Nice looking game and plays great!

Really cool animations! I also like the music.

Love the graphics! Very cute. I think it would be much easier to play on a flat keyboard though. Quite hard to play on my current one.

I had the same problems with exporting from python and funnily enough found the same page you did. Cute game, I enjoyed the concept, art, and music. I had some difficulty adjusting to the moving keys, but that's not really a fault in the game. One problem though, I wasn't able to exit out of the program when I was done playing and had to use task manager.

I was a total mess playing this game. The controls were very disorienting (which I guess is the point of the game) overall not my favorite concept for a game but a pretty good execution of said concept!

Interesting game, and I loved the music. The controls felt a bit frustrating, and I had to result to spamming every key on my keyboard after a while, but I suppose that's intentional.

I had a couple problems. My antivirus (Avast) saw the file as a major threat (probably because it thinks .SevenPillars.exe is the file extension and not the name), and I couldn't play it until I changed the name. This was more a fault on my end, so just a warning to anyone with the same problem.

I also had a problem with closing the program, as the red quit button didn't seem to work. This used to happen to me with pygame as well, but I found that you can fix it by adding this code:

import sys

and in your events (assuming you're doing it like that):

if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
pygame.display.quit()
pygame.quit()
sys.exit()

(Also this is just a personal thing but cx_freeze is really good for converting pygame to exe :wink:)

Thanks for the feedback! I'll rename the file to prevent that problem for other people (I added the period so it showed up first alphabetically in the folder). I had a few problems with the game quitting unexpectedly at first, so I removed the ability to exit and never got around to fixing it.

Loved the pixels and music. I really liked the slide mechanic with the pillars. It was unfortunately tricky for me because my left hand is in a brace. I tried using my right hand, which felt weird on that end of the keyboard. None of that is a reflection on your game, just my own commentary. How is the direction determined when changing pillars? Is it just random? I noticed I never seemed to go past the forth; would always end up rotating between one through four. Or is it kind of difficulty/skill related and I just never made it far enough? Great entry!

Oh, and I had the same problem closing out the game but discovered that Escape would work to exit.

Great game with a really good premise. The pixel art style is also great!

Nice graphics and gameplay. Great Job!

A very clever and original concept for a game.

Pros:
- Having to move across the keyboard with the cat makes the experience surprisingly immersive. I found that the best way to keep up was to "jump" my hand in sync with the cat's jump animation, and found it to be surprisingly good at getting me engaged with the game. "Channel your inner ninja cat" is a good description.
- The music is very good, and fits the game well.

Cons:
- This likely varies from keyboard to keyboard (which I suppose is a potential con as well), but I found the angled-numpad controls to be a bit awkward to use quickly.
- The game does not punish incorrect keypresses. This means that in a pinch (i.e., trying to finish up the last couple of moves before sunset), you can button mash all remaining buttons. This is unsatisfying at best.

A very clever and original concept for a game.

Pros:
- Having to move across the keyboard with the cat makes the experience surprisingly immersive. I found that the best way to keep up was to "jump" my hand in sync with the cat's jump animation, and found it to be surprisingly good at getting me engaged with the game. "Channel your inner ninja cat" is a good description.
- The music is very good, and fits the game well.

Cons:
- This likely varies from keyboard to keyboard (which I suppose is a potential con as well), but I found the angled-numpad controls to be a bit awkward to use quickly.
- The game does not punish incorrect keypresses. This means that in a pinch (i.e., trying to finish up the last couple of moves before sunset), you can button mash all remaining buttons. This is unsatisfying at best.

A very clever and original concept for a game.

Pros:
- Having to move across the keyboard with the cat makes the experience surprisingly immersive. I found that the best way to keep up was to "jump" my hand in sync with the cat's jump animation, and found it to be surprisingly good at getting me engaged with the game. "Channel your inner ninja cat" is a good description.
- The music is very good, and fits the game well.

