Very well polished entry that unfortunately I found way too hard to play.
Being a musician, I have a reasonably good grasp of rhythm :) and I am not a stranger to EDM.
It looks like there are 2 problems here:
First, the pacing is off - it becomes virtually impossible within a few seconds on the first level.
The other is the random placement of the arrows on screen appears completely disconnected from the music track.
Maybe this is why these games normally use a track where the timer events progress towards you in a predictable fashion. I didn't feel like I was playing along to the track at all - in fact scanning the screen for the arrows 'shut off' my listening to the music.
On one of my attempts, I thought I had completed the level as it seemed I hadn't done too bad - but I had failed it!
The graphics, sounds and presentation are fantastic though!
Viewing post in Laika jam comments
Ok I gave it another go on the download version.
I still found it way too hard. It's also annoying have to wait through the sample each time on restart. Would be nice to be able to click past that like for the text.
I didn't hear a sound played when I hit the keys. If there were sounds for each of the 4 directions - e.g. snare, kick, hi-hat and toms then it would feel a lot more like playing along to the track. This should increase the immersion too.
As it it now, the buttons change position, the same button is synched sometime with kick drum, sometimes with snare - it's too much change all at once.
Maybe keep the 4 buttons in the same place on the screen and oriented in the same 4 cardinal points (up/down/left/right) at least on the earlier levels.
You might have to remix your track though.
Now what would be really interesting would be if you used more theme appropriate music such as the trolololol song or a Russian folk song from the time.
I REALLY love the idea of adding a true guitar hero style hit noise drums for a successful or unsuccessful hit. I think that was something I struggled with making the beats of “hit” match up with the rhythms in the music while also making sense from a left right up down pov. AND trying to make patterns some of it was like where’s the downbeat or a note when there may not be percussion which was surprisingly hard to feel when you’re multitasking. So we REALLY understand why most of those games have a simple track of four arrows. I think if we make another rhythm game I’d love to implement a touch sound. Thank youuuuuuu for that feedback :P