Only problem is that i can't get past the first level because the music does not get loud enough for me to jump, but i love the graphics and idea!

the art is really cute. provides a great atmosphere combined with the music!

The concept is great, but the game is very difficult. We have to follow the beat, that's a good concept.
The only problem i am facing is that the game stops working after playing sometimes.

I love the idea.

The music is beautiful, haunting and atmospheric.

The artwork is good, feels substantial and fits.

The animations are smooth and well done.

The mechanic is a cool idea and with relatively little tweaking I can see this being a cool, tense and fun puzzle game as you try to work out how the tune fits with the music being played.

Unfortunately I can't get past the first platform. The sound of jumping seems to be higher than the music ever goes on my machine. I don't know if i have to wait longer for the music to get beyond the yellow bar.

If you fix this let me know, I'd love to give this a proper go.

Thanks for the feedback guys! Sorry about the first level, it's not really self-explanatory. Before you can jump, you gotta flip the lever in this little alcove by pressing 'X' after getting next to it. That will make the music loud enough!


I really like the concept, and while it took me a few tries to get how the switch worked, it was a real fun experience after that. Also great feedback, it was pretty intuitive (except for the switch)

I love the sounds and music in this game, i found it fun, and it fits just fine with the theme. Great job!

Just came back to say that I loved the look and feel of the game but had been unable to make it to the first platform, that tip in your comment about the lever definitely helped though. Not quite my cup of tea, but still a brilliant game.

Cool genre mix and really enjoy the art style. I couldn't get very far (got to the first orb) but I could see this being a full game of rage-inducing fun. Also love the smooth transition of the main menu into that loading screen and into the first level, nice little touches like that really improve the feel even without the player interacting with it.

Love the concept, and the graphics, music and sound effects are really well done. While the game is challenging, it didn't feel unfair, but maybe increasing the time window you can make noise in would improve the experience.

Awesome job Nate!

This is a really cool concept and I like how you managed to mix a loud genre with the quietest without making it seem tacked on. This concept fits and it seems like the mechanics belong together. I think this did a really great job!

One of the best ones I've played.
Really difficult but well polished! Haven't seen this idea before. I had fun once I go the gist but found it too difficult.
Loved the art and the music.

Looks really cooL! I wish there was a web build :sob:

I thought this was a awesome little game. The concept was really well done. I just wish it was a little easier. I thought the guy was a little too slippery and I kept falling off the ledges.

Really awesome game, pretty tough but a lot of fun!

Probably the best execution of the theme I have seen so far. It really changes how you think about platforming.

I do agree with the general consensus that it's too hard. If you could somehow add some fudge factor to how loud you can be for certain jumps/dashes, without it being an insta-fail when you're off by a few frames, that'd make it a lot more satisfying.

Still, everything about the game, other than the difficulty was spot on. The graphics are minimal, but have tons of character, and the audio is superb.

Great job!

Definitely a great interpretation of the theme (translation: I wish I'd thought of something this cool). I just wish it was maybe a *teensy* bit more forgiving - have the music's sound level bar decay a little slower maybe? The graphics, while certainly not complex, do their job well (translation: I used even lower res pixel art so I certainly couldn't object to yours, even if I wanted) and the music goes together great (translation: I wish I could do audio this cool).
If it looks like I'm not speaking English, I'll summarise: great job! (just maybe make it a little easier)

This Is really good, It's tough though, but it's awesome, I'm going to have to try to progress more later I've only gotten to level 2 so far.

and here's the obligatory self promotion
check out my entry: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/photonic

I like this game, and idea is very cool, but it's really too hard. I do not have problem with understanding how levers works, but even that i understand what to do, it is so hard to do it right. ~20 tries to finish lvl 1(when i realize, that i have to come back to start of the level 1 after ending it, i nearly surrender). Then i realize that lvl 2 even more hard. Maybe add some checkpoints? Anyway game is great, i like artstyle and music.

