I liked the SFX and the vibe of the wheel. Like another commenter said, it felt like playing a god or powerful magician who can manipulate the sounds of the galaxy. I did find the actual grab and drop interaction frustrating, though. Part of it may be that the cursor's target position is ambiguous and feels off. The look and feel of the hand seems out of place with the rest of the art. Perhaps making the hit box for the star tokens larger could help as well. Also I wanted to be able to drag and drop the stars, rather than click-move-click. And finally, it felt like frequently I would click and just not pick up the star, and I'd have to move back and click again. Or it would not play when I clicked on the center button. It felt like some times it would be in a state where it threw away my input. I played on a laptop with a pretty solid trackpad, I don't think it's a hardware issue or PEBKAC. Regardless, I enjoyed the play through and especially when the last stage loaded in, it felt like "Now you are ready to begin learning, grasshopper," in a good way.
Play game
Harmonice's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| I appreciate the mood/atmosphere | #1 | 4.532 | 4.532 |
| I appreciate the sound design and/or music | #1 | 4.596 | 4.596 |
| Overall | #6 | 4.015 | 4.015 |
| I appreciate the game-feel (responsiveness of interactions) | #6 | 4.234 | 4.234 |
| I appreciate the art/visual style | #7 | 4.383 | 4.383 |
| I would buy a longer/commercial version of this game | #12 | 2.979 | 2.979 |
| I find this game's challenge/puzzles interesting or compelling | #13 | 3.447 | 3.447 |
| This game was intuitive and self-explanatory | #28 | 3.936 | 3.936 |
Ranked from 47 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Jam Entry Confirmation
Harmonice
The Team
Alex New: Programming, playtesting
Connor Lepre: Design, programming, music
Emily Stein: Audio, music, playtesting
Jacob Finch: Art, design, programming
Playtesters: Flora, Ellie, Cameron, Wendy, Gavin, Brian
Other Credits
N/A
Comments
Thanks for this feedback!
I opened the project again to get to the bottom of it because I actually have similar thoughts about interactions and the cursor targeting.
- Cursor reliability: You aren't the problem! When the placeholder asset was replaced, it looks like cursor offset was not adjusted or placed somewhere not in the visual center of the index finger and thumb. (it's closer to the inside of the hand, past the index finger). Sorry about that! Definitely an oversight.
- Click and drag: It almost made it in to the submission release :{ Personally would have preferred a hybrid, where clicking and continuing to hold for some time is treated as click-and-drag input (so `released` becomes the drop orb trigger, not another `pressed`), while allowing a single click-and-release to be treated as the click-move-click input mode.
- Button clicking: Same issue as the cursor target, but a little worse because the button does not have the same padded interaction area that orbs do. Orbs have about twice their radius as interaction targets.
I love that you appreciated the ending and that all of the affordances made it clear exactly what you were being provided! I was worried that sliding up two more trays of orbs would send mixed signals about it being a harder puzzle, and not a free-play mode.
Appreciate the thoughtful feedback :)
This is a great game. Emily did a great job on the SFX as it blends well to the calming atmosphere of space. This reminds me of outwilds and the Alkrabs space music on youtube.
Absolutely knocked it out of the park on this one. I was a little confused at first, but picked it up very quickly all things considered. The puzzles were fun, the atmosphere and sound design were on point, the art was really nice, and I adore that you get a little sandbox mode once you do all the puzzles. I did find one bug, if you're holding a star in your hand and click a star in a slot that's locked in place, it'll pull that star out (the star you're holding won't fill the slot, it stays in your hand), and you won't be able to put it back in. But it was pretty minor overall. This might be my favorite submission to the jam :)
I really enjoyed this one. It had a nice blend of mystery, vibes, and pleasant game feel. Although I had no idea what was going on at first, the clear and satisfying UI interactions helped foster a nice space of discovery. I ultimately had trouble conceptualizing the order of things when different elements seemed to move in opposite rotations, but I'm assuming that was intentional friction. Ultimately, there could be some additional elements (or removal of some elements) to make a more compelling "puzzle", but I think this was fun enough being something to tinker around with and eventually come to a solution. Excellent job - felt like it should fit right in as-is as a mini-game in a polished commercial release of a Myst-like experience
Here's a playtest
interesting concept and there is a good learning curve for the puzzles. great job!
This is absolutely brilliant. It's weird, strangely beautiful, and there's some unexplainable mysticism to it. It feels like you're some kind of god arranging the constellations. I like the feedback of being able to preview where the stars will go before you place them and how the stars act like sheet music.
This is a gorgeous little game, it's an intuitive little puzzle that gave me enough clues to figure it out.
The juice and vibe were perfect.
Negatives: The cursor felt a little off-center. It felt to me like the wheel may be turning backwards from the layout I have on the revolver at the bottom.
Pretty cool game! It was kind of confusing at first but I figured it out pretty fast.
Sound and graphics were very nice, and I liked the "build your own" feature at the end.
I really love the vibe, presentation, and sound design. But the actual gameplay didn’t quite do it for me, since it involved a lot of sitting in silence while counting dots and double-checking star shapes :)
Probably this was the best rating I have given such cool theme and such a polished game congrats on you bro.
A nice and polished piece. I was a little confused on why my correctly sequenced second puzzle wasn't being accepted because I couldn't tell that it was supposed to go in a specific slot (like a drummer not playing on the one lol) but once that clicked everything was straightforward and sounded good, although I would probably appreciate if that one note that rings out was slightly less abrasive (but that's a nitpick). Nice job guys
Best game we've played so far! Really cool concept with great execution and super polished within the time limit. Music and sounds were a delight, very cute to hear the notes get played successfully. The mood was excellent and the art was good, but would've been interesting to see a more stylized artstyle. Overall very very nice!
Great feedback, very satisfying when you get the correct combo.
For me i found the the lining them up compelling, but being off by one circle here or there was a little frustrating because it wasn't so easy to tell all the time. Some better indicators of spacing would help i think.
Amazing job overall!
Thank you!
That 'off by one' friction was what led to almost all of the real-time feedback for where your notes are placed in the sky and all of that fun stuff. Definitely could use even more visual aids. I had thought about quartering the rings and using pips along the edges for little *, **, ***, **** markers to make it a little easier to break the device up mentally into the pieces you care about.
stand out as one of the best game's visually I've rated thus far. the puzzles are a little samey so i wish the free music mode wasn't locked behind it; in a commercial release a couple puzzles with missing dots, or the dial turns the opposite direction or something would be really cool. i did appreciate the music though and I hope you develop this into something bigger
Well done! Very cool concept. It was a little finicky to line things up exactly but there were enough UI hints to figure it out. Took me a bit of trial and error to figure out that there was no action I needed to take to play the notes on time. I thought I wasn't hitting a button at the right time, but eventually figured out it was just a placement issue (PEBKAC). Great art and sound design.
Really cool game, I had a lot of fun figuring it out! It reminds me of really old school puzzle games like Myst, excellent work!







Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.