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Alien-51's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio | #6 | 4.276 | 4.276 |
| Gameplay | #95 | 3.690 | 3.690 |
| Enjoyment | #180 | 3.655 | 3.655 |
| Overall | #197 | 3.563 | 3.563 |
| Visuals | #255 | 3.897 | 3.897 |
| Theme | #430 | 3.379 | 3.379 |
| Innovation | #786 | 2.483 | 2.483 |
Ranked from 29 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does the game fit the theme?
The "Strange Places" theme is all over our game. To the Alien-51 band, the spots they visited on Earth were just "strange places" they didn't quite understand. They felt so inspired by our monuments and culture that they went back to their own planet to make these weird, remixed cultural interpretations, and that's exactly why they named their first album after the experience!
What code and assets did you not make from scratch during the jam (if any)?
We did all the assets for our game. Pixel art and coding were made by furioustierren using Aseprite and Godot, and music and SFX were made by Ghaladeon using Ableton Live.
How many people worked on the game?2
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Comments
The alien band is so cute! Making two songs in a week is very impressive. Love the theme so bad!
Awww, glad you liked it so much! We were so inspired that the ideas for each level, the songs style and the whole theme for the game came out by itself in the first day of brainstorming, and we agreed in (almost) all decisions for the game, so it was a breeze to work together haha :) thank you for playing it! <3
This is a very good rhythm game. I'm impressed with both the custom songs and the charting. Great job to the team!
Hey Andy! Thank you for playing it and the comment :) so happy of the artistic side we achieved in this game for a second Game Jam, and so excited to do new games soon! Making music and games was always a dream for me, so this Jams are so fun to do.
This was quite fun! I played the web version, and the notes were tolerably in sync with the music, which I think is impressive for the web. I thought the beats were pretty fun too and had me bobbing my head along. I wish there were more levels, or maybe some leaderboards to add some challenge.
I think the UI was pretty clear and well put together. I wish there was a little more going on with the alien band - granted, I wasn't looking at them too much, but still would have been cool to have little animations in time with the beat to show them playing along.
Your cover art doesn't do the game justice, but I was surprised how much I liked the game when I booted it up :)
Hello hello! Thank you for all this points you shared, lots of them are on point, for sure! :)
Glad you enjoyed the music and the level designs of the notes! We had to do quick iterations because of changing mechanics (holding notes), trying to keep the first level as “Tutorial level”, and the second as a more rhythm Hip-Hop beats. We had the idea of a third level, but we didn’t reach on time :( maybe post Jam I could make a new song, let’s see!
Leaderboard was a really nice idea we had as well! The second button in the Main Menu was supposed to be that, but we had to move it to “Out of Scope” in our Board because of time as well :( if it’s not hard to implement (the database and API), it would be nice to check :)
We wanted to animate the band, at least a 2 frame switching with the beat. Same with the crowd (booping up and down with each beat), but no time for that as well :( might have been cool to add more dynamics, indeed.
We were talking to improve the cover art comparing with the other submissions that we liked, like making the alien-51 title green, or showing the band as the cover. I might be able to talk to the pixel artist to see if we can change it. Glad you were curious to click and discover it :)
Got 128 and 150 combo respectively. Guess my old DDR skills are still here. Really nice visuals with the alien band. The rhythm game feels good to play, the songs are decent, but maybe due to being a web build, the timing felt slightly off. Not a big deal for me, though. Baguette Eiffel got me laughing out loud, which is a plus. Overall the game is quite polished, so well done!
Other things I like:
Suggestions:
First of all, thank you very much for your full review! Really helpful and with lots of positive and constructive feedback :) here are some points I can answer:
The Baguette Eiffel was the starting point of all the bizarre ideas when doing the brainstorming for the theme, everything else came from there haha. We initially thought of a Free Tour Guide that had to build a circle of tourists and bring them to strange places like this, and talk and show it to get points (might work on that idea as a test in the future for another small game).
The timing on the notes sometimes was a bit hard to sync perfectly, so it might be a problem of the notes itself, not the web. We are planning to improve the levels a bit post Jam :)
About the audio feedback: we focused on the visual feedback with the ripples, and even thought to make the note show white before disappearing to give more feedback in that part, but it’s true we could add a small drum or space sci-fi sound for the single notes and the hold notes. I personally wanted the player to enjoy the original song without much extra noises (the crowd was supposed to show up after Streak x20 with a “WOHOO!” and crowd noise, but it was out of scope / song was not going to listened well). We will look into that for post Jam as well and let you know to test it!
About animation of the band: another point that was out of scope, sadly :( it could be a nice addition if our pixel artist has time post Jam. She wanted to add different states of the band (like sweating and sad if there were lots of misses, and happy and playing if they were playing correctly). Lots of ideas, but such a short time, but oh well, Jams are like that haha :(
nice soundtrack and pixel art, and neat implementation of a rhythm game! alien's is also a cool idea for the theme.
Glad you liked the artistic side of the game :) it was really important we made it the best part of the game, and happy you appreciate it! <3
Disclaimer before you read the below, I am not into this genre of game.
Now that the disclaimer is done with, the game has good pixel art and the music is upbeat goes well with the art I felt.
I tried out the game, since my hand eye coordination is zero (thanks for making me realise that 😂) , I enjoyed trying this out.
One thing is the key input synchronization with the beats, I know it might be a very hard thing to do and is unrealisitic for a game jam. That can be one of the direction this project can go.
Kudos for a solid entry!!
Have a nice day.
