This is pretty fun, though it needs a bit more love to really throw it over the edge. For starters, the detection seems to fail if you do it "backwards" which should still be legal. The mouse detection is also very moody. Also the lack of menus, persistent scoring, and other common game elements make this somewhat lacking in polish. Still very fun.

The idea is good, the game.. less.. Probably I'm missing something.

Where the heck is the indication where you should start and where end? Or is discovering that the part of the game? This should be stated somewhere.
Other then that quite good, but needs moar stages!

FireSlash - you can complete in any order - it doesn't fail if you do it backwards. However you can only touch each point one time - you hear an audio cue when you touch a point, if you hear two then you went out and came back in... and it will fail. I did mean to add in a little time buffer so that wouldn't happen so easily, but I ran out of time. Menus? For what? The only scoring is the bonus meter on the right. And yeah, a few things I wanted to add include decrementing the meter for breaking the chain, bonus for speed linking etc... Thanks much for the feedback.

Hi Endurion, you can start anywhere - the only requirement is you complete the pattern you're shown at the level start. And yeah, that is part of the discovery. You can ignore the pattern all together and play with it like a music maker if you like... that was my intention. Yeah, I need to add better instructions, I know. And more levels for sure. But I needed to wrap up and submit...

Nice idea, but it seems a bit buggy. It doesn't always recognize when you do a pattern, even if it should be correct (indicated pattern without doing the same line twice, right?), and sometimes I thought the lines cancelled very fast. The last level was particularly troublesome.

(Also.. using music loops you didn't make yourself technically isn't allowed for the compo, unless you consider them samples/instruments.. kind of a gray area here, I guess..)

It's not buggy - seriously. What happens is you hit a node - go past it a bit and come back in. This registers as two hits on the node and breaks the sequence. I need to add a time buffer so you can rollout of a node for 1/10 sec or so and come back in without it registering two hits. The time you get between successive hits decreases as well - at level one you get a full second - on level 4 you have just 1/2 second to make the next node before you break the chain.

Yeah, gray area... I used some small loops and cut tiny pieces out to serve as notes. It seems allowed from what I read in the rules... if it's not then oh well... I didn't use any base code like many did, so I hope it's ok.

Thanks for the feedback.

I know you've already said it's not buggy... but it clearly is. I successfully completed patterns without getting credit, and had numerous problems with the puzzle resetting suddenly for no reason much too quickly.

Anyway, the graphics are surprisingly good and the gameplay is intuitive. Don't know if it really fits the theme, as you're shown the correct pattern at the beginning and penalized for taking time to experiment. The sound thing is neat but seems to have very little to do with the rest of the concept.

Anyway, seems neat overall. With some work it could be pretty fun I think.

>>I know you've already said it's not buggy... but it clearly is. I successfully completed patterns without getting credit, and had numerous problems with the puzzle resetting suddenly for no reason much too quickly.
<<

Seriously, it's not a bug per se. If you completed a pattern without getting credit it's as I said before - you hit a node twice in succession. And if it resets - it's because you took too long between nodes. You get one second between nodes on l1 and .5 sec between nodes on l4.

Most of the issue is one - the instructions are not good enough, and two I need to add a buffer so that double node hit doesn't happen...

You aren't penalized for taking time to experiment - you just don't get a bonus... you can keep going though - that's the discovery part.

I think it fits the theme well because of the sound - discovering new ways to link the sounds.

Anyway, glad you like the graphics and I plan on putting some more work into it. Thanks for the feedback.

I also have to say it was a bit weird at times where I would complete the pattern but it wouldnt work, perhaps it is counting the start and end as a double touch incorrectly at times and therefore failing people?

I have no doubt though that this would have been easier for me to do if I wasnt using a mouse touchpad though, sometimes I was so slow getting from a node to another it would fail me just because Im slower on touchpad than with a mouse.

Finally, I understand you dont need a menu, but you should add a highscore list to the game for people to try aim for, and then the player needs to be able to see it before he/she plays, so you could integrate it on the first "view" so to speak or make a menu for that if you ever include one :)

If you can iron out the glitches that make it too fiddly to play then it would be a lot of fun, albeit not really on theme.

Thanks badlydrawnrod, but I think it is on the theme... the discovery aspect is about putting sounds together... my wife ignores the bonus meter altogether and sits and makes cool sounds with the various 'notes'. I think that fits the theme of discovery perfectly.
But it's totally cool you think otherwise... and I do plan on ironing out the glitches. I have the next 10 days off work so I'm going to work on this quite a bit I hope. I'm gonna add more levels, a high-score system, and a time buffer to the mouse so it's not so picky about hitting a node twice.

Several times I got the pattern correct and seemingly in time, but it didn't move onto the next level. Game is a little confusing, but sort of fun.

This is a really good idea with a pretty well achieved :)

Anyway, the game has 2 major defects :
- no restart key,
- zero tolerance for doing the pattern from a different start point (and I don't know how to figure which dot is the first one)

Good job anyway !

Please stop trying to explain your game is better than it is. If the being able to screw up your pattern by touching the same node twice in a row within a split second (because you don't have absurd precision with your chosen pointing device) is meant to be a feature, it's a rubbish feature, a result of poor design. (I can see that being able to hit the same note twice is handy for composition, but there's little sense ruining the game's actual playability for that.) On a less egregious note, with the third level, I kept forgetting the target pattern - a key to show the target pattern again would be nice.

Issues aside, it's an interesting premise - not particularly on theme though, since the way you are advised to play the game, and the way of scoring points, is nothing to do with discovering things. The music generation element is actually good fun; watching the 'beat' reverberate around the node graph you create is interesting. I think you may have been better off removing the scoring and predetermined orders entirely, and making it a more open game about composition instead, though that's just my opinion of course.

Note: I don't comment to gather critique on my commenting ability. Please do not attack my opinions, or I'll adjust my rating of your game accordingly. Sorry I'm having to be so blunt.

Hi Devenger, thanks for the feedback. I agree - it was handy for composition but bad for playability. I've removed being able to hit a node twice like that, and instead you can now click a node if you want it to play its sound twice. I've also updated the instructions which I think will help.

Updated version is here:
http://www.blurredistinction.com/ld19/update.htm