| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| ART / VISUALS | #25 | 4.263 | 4.263 |
| SOUNDS / MUSIC | #30 | 3.763 | 3.763 |
| Overall | #103 | 3.382 | 3.382 |
| FUN | #172 | 3.184 | 3.184 |
| USE OF THEME | #186 | 3.105 | 3.105 |
| BOSS DESIGN | #189 | 3.105 | 3.105 |
| CONTROLS | #253 | 2.868 | 2.868 |
Ranked from 38 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Game's Take on the Theme
All actions rewind the tape reel forward or backwards, which consumes tape. All risk reward decisions are based on how much, and in which direction you spin it.
Did your team make the majority of the art and music during the jam?
Yes. We got our building, road, and wood textures from here: "https://www.fab.com/listings/7a254e70-5f03-4c2d-b01f-ff4509732198" and used this async loading screen plugin: "https://github.com/truong-bui/AsyncLoadingScreen/tree/master/Source/AsyncLoadingScreen/Public". All other code, 3D models, assets, animations, sounds, and everything else was made by us during the jam.
If not, please link to any asset packs or resources used here.
We got our building, road, and wood textures from here: "https://www.fab.com/listings/7a254e70-5f03-4c2d-b01f-ff4509732198" and used this async loading screen plugin: "https://github.com/truong-bui/AsyncLoadingScreen/tree/master/Source/AsyncLoadingScreen/Public"
I forgot to mention, when i was playing, i was always looking at the metronom to focus on the rythm, maybe you could make a lock system so the camera would follow the boss so the player could really focus on the rythm because, remember when playing , a player doeas many things at the same time: getting the infos where the boss is, making combo with metronom, walking, dashing, parry, checking if the boss is in attack animation, what attacks it is, etc, this is well made, the player has time to react, but me, i said me, i was always looking at the metronom to not mess up my rythm.
Wow thank you for taking the time to play the game and for taking the time to write such thoughtful and kind feedback! I really appreciate it!!
To address some of your points regarding the UI icons and tutorial, I apologize for all of that! We were really pressed for time and we implemented the entire tutorial in a couple of hours, we didn't have time to make individual textures for each key/gamepad icon possible, so we just used a single standard "square" texture and pasted the universal icon for the "space" key as text rendered on top of it lol. We do intend to make real icons for everything though, and we'll be sure to make the icon for the space key wider for the sake of clarity!! The same goes for the entire tutorial part, I agree with all of your points and I despise text-heavy tutorials as well -- it was very much hastily thrown together, but we'll be sure to improve on it as we move forward!
Regarding your other points, don't worry I do not intend to dilute the game of its main focus at all! I don't intend for this to target the widest audience possible, and I am very much focused on trying to make sure that the core gameplay remains as satisfying as possible for anyone willing to learn how it works! That of course means that I can't cede on some things that would make this challenging -- I fully agree with you there! I do however think that there are some holes in this game currently that would get in the way of this, and would in turn make it just a tad more accessible for people.
For example, you could be a very good musician and rhythm game player, but if you have a weird audio device or a bad monitor, you'll inevitably have some nasty input latency that would mess up your timings. Usually, a good rhythm game has a calibration screen that would let the game mitigate and account for that latency so it doesn't feel nasty to play. This is something that we need and would make the game a tad more accessible without sacrificing quality. I also think that having multiple difficulty options with varying timing windows wouldn't hurt.
There are also numerous tricks in here already that make timing things easier (outlined in the game page). For example, even if you mistime your attack, the "impact" frame of the attack animation (the moment the attack lands and the boss flashes white) will always land on the next beat. So if, instead of focusing on the music, you focus on hitting any of the attack buttons right when your previous mistimed attacks land, you'll have a guaranteed successfully timed hit. Another trick is that the dash is free, so you could try to dash until you get it right, and when you do you'd immediately press attack or rewind or whatever you want to do and it will be successfully timed. These are all things that presently exist in the game but are not as intuitive as I'd like them to be. So I think it is worth investigating various different effects to get them to a more polished state (eg., via hitstop, particles, something else), which I think would make the game both more satisfying and more accessible without diluting it.
I am curious about what you mean by the "lock system". If you don't mind me asking, would this be different from what's already there? The game already automatically locks the camera onto the boss as soon as any boss fight begins.
Thanks again!!
Thanks for playing, and thanks for the feedback! I also think that one might have been easier moreso due to the strong background beat but also possibly because of the way the game mitigates and accounts for input delay (as any rhythm game should). We don't support the latter (yet!) due to time constraints but it's very possible that some hardware is adding input latency here, we don't have any kind of calibration screen that let's you accomodate for variable input delay caused by monitor/audio devices so it is very likely that this is contributing to what you're experiencing here. I could only guess though heheh
From what I remember Crypt of the NecroDancer often operates on the same BPM range & time signature as we do for this, especially for the end tracks that I believe are often between 120-145ish bpm, so it may be less likely for the amount of time between beats to be the culprit here. For this game we stay strictly inside that 120-145 range
Not sure about what it does for its input window though. I went with the same amount used by other games in the rhythm action genre (which was also the bare minimum I needed to make sure you can't just mash a button and get everything right), but maybe CotND is more lenient in this regard. I'll have to investigate and benchmark it later..!
