Duality by cxsquared

[raw]
made by cxsquared for LD34 (COMPO)
Duality is a rhythm game with a bullet hell twist. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. There's no lose condition so the only goal is to see how high of a score you can get. I really tried to add a bit of polish to is and I think I did a decent job. I mainly use the two button controls theme but tried to incorporate growth into a difficulty mechanic. My highest score is a 926 (but that's after like 12 hours of testing it over and over). I'm interested to see how well others can do.

I recommend that you use a mouse.

Feedback is always welcome.

Made using Haxe and HaxeFlixel.
Art done in Photoshop/Illustrator.
Music/Sfx done in Ableton Live.

Edit: You can play an easier post jam version on Game Jolt.

Ratings

Coolness 48% 1427
Overall 2.97 709
Audio 4.38 3
Fun 2.73 757
Graphics 3.00 526
Innovation 3.10 525
Mood 2.89 538
Theme 3.73 484

Feedback

jcmonkey
14. Dec 2015 · 03:11 UTC
pretty good game, though its not my cup of tea. but its interesting
mukult
14. Dec 2015 · 03:11 UTC
Its really hard sometimes to do a click...
The sphere just goes away in like half a second or something, sometimes.

But still nice work... Not bad! :)
TerraCottaFrog
14. Dec 2015 · 03:16 UTC
The game felt like it was too slow to start. Without any indication of a win or lose condition it felt confusing. Some of the ideas were cool, but I feel that there were a few things missing when it all came together.
adamgryu
14. Dec 2015 · 05:12 UTC
I liked the music! It's a little confusing at the start (I never really got the blue AND red buttons?), and some earlier indicators of where the buttons will appear would make it feel a little more fair. It's a good start :)
The game reminds me of OSU; you might want to take a look at it to see what it does too.
JohnGalt
14. Dec 2015 · 05:48 UTC
Nice pacing. I guess I need a better mouse to get better scores. No, it is excuse. Just need a better player here. Lol.
emmes
14. Dec 2015 · 05:49 UTC
Nice graphics, great music; flash player does have it's issues (clicking outside the area by accident -> freeze).

Cool game!
MarekkPie
14. Dec 2015 · 05:51 UTC
Fun, but I agree with the others. Might have been better if you gave some lookahead. Most rhythm games I've plays have give the player indication of what is to come, so they can both perform the action that's required immediately, and mentally prepare for the next action. Think the "note highway" in Guitar Hero/Rock Band.
Fervir
14. Dec 2015 · 14:25 UTC
I really enjoyed the game and the music.
The way the circles disappear quickly and the fact that you don't have any idea where they will appear makes this game focus more on, reflexes and pattern recognition/memorization.
That boss mechanic was pretty awesome though, that was a really interesting twist
lekochen
14. Dec 2015 · 14:35 UTC
Nice music and good gameplay. It's fun to play but sometimes the ball disappears too fast.
et1337
14. Dec 2015 · 17:55 UTC
Didn't understand that you have to actually click inside the circles at first. I would echo other people's comments. One idea to easily improve the game: display the circles as two concentric circles, one slowly growing and the other remaining a constant size. The goal would be to click the circle at the exact moment they reach the same size.
jdoughty
15. Dec 2015 · 04:12 UTC
926? I only got 323. The only thing that held this back for me was the difficulty of get the the clicks in time. maybe just leaving them on screen a little longer would have helped? Also I almost moved early because I thought I'd seen all there way to see, but thankfully stuck around long enough to see the bullet hell part start. Very inventive!
SirSoltex
15. Dec 2015 · 05:11 UTC
after the loading screen it goes to a black screen and nothing happens :/
David Cookie
15. Dec 2015 · 16:42 UTC
So you made a rhythm game too! Pretty nice :) I wasn't expecting this at all when I launched it! I'm a great fan of Ouendan so it's my cup of tea ^^ However it's pretty hard, the sphere leave as quickly as they appear. In Ouendan for example, there's a circle that comes in advance which indicates the location of the sphere. Here, we can't really expect anything and it's more a game of reflex than rhythm. If you could just fix that, it could be marvellous! Especially as graphics are cute and music is awesome, and the shooter part is really surprising!
Anyway.. really great work! :D
WitchLake
15. Dec 2015 · 17:18 UTC
Concept is solid! Graphics are really cool but i was expecting a more linear difficulty
🎤 cxsquared
15. Dec 2015 · 19:19 UTC
Thanks for all the great feedback. I guess after 12 hours of playing it over and over I didn't realize how hard I had made it.
Jupiter_Hadley
15. Dec 2015 · 20:49 UTC
Super challenging game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 34 compilation video series, if you’d like to check it out :) https://youtu.be/HyS0oGo3sGY
Dalkor
16. Dec 2015 · 01:02 UTC
Looks great. Love the music. Quite difficult, mind you I'm trying to use a track-pad on a laptop.
ambocclusion
19. Dec 2015 · 07:13 UTC
After a while, I realized that my touchpad treats left+right click as middle click, which was why I couldn't hit any of the "both" circles. I found a workaround though.

Neat idea. As other have mentioned, it needs some kind of predictability element.

Bullet hell at the end was an interesting twist, but it's hard to manage it while trying to click circles ASAP. Perhaps consider syncing the bullet patterns to the music and the circle positions? It might make the bullets more manageable--but it also might defeat the bullet-hell spirit. I have faith that there's a way to sync rhythm and bullet hell properly. Interesting concept regardless :)

You mentioned a growth mechanic, and I noticed the player size changes. Not sure how it worked though, I figure it's tied to score, but I was tiny in the end despite having a score over 100. Perhaps standards increase as the game goes on? I figure having a bigger cursor would make circles easier to click though (which would be nice in general).

On my most recent attempt of many, I got 113.

Great music and timings. Well done!
dvdfu
29. Dec 2015 · 17:29 UTC
Really loved the track! Gameplay is simple and addicting, good job! If I had to make a suggestion, maybe add a longer head's up of upcoming targets to press.