty too. Overall, great job!

Ah I see, I will have to look into how the camera system works more. Thanks for the note!

Enjoyed this game! The ability to determine the effect of your rolls reminded me a lot of a board game I like called Dice City. I also liked that you could re-organize your skills after a certain number of turns, which let me do things like build up my armor and then focus on doing damage after I got to change. Would love to see more interesting skills, or perhaps randomized skill pools when choosing, to create variety.

Great job! 

Thanks for playing and for the feedback! I'm assuming you played on mobile device, and moved the camera by touching the screen with 2 fingers at once? I didn't implement that on purpose but a friend pointed that out to me and I guess its a built in feature to unity? lol

That is to say, I thought the game would be entirely fixed perspective (no camera movement), but it is not haha.

82 is pretty fast, I think that's faster than I've ever gotten haha (though I never really worked on getting a super fast run, was too busy working on the game lol)

Thanks for the feedback, and for playing! If made into a full game I'd probably work on making help pages that explain the abilities in a more visual way (rather than my crazy long description I have for the game). I honestly appreciate you reading through and learning the abilities!

Thanks for playing and for the feedback! Also nice username haha.

Fast paced was what I was going for, I left a really in-depth comment below on another person's feedback on real-time vs turn based and why I decided to have the speed/system the way that I did. In that comment I talked about how if I made this a full game (with more complex mechanics), I'd probably implement a "tactical mode" mode toggle that would slow down or completely pause the action to help you reconfigure your setup when needed (but also halt the progress of dice generation). Glad you enjoyed the game :)

Thanks Levi for the feedback, and for playing! Below is what I wrote in the description. I'll check out your game when I get the chance, but sadly do not have access to my computer this week, so unless it works on my phone, I probably can't rate or give feedback during the game jam.

Cut Features

I had hoped to implement the following, but didn't have time due to the time constraints. They may be added at a future date.

- Enemy attacks back

- Visible enemy life bar

- Bonus damage totalled separately to regular damage

- Multiple enemies

- Money system on enemy slain

- Progression system where you start with one character and easy enemies, gain gold and can purchase more abilities, characters, and upgrade your dice portals

- Better crit animations when big damage happens

- healer character

- different special abilities that leverage other mathematical dice patterns for bonus

Thanks for playing, and appreciate the feedback!

I'm also someone who likes to really to solve out a system and optimize, so I can see where you're coming from with your feedback on the real time vs. having time to think comment. I have had a lot of fun spending several minutes on a single turn in Slay the Spire for example.

When deciding whether to make my game real time or entirely turn based, I thought back to how I previously enjoyed playing chess with no timer because I always wanted to deeply think out my move, but now I enjoy playing it more with a timer, because sometimes infinite decision time leads to stagnation in play because the user wants to spend excessive time on their turn to achieve an optimal result. I enjoyed the timer more because it felt more low stakes, and therefore I could play more games, and not feel horrible when I lose a game that I spent several hours trying to game tree the moves my opponent would make.

However, I think the decision of "game speed" (or no movement in a game without player action) comes down to where you want your game to fall on the spectrum between completely strategic vs action. And I think having a good strategic game is incredibly dependent on having mechanics that are complex enough that they are fun to solve. When thinking of the mechanics of my game, I knew I wouldn't be able to design complex interaction systems in the 48 hour period of the jam, so I decided to make it real time. In addition to this, I thought that the real time element would make it so that more simple classes (warrior and ranger) could be spammed as you rerolled dice in hopes of getting the big damage on your wizard. If it was completely turned based, the warrior and ranger would be pretty boring I think.

One way of solving this would be to add a "tactical mode" that would greatly slow down (or completely halt) the game speed, much like FF7 Remake. I may do that if I make a more fleshed out game, esp if mechanics become more complicated.

Sorry for the wall of text, I really enjoyed your comment and enjoy thinking about the philosophy behind design decisions for a game, so thought I would share my thoughts.

Thanks for playing and for the feedback! Yeah, the wizard doing 1 dmg without a die is a bug lol, fixed in the v2 that I'll push out once the jam is over. We'll see if I flesh this game out or just start working on a new one after this, but if I do, it will definitely have more traditional RPG elements and progression!

Will definitely check back :) One things I also liked that I forgot to mention in my comment yesterday is that I think it's cool that you have two decks that you can shoot from with the different mouse buttons. It would be interesting to see how the deck building portion could be strategic, as I'm a big fan of deck builders/roguelikes and the synergies you could get (maybe if I get an ice shard and then a fireball, bonus melt damage somehow? Or somehow the card played before might affect the damage/projectile count of the next card?)

My last piece of feedback (more like feature requests at this point haha) is that if you do a full release of the game and it's a PC game (vs just being a browser game), I'd love controller support so I could play it as a twin stick shooter. You could make the right stick aim and then the different shoulder buttons shoot from the different decks.

Good luck on the update, rooting for you!

Great visuals! 

I'm a pretty big fan of roguelikes like this (plenty of hours on Binding of Isaac/Gungeon) but I have to agree with others, the difficulty was pretty unforgiving (rooms too small, no cover, too many enemies that had too much health) unless you had the vamp, in which case it was pretty easy.

While it was nice to be able to see that enemies were readying projectiles, I think you need a sound effect or visual cue (maybe make them flash) before they shoot. In a game where health is a precious resource, telegraphing attacks to the player helps make it feel less unfair when you get hit.

Saw below that you had plans to make shops/balance the game, which I think would be great (I also felt the time crunch, so I know it was prob rough to cut a lot of features that you thought up). The movement and shooting felt pretty good itself. Would also be nice to know what the different cards were doing mechanics-wise.

All in all, awesome work! I only left a lot of critique because I thought it was great overall and hope you'll refine it and make it even better.

Always cool to see board games reimplemented as video games, +1 for remaking a classic. Good job :)

Nice game! Thought the art and animation was nice, and mechanics were solid. My feedback would be that it would be nice to have some bigger indicator of where your character is located on the zoomed out map, and it might be more aesthetically satisfying if a die was rolled instead of the borders just changing for the dice stuff, even though functionally its the same thing. I had a lot of fun though, and thought it was very polished.

Cool concept, I liked the dice being a resource and using them for different contexts (money, searching, battle). Reminded me of DnD. I beat the golem guy, and then my screen was just a blank sky, not sure if I missed something and there was more, or if that was the end of the game, but wished I could've kept playing. Either way, good job.

Thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback! I would've like to add more skills but just didn't have enough time. Maybe I'll update it one day.