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Sound.Wav's itch.io pageLink to your Game Design Doc on Google Drive.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/15MI09dmqlaAucbtGMeh99hhdjz2mfsc7/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=106735032634943173947&rtpof=true&sd=true
Have you checked that your GDD is publicly accessible ?
Yes, another Team member double checked
Is your game set to public on itch.io so we can see it?
Yes
Summarise your game!
The Player is a sentient Musical Artificial Intelligence named Sound.wav whose goal is to infect the world. Fight through Malware, Firewalls, and Glitches and absorb their abilities to increase musical prowess to be downloaded by more Humans to further infect the world through Musical Combat. The game combines top-down, auto attacker gameplay with rhythmic combat and a musical theme where some enemies and abilities are tied to instruments and sound.
Controls:
● WASD: Movement
● Mouse: Aim
● 1 - 5 Num Keys: Mixer control to switch between amplification of instruments:
1. Balanced: Default mode, standard attack.
2. Bass: Area-of-effect (AOE) damage.
3. Strings: High-damage single-target attacks.
4. Brass / Woodwind: Damage-over-time (DoT) effects.
5. Synth: Crowd control (CC) abilities like slows or stuns.
● Hold Left Mouse Button: Activate Solo Ability, Releasing Left Mouse Button Cancels Solo Ability
● Hold Left Mouse Button + Input Sequence (12345): Activate solos for special abilities.
Please explain how your game fits the theme:
Player is a Musical AI Program that is working it's way to infect the world. As a Musical entity, it's data attacks are represented as literal Music Attacks against various Defenses like Firewalls, Malware and Glitched code. The Players power grows as it infects more of the world, destroying and absorbing remnants of defenses and musical data to grow it's influence and power.
Is there anything you'd like the judges to pay particular attention to?
We wanted the game to have a distinct layered music that is reflected in the instruments (weapons / band members) that you gain while progressing through the Stage. We focused heavily on adding rhythm to the game because we had 2 Musicians in the team and wanted their abilities to shine.
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Comments
Really cool concept! I'm a fan of micro-heavy games and this felt like just the right amount of micro for me. Genius to have the powerups play together in the same scale. It was very effective. I beat the glitch boss but kept dying after.
Some things you may already be aware of, but wanted to share in case you're looking for improvement suggestions:
1. I walked out of the screen and my character was never able to come back
2. Cooldown on the solo is really hard to understand. I wasn't sure when I could and couldn't use it.
3. I really liked the idea of having 1-5 amplify certain types of attacks, but it took some getting used to for my brain to associate that Bass = AOE, Strings = Single target, etc. Might make it easier on the player to just call it their intended upgrade like AOE/ Single Target instead of musical terms.
4. It was hard to know when I got damaged and felt the death was very abrupt when it happened
Overall enjoyed the game and character designs a lot! Excited to see where it leads!
The characters are super cute and I love the way they have been animated. I definitely think with polish this could be super awesome!
Since others have already pointed out the controls, ill focus on other things I noticed :)) Once you have a lot of instruments following you, they tend to overlap with the enemies and it gets pretty cluttered. since some of them are similar in color, i would suggest adding a way to add clarity. Also it might just be me but there seems to be some kind of scaling issue as I did play in full screen and on chrome as suggested but the text was way too small in most cases.
For the solo left click, i suggest adding some kind of feedback when you use it as sometimes when i left clicked nothing happened and i wasnt really sure why. Im not sure if there's a cooldown or etc.
I strongly think though you have an interesting concept with the music and minigame for the left click going on and i encourage you guys to polish it and keep it up!
Congrats on the game! It def looks like a lot of care and work was put into it! :))
Really interesting concept, i don't know much about music, so I'm pretty sure a lot many cool things were lost on me. But that being said, clearly a lot of effort was put into it. Art is nice! Gameplay wise i got a little confused. At the start i thought the combo/rhythm sequence was going to be a really "core" part of the experience, but i ended up not using/understanding it really.
If this were my game (which is not, so i probably have very different design objectives than yours), i would kind of design, some enemies to be, highly weak/resistant toward specific instruments, to push the player to adapt into different situations. Of course, this requires a lot of iteration, time, and design, cant really fit all that in a 2 weeks game jam. That being said, i don't have to much experience on this kind of game, so my feedback may not be the most adequate. Nevertheless, is a cool concept, with really cool music and sound design that is directly linked to the gameplay which makes it stand out. Congrats on making such a cool entry while adapting to the best of your team, keep it up!
A fun little game that I really enjoyed the concept of, particularly the idea of an evolving soundtrack. I was also really impressed with the art!
Thank you for checking out our game! We hope you continue to play as we polish things a lot more in the future!
I love the way it feels like you are slowly building your own band. Great job, I had fun playing this!
Wow. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I think adding combos to play music and do special effects was super cool!! And the build up of music as you play the game, more instruments and sounds were added felt like you were making progress. I enjoyed this entry a lot, it's a bit chaotic but it definitely works - also, besides the music, I think you did a really nice job with the art and palette too. It really gave this game its own style alongside the music. Awesome entry!
Thanks so much for your words!!
I love the concept and it seems to be executed very well! Unfortunately I'm not very good at it, but I can see how fun and cool it would be to really get in the flow and rhythm.
