I'm so excited to play! Good luck Jeremy!

@paul-merkamp Hey! Glad to see you're back after missing LD47! I'll make sure to play your entry as well.

Wonderful job once again!!!

You've definitely accomplished what you set out to do with this game - great job with the writing, I saw the symmetry coming there but was very happy that it happened. The gameplay itself is nice - the notes are super responsive and satisfying to hit (maybe 2 or 3 times I hit a note and it didn't respond - I'd chalk that down to either a bug, or I'm delusional). I got stuck at the very end of the second to last section and had to do it 3 times, but I think you handled the player's failure very well from a writing standpoint and a gameplay standpoint, as it didn't feel devastating to start from the checkpoint, and I was improving every time (hey, just like regular piano). Missing a bunch of notes all at once felt pretty bad - the screen shake and other effects you've included make the feedback very aggressive - but, again, failure wasn't devastating, so this didn't matter much. ~~also this one didn't shutdown my computer so it has that going for it~~

Graphics are not my strong suit, so take this with a grain of salt - they didn't pop out at me as much as they have in your previous entries, but they're still perfectly good, and the subject matter isn't such a poppy one anyway.

I enjoyed the music composition a lot - it reminded me a lot of Nintendo DS games, partly because of the nature of Musescore's midi instruments, partly because of the dramatic string flair that comes and goes throughout the game, and partly because the way the music itself is written. It worked really well here. If it's something you can swing, in the future, I'd love to see what you could do with a DAW and some fancier libraries, rather than composition software - not a slam against this style at all, just a thought of mine.

This was a very heartful entry with a super unique spin on the theme. You knocked it out of the park again Jeremy, see you at the top! :smile:

@paul-merkamp Thanks so much for your thorough feedback!

Regarding the graphics, I definitely was trying a new approach for this one, and had some improvements that I ran out of time for (such as adding detail to the curtains and backgrounds, or adding other animated details like a cat in the windowsill).

I definitely agree that the "composition software" effect could be improved, and it's definitely more noticeable with MuseScore than Sibelius! I even considered recording it live from my keyboard, but with this volume of music that wasn't realistic (I did end up doing that for LD47). And if you have any recommendations for a cheap DAW and VST plugins I'm all ears.

Glad to hear that it wasn't devastating to reset to a checkpoint, and that you were able to make it in three tries. I was definitely worried that difficulty would be an issue (and it very well could be for others), as it's definitely tricky to self-playtest rhythm games as someone intimately familiar with the music.

I found the rhyrm mechanic a little bit challenging game, but that's great! I really love that way you bring in the story because it suits well and and encourages you to pass the next levels. After all, the music of course is the best part.

Thanks for all game experience and good luck!

I agree with the commentator above that the game is a bit challenging to start with. But I really ejoyed it! Great job!

These tunes are hard to play, but i really liked the approach ! :robot:

Also the music is just peeerfect!! Thanks for submitting the game :grin:

Pretty music, pretty graphics! Gameplay is fun but _hard_, I couldn't get past the first two-hand bit.

Also, runs in Wine on Linux! But audio doesn't work there.

I might just suck at rhythm games, but I found this one really tough! It's a shame, because I think the presentation and music is awesome, and I really wanted to see where the story goes, but I couldn't even clear the second level (again, I am really bad at rhythm games).

If it was maybe a little more forgiving, I feel like I'd love this!

Just a heads up: I'd like to run your windows build through the itch app (partly because it should take care of the Windows Defender problem), but I can't because the file on itch isn't marked as being "for windows" so the app doesn't find it. Would it be a problem to tick that box on the itch page? Thanks!

@tjm My bad! Should be fixed now.

As expected, great music and really nice graphics. I also loved the idea for the story - watching a girl grow up playing piano with her mother was heartwarming.

The only thing I didn't like - it was so, so hard! I really wanted to get past the third stage but I just couldn't. At the very least there should have been a checkpoint after the first segment. I would like to see a difficulty setting where it would leave out every second note, for example.

I think this game could actually be used as a training exercise for pianists :slight_smile:

Is there any chance of a walkthrough video to at least see how the game ends and listen to all the songs?

Thanks, that worked! The game is pretty difficult, though, even as someone moderately experienced at music games. :sweat_smile: I found the number keys quite awkward to rest on because they're so high on the keyboard; I think I would have had a lot more success if it used the home row (ASDFJKL; on QWERTY). The game's very pretty, though, both audibly and visually, and very nicely put together so great job!

@mvasko2 I was considering posting a playthrough video, since difficulty seems to be an issue. I'll ping you if I do!