Cons:
- This likely varies from keyboard to keyboard (which I suppose is a potential con as well), but I found the angled-numpad controls to be a bit awkward to use quickly.
- The game does not punish incorrect keypresses. This means that in a pinch (i.e., trying to finish up the last couple of moves before sunset), you can button mash all remaining buttons. This is unsatisfying at best.

A very clever and original concept for a game.

Pros:
- Having to move across the keyboard with the cat makes the experience surprisingly immersive. I found that the best way to keep up was to "jump" my hand in sync with the cat's jump animation, and found it to be surprisingly good at getting me engaged with the game. "Channel your inner ninja cat" is a good description.
- The music is very good, and fits the game well.

Cons:
- This likely varies from keyboard to keyboard (which I suppose is a potential con as well), but I found the angled-numpad controls to be a bit awkward to use quickly.
- The game does not punish incorrect keypresses. This means that in a pinch (i.e., trying to finish up the last couple of moves before sunset), you can button mash all remaining buttons. This is unsatisfying at best.

Sorry about the multiple comments: the "Publish" button glitched out and posted it several times. I don't see a way to delete them, so I've cleared their contents to take up less space on your page.

Nice graphics and execution! I found the gameplay a bit boring after a while. Python lagged really bad on me. The idea with moving around the keyboard was interesting.

Music was absolutely beautiful.

@Talon Thanks for the feedback! I was going to implement an "incorrectness" (along with a score function...) but ran out of time and was running on ~1 hour of sleep by the end of compo. I'm very aware that the controls are awkward, but it was the most innovative thing I could think of in my short brainstorming period.

@Boltkey Thanks! The music was made in Sibelius. Sorry to hear about the lag. I know it gets dull after a while, especially since you don't have a score to work toward. I might consider making small improvements on it post-LD38.

The Art is amazing, controls are quite frustrating but other than that the game is really well made and fun to play after getting used to controls, Idk if its just me but the game didn't close when you press X and alt + F4 also doesn't work :P

Very interesting gameplay. Reminds me a whack-a-mole somehow:)

My game: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B13g3FsdXQ4MUGp5anQzb20zams?usp=sharing

Hey,

I played your game and I wanted to leave some honest feedback that you hopefully can use.

My first impression is good, that graphics are nice, and I like the music as well. The visual style, gameplay and music fits really well together.

Gameplay wise I didn't get it at first, and I still dont fully understand why you sometimes loose a life or get pushed back. In my mind the objective was to go forward? But I think you need some indication of what you need to achieve, and to somehow show that the controls keep changing. I also think it could be a lot more fun if the phase in the beginning is really fast, the keys are really simple and then gets a lot more complicated, so I the player gets a success and are getting pumped.

I hope it makes sense. Gratz on making this little gem :)

The animations are pretty good. It was really hard for me to figure out which circles are which keys on the keyboard. It would have been great to have an option to display the keys on the circles.
I like those type of game where you have to go fast, but I struggled a lot on this one x). Glad I'm not a kung-fu cat :p (you, in an other side, are really good as I can see)

Peek-a-boo! :cat: Came back to leave ratings!

A very well crafted game with a unique art style and interesting game play!

I was a bit confused by the keyboard at first having a "french-be-point-AZERTY laptop keyboard" but switching the keyboard layout to QUERTY in windows made the game playable if not we forget the issue of angled num-keys vs not angled num-keys.

However, despite the keyboard issue at first, once I understood the concept and it fit in my brain, I was able to play fairly good.

It is really funny and immersive to move the hands from left to right on the keyboard each time the player jump pillars.

I wish there was a progression or a goal in the game thought.

Thanks a lot for this game, it was super cool to play :D

(You can see me playing this game for the first time on the vod https://youtu.be/lXUmif8KKxM?t=2h12m25s )

Very interesting mechanic, and commendable that you manage to squeeze out an exe from pygame, I know it can be a pain in the ass, as I've spent some time both with pyglet and pygame ;)

The approach to controls, while at first confusing, is really fun when you get the hang of it. Although, since you assumed QWERTY layuot and numpad, this will bar some people from fully enjoying it (I'm for example on a QWERTY, but tenkeyless and slight modified layout).