Thank you for your kind words!! And don't worry about it; we'll see that the way the game is played becomes a little bit simpler for everyone to have a good time while jamming to some tunes. (I became obsessed with your game too, btw. Love your work)
This game is super cool! I'd love to see more of this. As a musician myself I'm always looking for different ways music gets incorporated/focused in games.
I like all the different music bits getting layered as you progress. That's super cool. However, I think the actual "solo" mechanic was a bit buggy. I kept having issues with it not showing up when I wanted it to/disappearing. It was difficult to accurately hit those buttons while also running with WASD. I think the different modes are a cool concept but didn't see much difference I guess in the visuals to know that those attacks were doing something different from the "Balanced" mode. As a rhythm game I think having the standard shoot abilities being tied to BPM could be cool as well. But that's ultimately a design decision left up to y'all.
The art, SFX and music (of course) are all really solid so keep it up!
I think the ideas are there, I'd work on polishing your execution/UX. Keep working on it! Good job y'all!
Thank you!!! Cool idea about timming the abilities. We can try that yeah :)
I love how the music slowly changes as you get more upgrades! The solo mechanic is really cool in theory, but WASD and 12345 don't work together that well - maybe if the attacks had autoaim, leaving the mouse hand free (not having to use the mouse), you could use keys that the player can easily press with the right hand.
If I were to make this game here's how I would try to make it:
- Have the "solo" challenge going all the time, but instead of a specific sequence, each instrument/upgrade you pick up has a different note it adds to the beat, which you have to match with the corresponding button - for example Bass would play one note every 1.5 seconds, where you have to press [2] to trigger its attack. Then each new instrument adds an additional "note" to this sequence, so the more upgrades you have, the more complex the melody becomes. Maybe multiple upgrades of the same instrument type could change the rhythm, for example two bass notes in quick succession instead of one at a time.
- These attacks should automatically aim at the nearest enemy
- Move the rhythm bar to the middle of the screen, like in Crypt of the Necrodancer
Thank you so much for the feedback! we'll take your notes to heart. I hope you continue to tune in when we release future updates!
Played a while and finally gets what the game want me to do. It a nice little vampire survivor I see. The music is very nice and really adds a lot to the game. Not too sure on the solo mechanics though, on one hand it's really nice to make it a multitasking task just to launch a special attack, but on the other hand, it guarantees some damage to be taken, the effect is not that strong when compares to what was sacrificed, and that it didn't even start when I want it to. Don't know is it me still not understanding how the cool down works, or is it something else, but I eventually just ignore the solo mechanics all together, which was a shame to such a cool concept if you ask me.
Anyway, you all did a good job, so keep up the good work!
Thank you! I'm sure our muscicians will appreciate your kind words. We'll make sure to keep working in order to communicate a little better. Glad you could check out our game!
Love the concept – took me back to my Guitar Hero days! I love a good music game, and adding a Vampire Survivors touch to it is just perfect! The game canvas is really a bit small, and controlling it was also hard – WASD to move and 1-5 simultaneously didn’t work that well for me. Basically, you have to hold still – but that kills you. Maybe leave the controls with WASD and let the player move toward the mouse cursor instead? Cool game anyways! The music and character design is also nice! 😊
Thank you! We'll try to look into the controls a bit more. thanks for playing!
Love the design of the characters. Was a bit confused when I first picked it up, but once I got into it I found it super fun and relaxing. Great work!
Thank you so much! We all put a lot of effort into it, so I'm glad you enjoyed it. Cheers!
A Good vampire survivors like. The introductory mechanic of the game put me a bit off though but after I realized I did not have to use it I ignored it completely. the weapons you get adding to the music was a nice effect though.
Thank you for checking out our game! I'm sure the team and I will look onto making the introduction better in the future. For now I think we're stuck like this hah.
Games looks like nice but how do i kill the first enemy?
Hey! Sorry if you're having trouble with the introduction. You have to press M1 to activate the mixer, which then prompts a 'solo' where you have to press the indicated keys in order to activate a special power! Hope this helps and allows you to continue on with the game. Cheers!
The canvas loads really small and cuts off part of the game UI. Trying to hold the mouse button while hitting separate numbers for attacking is also incredibly awkward, likely for most people. It almost feels like you have a left-handed mouse and a number pad at your disposal, but I can't use my work computer to test this idea.
Sound is great. I really liked the Main Character Design, should keep him. Well done.
Dude this game is so much fun!! The sounds are so much fun. I had a hard time triggering and staying in solo mode because I had to constantly move and fire so both of my hands were busy. The solo is also basically at the far top of the screen so it can get cut out. The game truly shines once you have all these instruments like it puts you in this vibe. Love the music and art, gameplay is smooth as well!!
I'm having trouble making this game fullscreen, and it looks like Solo Mode is off the top of the game window. :c
But I love the concept. The art and sound design are great.
Thank you for trying our game anyway! Does the full screen button not show up? What is the trouble you're having?
It is just off the screen, and when I click it, nothing happens. :c (I took a screenshot, went back to it... And now it works. I don't know what changed, but apparently we're good now.
Okay! I've played a round. The control scheme of moving, clicking, and also hitting the number keys on beat is kind of crazy! But I do enjoy that leveling up actually adds those things to the soundscape. :) very cool!