Really cool game ! I think the better I have seen for this LD (and I reviewed 100+ games ^^). It has a really good mood, with these musics, the gameplay is perfect but I am too tired to be good at this game ^^' I will play this later !

(5*) Cool game ! Keep coding :)

OK so yes what everyone's been saying is true, this game is far too hard. But that's a very shallow criticism, and I don't think anyone's talked about the root of the problem yet:

First things to get out of the way, I adore everything about this game - the idea is brilliant, the graphics are clean, the mechanics are weirdly intuitive despite being something I've never seen before. The music's atmospheric and plain good. All around this should be a fantastic game.

There's a really frequently repeated adage that how satisfying a difficult game is is tied to how long, after a failure or death, it takes to get back to what the player was doing. I know it's been said a million times but it's worth repeating. Because this game completely fails on this front, and this alone has turned this from one of the best games I'm going to play this LD to one of the most frustrating.

To start, the game punishes you for unfair reasons. I can dash, with the volume well above the required 3 bars. But if, _after I've pressed the shift key_ the volume drops to below mine, I die. I quit the game on level 4, because you gave me what amounts to one or two frames to make each jump, then asked me to time, with the same precision, a fall onto another platform. I was able to do this twice, and died immediately afterwards both times.

Once you do get fail, the game just revels in your failure, making the player feel like shit. First you get a giant red "YOU FAILED" for a good chunk of time, along with a sound effect that completely kills the mood of the game and drives itself into your skull after the ntieth death. Then, you get sent all the way back to start of the level, with the music back at the initial state. So now you get to repeat all those difficult jumps and wait for half a minute to get back to the one part of the song that lets you progress and try again.

The switches should act as checkpoints. The game should let you take 2 or 3 hits before it sends you back. Or at the very least, the music you've set should stick around when you're sent back to start. If you feel like this would trivialize the game too much, add a setting to toggle "baby mode/hardcore mode" on and off.

The third level was somewhat cleverly designed. The one long fall you had to make was possible because the song playing gave you a few seconds of persistent level2 volume to make the fall safely. The fourth level, at least until you hit a switch, is just impossible bullshit. You can't consistently make a _frame-perfect fall_.

I desperately want you to make a post-LD update to this game, because it does SO MANY THINGS SO WELL. But you need to:
- get rid of the timed falls and frame-perfect jumps on the 4th level, or wherever else they appear later in the game.
- add an easy mode where switches (and the orb) are checkpoints. OR give the player 3+ hitpoints each level.
- get rid of (or add an option to get rid of) the TOO LOUD death screen. The player should be in control of the character at most 2 frames after their death. And change the sound effect to something less grating, more smooth.
- get rid of the double-spike in the dash volume. Only count dashes as failure if the volume's wrong when the shift key is pressed.
- maybe let the player make noise a frame (or a few frames) before the volume spike happens. This isn't crucial but it would turn this into more of a rhythm game and could add some nice flow.
And please mention @me if you upload a post-LD update. I would love to play it.

So yeah. I'm really frustrated because this is a fantastic and amazing game that I can't enjoy because you failed at the most basic principle of platformer design. Please fix it.

P.S. - the game reads inputs when it's not in focus, like when I tried to type this review without losing all my progress. But since I can't pause the game, or make it ignore my spaces, it's just making the game over noise every few seconds and driving me insane.

To @amras0000,

First and foremost, I want to thank you for your post. It's overflowing with valuable feedback and it's clear to me that you care about my game, which makes me super happy! In addition to that, I want to apologize. I'm 100% aware of the mind-numbing artificial difficulty present in my game. There are things that I would have done differently if I could do it again (many of which you pointed out). I fully intend on fixing the glaring issues, I just haven't gotten a good opportunity this week to sit down and work on it. I'm actually greatly considering committing to building this into a full game, but we'll save that conversation for another day.

One important note, level 4 is the final level in my game, so I increased the difficulty by decreasing audio windows (this admittedly was overkill). If you felt fairly comfortable with levels 1-3, that's more along the lines of what I want the game to play like.

Okay, so lets get to the good stuff.

