I loved this game! The fresh take on the classic rhythm game was sooooo cool! I was kinda bad at it though... It would be cool to have more songs and maybe a bit of progression! I encourage you to continue developing this game into a larger release! Good luck!!!!
Play dawg
SCRATCH DAT DAWG's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio | #53 | 4.208 | 4.208 |
| Creativity & Theme | #103 | 4.333 | 4.333 |
| Overall | #144 | 4.025 | 4.025 |
| Seriousness | #264 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Enjoyment | #316 | 3.833 | 3.833 |
| Visuals | #680 | 3.750 | 3.750 |
Ranked from 24 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Game Engine
Other/Custom
Comments
Hello! I've played all of the songs in your game a few times and I have some feedback for you!
- Before I even launched the game the line "Controls are as follows: use the mouse for everything." on the Itch page made me laugh. I'm sure it's not supposed to be funny even, idk, it got to me.
- The dog paw for the mouse pointer is really cute!
- Song 2 seemed much easier to me than Song 1. Not sure why 2 isn't the "introduction" song since most people are going to play them in order the first time.
- Could just be me though!
- Dogs are colorblind. How is he seeing the notes?
- More seriously, how are colorblind players seeing the notes? Perhaps you could add a colorblind mode where the notes are different shapes?
- It would be cool if the songs had names rather than just being numbered.
- Really cool interpretation of the theme!
- Song 2 has a gray note at the end? I thought it might just mean like 'end of song' but I didn't see it on the other two songs? What's that?
- Speaking of, the songs are really good! Liked the audio on this one!
- I do own a drawing tablet, I'll have to return to this game after the Jam rating period to try it with tablet controls. For now I just used my mouse because I didn't want to hook up my tablet right now, but that's such a cool idea!
- It would be cool if the game offered like a letter ranking based on your 3 combined scores at the end of each song.
- Would be nice if there was a settings menu or some way to return to the title card once you've clicked past it, especially since refreshing the page wipes your scores.
I think that's all my thoughts on this one. Cool idea, and really fun game! I hope none of my feedback sounds too negative! I'm trying to offer constructive criticism to every game I rate. Anyway, these are my high scores after 3/4 plays of each song:
Have wonderful day and good luck in the Jam!
52 days ago(+1)
Thank you so much for playing!
I dont think any of the feedback here is negative, it's quite helpful! I agree with alot of the points you bring up. I suspect we'll do a pass over the game to improve these points after the jam rating is over.
Regarding color blindness.... we did actually almost solve it. We had originally done guitar hero style notes with different shapes, but at the last second we had to change the gameplay, which unfortunately reintroduced this issue again.
So good! I keep finding new favorites, but this one might just take it for me. The dog, music, and gameplay all go hand in hand and I don't know, it all just comes together so well and is a blast to play. I saw the other comment about the songs being too short, but personally I thought the song length was fine, more than plenty for a 7 day game jam. The problem is more so that the endings are abrupt, in my opinion.
Got 100% note accuracy on each song, but there's definitely a lot of optimization to be done with my turn and hold time.
My only other complaint is some notes seem inaccurate to the song, but that's not too bad because the visuals are a good reference for the timing when that happens.
54 days ago(+1)
LETS GO! I WAS WAITING FOR SOMEONE TO MAKE A PERFECT SCORE !
Now you're in the club with me. :D
Regarding note accuracy, yea how I approached the game data originally really bit me in the butt there, so it was hard to nail it down precisely. I got most of the way there but sadly I missed a few spots by the time the jam was up.
And yea the endings were abrupt unfortunately. There was more to the songs, but I had to cut it to submit the game on time. In an ideal world you wouldve played each full song
Thank you alot for playing! This comment is gold for me b/c of so much useful feedback here.
To address your points:
* Tutorial: 100% agree: that seems to address the common thread among players so far. I honestly did not realize how hard I had made it, but like you said, once you get it, it really gets going. I think in the future adding a tutorial level will be the best remedy here.
*Fullscreen: My bad, I just realized I accidentally disabled full screen on the itch page. I just checked it on, so itll be available now.
* Bar on the left: That was a progress meter, kinda similar to guitar hero. It went along with score in the upper left and showed you visually how many notes you got. Probably need to improve that UI.
*Score: Yes, currently best % is beats. The hold time and turn length scores are "modifiers" to the beats % score if that makes any sense. I noticed during playtesting that beats by itself was too easy to cheat, b/c you could waggle away and get the majority of points that way. Those two modifier scores acted as a way to dissuade that (tho I agree I could have better enforced those rules in the game). The goal is to get the highest number of beats possible, while minimizing hold time (how long you hold your mouse down on the disc) and turn length (how often you turn the disc). Regarding aggregate score, that's a good idea, tho I'll have to sit down and figure out the math formula to doing that one correctly. All of this tho goes back to your other feedback point too, getting a good tutorial level.
* Pressure: Yep we'll need to add in some failure mechanics for sure. Atm it seems like it's mostly up to the player whether they go for 100% or not. If they do, the experience is difficult and fantastic, otherwise it's a little too lax. I need to study how other games do it.
*Songs too short: That feels like the best criticism ever. Song 3 was originally longer but I was kinda scared I made it too brutal at the time. Now it feels like I have permission to go in there and make it harder :D ... right after I get a good tutorial level working.
Just played your game too and it was really fun :D. Left a comment on your page.
The beatmap system was honestly pretty simple. Just an array of timestamps plus what color note to play. When the song timer reached a timestamp the note would appear and travel down the screen. I feel like the majority of the game design came down to how the disc handled.
This was my first forray into any kind of audio programming, so getting the gameplay to sync up correctly was hell. But I enjoyed making this game alot!
YEAAAA that's exactly what I feared too T.T
It's not just you, for some reason the web build can get very inconsistent across multiple browsers. For some it desyncs the audio horribly, for others it works fine. Unfortunately it runs fine on every browser I've tried so far and it drives me nuts I can't reproduce the issue! I've also had folks try it on the browser of their mobile phone and it ran fine... yea this one's hard to track down.
Glad to hear the PC version of the game ran fine though! Happy you enjoyed it :D
I simplified songs 1 and 2 just recently so ideally they should be easier to play if you'd like to try again :) Song 3 will still be hard though.
Regarding feedback, I agree alot! The original plan was to include a hit sound effect when you hit the note correctly, but unfortunately the web audio didnt sync that sound effect correctly (it consistently lagged) and threw off the rhythm every time. It kinda works on windows, but there's some variance that's grating to the ear sadly. I'll try and see if I get any luck fixing this issue, but still glad you enjoyed your time playing the game!
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.