What could be improved:
- supporting more layouts (although a simple remap unfortunately won't do, since setup phase would be long for the player before they can enjoy the game properly).
- help (could use a bit more introduction to pick up the game instead of a trial-and error run)

All in all this is a good entry, with a clever idea behind it and consistent presentation, offering an interesting gameplay. Leaving my rating, and well done :)

Interesting gameplay and fun mechanics. I like it. And that music! I cannot forget it ++

This game has all the right pieces to become a very addictive game! It has simple mechanics that are hard to master, and great music to go along with it. It also doesn't appear to be a remake of a game with a similar mechanic, so that really adds to the interest in it. As @talon said earlier, having a consequence for pressing wrong keys would greatly add to the skill and satisfaction. Also, if I was trying to guess the theme just from playing the game, I probably wouldn't even be close. Other than that, it's a really solid game, which has obvious amounts of time and energy put into it. Great job!

Looks great, the artwork is really nice, although seems a little slow, laggy maybe? I found the moving across the keyboard didn't work so well as a gameplay element, you use a 3x3 grid of squares, however keyboards keys are generally are staggered in non square patterns so it was very fiddly. Music was ok, a little repetitive. Maybe needs some sound effects to add some drama. I didn't really feel it fit the theme that well.

I was waiting for this game. He even banned tweet on the days of jam. Cool graphics, it's a pity that the management of the keyboard is something not very convenient. I think on the mobile or on the gamepad it will be better

Cool idea! It's a shame it didn't run well in my PC (seemed slow motion), so it was not very challenging.
The pixel art is very cute ^^

Oh, I was not able to close the game, I don't know why. I had to close it by the task manager.

Very interesting game! You feel like a piano player after a while.(What if every key sounded like an extra note to the melody?) I would add a quick hint to remind the current keys when the player is making too many mistakes, in order to get him back on track. The character is very cute, I'd love to know more about his story. Very well done!!

Really cool idea, I really enjoyed it. A bit laggy as some others have mentioned, but a really solid product nontheless.

Love the art/animations. Gameplay felt like I was endlessly trying to unlock my phone. Really good entry. If you get a chance check out our game https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/down-the-rabbit-hole

@Tommyflower I do happen to play piano, I wonder if that is a coincidence? :P

@Eric Florio and @Hethsin Not sure where lag was coming from, framerate should be frozen at 30 FPS. Thanks for the feedback!

I am fond of the graphics style : cat is really beautiful, atmosphere is gorgeous! And the music is so nice : I can not resist whistling it. An amazing game even if it is easier to press all the buttons of my keyboard everywhere at the same time. A so great experience for me, felicitations! (Your game is probably one of my favorites for now but I can't see a real link with the theme : could you help me to find one?)

@Fouralex I took a fairly generous deviation from the theme. I figured that a lot of submissions will translate the theme very literally into "small planets" (a lot did, and a lot were really good), and I wanted something different. I interpreted the theme as just having a limited space, or "world", that the character can move in, which eventually evolved into the concept for seven pillars.

Probably not the most strict upholding of the theme, but oh well. I had fun.

@jeremy-ryan In any case your game is really fun! Congratulations!

Never got to the end, but I had fun and that's what counts! There was one point were I lost my place on the keys, and I had to go through all the middle row keys to guess where I was, and indicator of some king would be cool. Other than that good job.

Really enjoyed the music and color choices..!

Agree that something to help inform the player about the active keys would be nice, even if just one key is labeled.

A mode that only used the numpad or a fixed set of alphanumeric keys would be a really relaxing experience.