I hope 70k is a good score ;D
Hello! :) Thank you very much for your detailed review of the game! I am not a professional Rhythm game player either, so I think the difficulty we managed to achieve for the game is enjoyable for everyone. Glad you liked and gave it a try!
About the synchronization of the beats: as we added the “hold the note” mechanic with few time to improve the songs in the last day, this was the best we achieved some hours before the submission ended :( but after the Jam, I will try to make the notes match better some instruments of each song, thanks for the recommendation!
Have a nice day as well! :)
Well done! That was funny that I thought you guys made the other Alien 51 game 😂
Anyway, here's my score :D Nice game guys! Music is my strong suit, but I've never been too great at rhythm games, but I think I did okay!
Hehe we could’ve foreseen more games being named like that. It’s the first thing that popped to mind when we came up with the idea, and we just ran with it!
If you enjoyed it that’s what matters for us the most :D
If music is your strength and you enjoyed playing it, that’s the most important for us :) the score is just for challenging / Leaderboard purpose. Thank you for playing it! I will do my review of yours now :D
INCREDIBLE visuals! I'm trying to get into pixel art and this was fantastic. The music was great too, and together they felt super good, well done!
This is already peak visuals for me, so this is just nitpick, but I would LOVE if the band was animated. I know its a lot more work, but when I saw the hotdog alien animated but the band being static, it felt a bit odd because the band is such a central piece.
And maybe its on my machine only but I've hit a bug where the first time I have to hold a key down, my screen freezes for a while. This happened on both levels
But these are minor things, overall this such a solid entry, and seriously one of my favorite pixel arts I've seen. The feedback when you hit the keys is really good and the game felt challenging but the atmosphere is great, I had fun playing it!
Awwww thanks so much for the superb review! The art and music synergy we got going on is definitely strong.
I only just got into pixel art less than a month ago, it’s the first time creating 2D game assets for me. And you’re on point with that band animation. I got way into the hot dog man and could’ve used that time to animate the band and the foreground instead!
Thanks for raising the bug about the long notes, I noticed that during the testing and hoped it’s a flake on my part, apparently not. I’ll debug the code.
Fantastic review, glad you had fun and I’ll definitely check out your game, preview looks great!
Thank you so much for your review and words :) making someone enjoy the creative details of a game makes me feel proud of the effort I put in my music and SFX works, great motivation to keep making new games in the future! <3
Cool litte game. The backgrounds are very beautiful!
Thank you so much! A lot of heart and time went into them :D
cool little aliens!! very fun rhythm game, the level 2 music is reaaaally good :]
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed the music :) one of my favorites to produce and play from the two, with the Synth change and the alien vocals.
I really enjoyed level 2, I couldn't stop bopping my head along while playing. Great artwork, great sound, great game!
Oh yesss, I was bopping my head all the time while developing and testing it. Glad you enjoyed it! :D
Thank you very much for your words! Really motivates me to keep doing music for new games, it was really fun :)
I don't play many rithm games but I actually enjoyed this one! I liked the concept of the alien band and it would be cool to be expanded on, with new songs and the band actually smashing them instruments.
Well done!
If rhythm games is not your thing but you enjoyed it then we must’ve done something right! If only there was more time to animate the band it would improve the look and feel, definitely :D Thank you!
If you don’t usually enjoy playing Rhythm games and you liked this, our goal was complete haha :) we will wait for the Game Jam to end, and probably upload at least one more new song post Jam that didn’t reach the scope. We will let you know so you can try it :)
Hell yeah, can't wait to play with the alien band 🔥
I was losing hope to see a rhythm game for this jam and I’m SO glad I found this one! I’m a sucker for a good rhythm game and this really was some good fun. I’d do 10 levels of this! Also the general concept was so… well, strange. Absolutely loved this one, must be one of my faves.
Well done friend! Check out my game if you want to!
Wow, what a nice review, thank you! Will definitely check out your game! :D
Haha I liked this comment a lot as well. It’s good that the levels are fun in terms of difficulty for everyone, and that you liked the concept. Hope we add one more song when the Jam ends, would love you to try it :) I will take a look on your game a well!
Cool little rythm game, audio and viusals are amazing. Would be also cool if music was in rythm with buttons.
We thought of making the buttons have the rhythm of one of the instruments, like all the Drums of the Hip-Hop one, but we thought a bit of freedom to play around with different combinations. We have the goal post Jam to improve each level patterns, so it’s a good feedback :) thanks!
You all nailed this. Good work!
This was our second Jam ever, we are so happy with the idea and the result :) Thank you for playing!
Fantastic, wish there were more levels.
Woooo, that’s a really high score! We were planning to add a third level, but we took the decision to focus the scope on making the long / hold notes, and it was worth it to add more depth to the gameplay :) maybe post jam we add new ones!
So cool! It deserves 5 stars for the music
So happy to read this :’) Thank you! I had a lot of fun making both levels songs, and the theme was really inspiring to make them goofy and groovy haha.
315,000. Beat that nerds
Human scoring test: SUCCESSFUL! Good job, human! We are still developing the result vinyl (Bronze, Silver, Gold), but for now, here’s a medal. People on Earth liked them 👽🏅
Delightful. Intro caught me offguard, therefore safe to say you did a good job. The game is awesome too !
Thanks for testing it! Glad you liked the fun little details and jokes like that escape animation we added, haha. We gave this second Jam a lot of care and love, we are really happy with the result :)
good music, really liked level 2
Glad you liked my music! We are improving the Level 1 song as well, and better visuals, gameplay and feedback :)