It's interesting to think about though, we'll be sure to test out and iterate on different things to account for this in the future. On top of the latency calibration screen, we've been talking about adding some difficulty settings that would maybe let you adjust the timing window. We'll see how that goes.
Thanks again for checking the game out!!
Thanks for playing, I'm glad to hear you liked the visuals! You can remap it, but the default parry button on keyboard is space! We probably should have added a wider icon for it lol
Thanks for playing, and thank you for the feedback!! I really appreciate it!
100000000% agree with you on the hitstun stuff, alongside the fact that the player has nearly 0 forward movement in all of her non-discharge attacks, it is no doubt the part of this game that ticks me off the most. I originally intended to add some kind of invul knockdown system but that meant a whole new suite of animations and states for the player and I was already kind of dying by the end so it unfortunately didn't make it.. You can bet your sweet bippy that I'll address that problem though!!!
And yeah, the way those things are telegraphed is a bit lackluster. All of those attacks are meant to be a kind of "check" on your parry skills. They're meant to be parried in the same rhythm as the sounds that precede it (for example, the first boss will spawn 4 wind balls one quarter note away from each other while making a sound, and thus you'd have to parry them by hitting the parry button in the same manner as those sounds 4 times). The second boss' blue katawaguruma summon will do the same, before it starts shooting at you it will kind of make sounds at half note intervals from each other, and the parry rhythm for it is the same exact thing. It has 3 flames that light up alongside the sounds it produces, so it only throws out 3 lasers, etc. I totally get how unclear this was though. We've been talking about adding more SFX for boss attacks and whatnot. On top of everything else, the existing sounds these things produce sort of drown due to the music so they're difficult to look out for. Lots of things to iterate on and test here in the future.
Thank you again!!
Cool game. The visuals and music are amazing. It took me a long time to get used to the pressing timings. There is still not enough click bar like in the OSU!, which shows whether you pressed early or not (I attached a picture of what I mean). It seemed to me that the window for a successful press was quite small. If it's not a secret, can you tell me how much time is given there?
Thanks for playing! If I remember correctly it should be about 0.1-0.2 seconds or something like that(?), the same thing as Hi-Fi rush in normal difficulty (and the bare minimum I needed to make sure you can't just mash a button and get everything right). I don't necessarily intend to keep it that way though, the fact that this game actively penalizes you for getting your timings wrong means that a bit of the challenge in that regard should be lifted away from that particular aspect of the game and shifted towards meter management or something along those lines. We'll have to iterate on this with time and find the right balance here, along with some difficulty options that straight up let you choose between different timing windows.
I didn't observe many issues with regards to timing when my friends were playtesting the timing windows, but I do know for certain that the experience won't be the exact same between people depending on their hardware (i.e., monitor input delay or audio device).
Right now, you can kind of get less input latency by switching off vsync in the game settings and maybe perhaps changing the anti aliasing method to FXAA or something (and also maybe by messing around with your GPU settings, the same typical tricks people do for other rhythm games), but the correct way to solve this issue is to introduce a latency calibration screen into the actual game so it can compensate for it (which is what most rhythm games do nowadays). I intend to work this into the game as soon as I'm able to update it, we kind of just ran out of time and couldn't add that feature for this jam.
I'm glad you liked the visuals!
Thanks for playing, I hope you enjoyed it!! I looked at a bunch of rhythm action games for reference and Hi-Fi Rush was definitely one of them!
The tutorial thing is sadly a bug, we will fix it post jam. But if you say no to the tutorial before you fully start the game (when you first run the game), it shouldn't keep reappearing after each boss.
But you did well the idea is to use the dash to sync yourself up before switching to an attack or rewind, helping you to maintain the beat.
You have 3 combos one focused on damage which should help you to beat the boss faster, another heals you and the other gives you a shield. You discharge the reel to use them. It has a bit of a learning curve but Im glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for playing our game <3
Ps. Once you do get into the game and you sync your attacks and different combos to the music its a great feeling! :D
Thank you for playing! I appreciate the feedback, and I am happy to hear that you enjoyed the visuals!
We'll definitely add some difficulty options to tweak the input window soon. As an alternative to focusing on the music, player attacks are always guaranteed to land to the beat, regardless of whether or not you've timed it correctly.
So if you focus on pressing any attack button right when an unsuccessfully timed attack lands, your next attack will be guaranteed to be on time. If you go into the hub and try it on the dummy, I'd suggest just focusing on pressing attack buttons right when it flashes white after being hit.
This of course is harder to apply for other mechanics such as the quick rewind and parries (for which there are also some neat tricks I outlined in the game page you can apply instead), but I've found it to be a reliable way of making sure attacks land on time.
Thank you for the kind words and thank you for playing!!! Yes, we've been talking about having some kind of calibration screen so you can account for input latency due to how important that is in rhythm games. We kind of just ran out of time to include that for this jam though lol. But we'll definitely be adding that in!
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.