Nice work. (￣ω￣)

Cool game! I like the mechanics of changing my hand position on the keyboard. I didn't get what i needed to do at first because I didn't notice the message on the left changed after the first pillar was completed. I kept pressing all the keys at random and thought the key mapping was broken xD. Maybe just a small animation or change in color would attract the eyes on the message. I enjoyed the music as it fitted very well with the game visuals. Some SFX on input would have added quite a lot to the rhythm of the game.

I also did a game in python using pygame! If you want to check it, it's over there:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/gnome-digger

I used pyInstaller too to package into a single .exe. I wrote a detailed answer on how I did it at:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28033003/pyinstaller-with-pygame/36456473#36456473
I found the existing documentation quite incomplete and obscure so I wanted to share. I think the "ressource_path" function suggested by the blog post is very tedious to call each time you have a path. My solution was to only add:

```
if getattr(sys, 'frozen', False):
os.chdir(sys._MEIPASS)
```
at the beggining of my code to set the relative directory to the correct place and everything worked great.

So good job on your game, it's great to see other users of pygame!

Oh man, what a fun game, especially trying to roll my hand around the keyboard instead of actually play it properly. Also, I really like the music and the aesthetic of the game.

My only complaint would be that the gameplay was quite repetitive (not sure if there is an ending), but other than that good job on the game :)

##### First thought

Oh, man, I'm kind of a slowpoke to press buttons on time and felt a little bit anxious. But I think if you'll add a little rhythmic element (something like rock band or crypt of the necrodancer) the game would be super dope.

I've thought of naming the pillars by the bottom key on a keyboard. The first pillar should be labeled 'x', the second one - 'c', etc.

##### Art
Heard some people call this subgenre of pixelart _the bit art_. It's fresh and distinct, but sadly not many people understands it. But I like it all the way and especially I loved cat animations. Catimations, if you like.

##### Audio
Liked the tune, it looped very well. But some more sfx could be useful. Pitch-shifting noise of pressed buttons. Or cats meows.

##### Overall

Gameplay was quite innovative, visual and audio aesthetics felt equable.

@jeremy-ryan, nice job!

**P.S.** There's a bug (or a feature): you can't close the game by clicking on the cross, only ESC key works.

heh, funny hero)
Interesting, I'd like graphic in game.

Good job doing a Compo! It was a little hard to figure out the controls because it's displayed as a grid and the keys aren't really in a grid pattern. I really like the music and the visuals!

Nice music and innovation, but since i played for few rounds, i'm starting getting bored since i felt has no progression on game. There's no goal and only i can do is to trace my finger to the correct position and input the commands, that's all.
Music is nice, but i think if there's some sfx from the feedback of input should be better.

Well done

Having your fingers literally mimicking the cat's every move is a very interesting and visceral use of a keyboard. The prompt for which key to press is far too faint. It should be much more visually pronounced since it's the most important thing on the screen, but other than that the art and music were good.

Good work on your first Ludum Dare entry! I like the idea, well done on picking something achievable within the time limit but still interesting. I enjoyed playing it, the artwork was excellent. It was a bit disorienting as others have mentioned, but I do appreciate you coming up with an innovative control system.

Hilarious game, bahaha. I'd like if there was an ending. Nice music and art too!

Interesting little game.Despite being really bad at it I found the idea for the gameplay pretty neat and original. I enjoyed the simple but cute graphics. I can't find any connection to the ld theme... Besides that overall it's a really solid entry.

The concept is as good as risky. It was a bit difficult to get used to the controls but I love the different entries, and this is one of it. Congrats.

My only complaint is that there's no score at the end, no way to compare with others about how good we did.

It's like a tongue twister for your fingers. Brilliant scrambling of player's attention and muscle memory to induce difficulty. I actually loved how as you went to the right, your keys would get less aligned. It went from a calm and easy game to a very intense one. Really wish there was a high score tracker.

I did have to close the game from the task manager though!

Cute graphics, very challenging game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 38 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1o2f-9mGRU