- **Rhythm leeway:** I actually do have a system in place that builds an "audio window" around volume spikes, allowing you to make noise a little before or after a beat and be safe. It's probably a little too small right now, so I'll play around with increasing it.

- **Falling onto floors:** I think the best course of action is to rework the whole falling-onto-metal mechanic so that you must *fall* on beat to land on beat, rather than falling at an arbitrary time in order to land on beat. It makes no sense as it currently stands. I'll also be making the audio windows bigger for those types of levels, mainly level 4.

- **On the topic of checkpoints, HP, etc:** Ok, this is a big and pretty important bullet point because it has to do with the game's future. I played around with the idea of making levers checkpoints, or staying flipped after dying, but I decided against it. In order to remedy the intense frustration that comes from almost beating a level, failing, and having to redo an incredibly annoying build-up period, my idea is to take what is currently one level, and stretch it to 2-3 levels. The levels currently try to do too much. Level 1 teaches you almost all the mechanics in the game in a single screen. Level 2 tries to teach you how to drop onto a metal floor, but only after a time consuming section of walking on beat, which is annoying to redo. It's overwhelming, and I agree that there should be checkpoints between these key learning points, but I think that checkpoint should be the elevator itself. I'm not sure, please let me know what you think!

- **Death screen:** Yeah I went a little overboard on this one; I totally agree with your critiques. I'm going to change it to be super quick and low impact, so you can get right back into the action.

- **Dash:** Agreed, I'll change that!

- **Input focus, pausing, and saving:** I've noticed the input focus issue, and it'll be one of the first things I fix. But I'll also use this bullet point to talk about pausing and saving. I had intentions to get pausing done for the compo, but I couldn't work it in in time. I'm also going to work on saving, but that's more along the lines of something to get done after these other issues get resolved.

Please let me know if you have any more questions or concerns! Thanks again for the great feedback!

I really liked this one. Great execution of a neat idea.

Great entry. I think it's a little bit unforgiving since you die instantly when going over sound, so some kind of health bar would be aprecciated.
I got till the end of the first level when the sound goes all grainy. Wanted to go through the floor since there was the arrow (same as before where you should go left) and i killed myself because I didn't feel the rythm.

Your graphics, sound and idea are amazing though. Really great implementation :)

Excellent game. The idea is flawless, although the first level is somewhat unforgiving, since the player needs to learn a lot at once. (First lesson: don't crush your head into the wall xD) If you update it, try to add simpler levels at the beginning, and keep the user iterating with a new concept each time. The feeling of progression will be greater and you'll add gameplay along the line, which is also good for you.

By the way, not sure if it's a problem of mine alone, but I kept failing because right SHIFT key didn't work, only the left one. Is that normal? It's not my keyboard, else there'd be no caps at all in this message :D

Despite that minor problem, I really enjoyed your game. Graphics and music are simple enough to work perfectly, and the player movements are quite precise. Keep it up!

The first level seemed to be the hardest for me to solve. The rest of it afterward however was awesome. This is definitely one of my favorite games this ludum dare. This game was a LOT of fun. If it was expanded and had more levels and music. More mechanics. I would buy this ASAP. I don't say that very often ( look at me acting all serious :p ). Solid entry

Nice game! I like the elevator idea, sounds, gameplay... Very cool :D

Played this post-results. Despite not having many votes, I do think your game is a good example of a game that got few votes but still deserved a high ranking. Good job

Hello ! :) I made a review of Crescendo in my last Ludum Dare 41 video : https://youtu.be/cZWBtMwuqDg?t=118 I loved your game even it was very hard for me to pass the first level haha. Congratulations ! And don't mind to ask me translation ;)

@nate954 My vote for a checkpoint system, that will save your progress for a couple of tries.
Or make a fall-on-metal mechanic in a way that you have to fall between bits, to land on a bit.

Please release a small update on that :)
Enjoyed the game concept alot but stuck on level 2 metal plate falling.
Any of those features will make the game much more palyable.

PS: Registered here to leave this comment. The game is amazing.