@tjm I agree that the number keys are a little less than ideal. I chose them because a couple years back I had someone unable to play my game because they had an AZERTY keyboard! This was simpler than adding control customization.

I had ~~some~~ *a lot* of trouble with the game when I first tried it and couldn't get past the two handed part @adam-selker talked about. I came back to it today and was able to beat it the whole thing on my first try! Very, very well done. The story was on-point & music was possibly the best I've seen in any LD.

For anyone who wasn't able to finish the story because of my poor gameplay balancing, I've uploaded a full gameplay video so you can hear the music and see the ending. Thanks for the feedback, and I'll make my story-based games less brutal in the future!

@euphelys @mostel @wujood @adam-selker @tom-robson @tjm @mvasko2

Holy crap, I actually managed to beat the game! First off, what a beautiful story. Love the visuals and music as well, this game is very well put together.

So... the difficulty. For context, I rarely play rhythm games. usually awful at 'em. I'm also not very dexterous, so actually playing a real piano/using both hands independently is a no go. ...I have to agree that it's a *bit* too difficult. **That said!** I don't feel like it needs to be *much* easier! Actually managing to finish the game and pushing through the challenge was truly satisfying. Keep it brutal, IMO. *but like, 90% of this amount of brutal, maybe, possibly* :upside_down: Amazing work!

The difficulty was right up my alley. I used to play doubles on DWI/Stepmania with a hand on each side, so this ended up being simple to finish. You must have quite a bit of rhythm game background yourself to tune it to this level.

In general I've played a lot of rhythm games and this is the first time I've seen a cohesive story tying it all together. This was absolutely brilliant and deserves way more recognition. The idea of tying the left and right portions with how the mother and daughter would be play together was meaningful and it immediately put me in the right mindset for the game. Then as the the characters grew up, the difficulty of the notes reflected that as well. How did you come up with the idea? I want to take notes from you.

This is going to be a game I recommend a lot in the future - one of the most innovative ones I've seen, and certainly for its genre.

This is by far the best music-based game jam entry I've played! It was really nice how the notes corresponded to the music, so it felt like I was actually the one playing it. The wrong note in the audio was a cool touch, although I'm glad that all my wrong notes don't do that or it would sound a lot less pretty. I agree this was pretty difficult for someone who isn't a piano player, but I could definitely feel myself improving the longer I played and I was able to get through it in the end (although I had to switch to a better keyboard). I do think adding one more checkpoint halfway through the second section would be helpful.

The story was very heart-warming, and the graphics were simple but effective. Did the quarter and eighth notes correspond to the music at all? It seemed like they were just used interchangeably. Overall, I really enjoyed playing this!

a touching game with high difficulty.

WHHOA boy this game was hard! I managed to finish eventually, but it definitely took me a few tries to get through the middle section of the second last song. I wonder if the checkpoints could have been a bit more frequent for LD sake? I thought the graphics, sound and gameplay were very well done and i commend you on an original idea for the theme. One thing I will note is that most membrane keyboards only allow so many inputs simultaneously, so there were a couple of times where I felt like the required inputs were impossible on my keyboard. Thanks for the game, I hope you take it further!

Beautiful artwork, music, and story. This is super challenging! I think I'm pretty good at rhythm games, but having to use both hands was incredibly difficult for me. I think I would have had a much easier time using the home row keys. In a comment you mentioned AZERTY being a problem, but I believe in pygame, if you use the key event's scancode, then the keyboard layout shouldn't matter.

What a beautiful game! (found it through your reddit post :)) Thanks for uploading the playthrough video, since I can't quite beat the game myself.

On a sidenote, your LDJAM history is inspiring me to give PyGame a chance one of these jams. Kudos!

this looks really great! i really want to play it, but i'm on a mac and it gives me errors when i run it on pygame :/ (it says that in line 50 of make_shadows in objects.py, AttributeError: 'pygame.mask.Mask' object has no attribute 'to_surface'). really unfortunate, this looks fun tho!

@ty_ Are you on the latest version of pygame? You may have to run `pip install pygame --upgrade`.

I liked the game - really nice humor. good job

Hey matey, thanks for submitting your game to the stream! I hope my feedback is helpful, I really enjoyed the game! Here's the twitch vod if you wanna rewatch:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1003703630

Super hard, so I had to watch the vid. Beautiful. Heart pulling. Brought a tear to my eye.

The game lagged very much on my pc =(. Don't know if it is too weak (i3-6100U 2.3ghz, intel hd 520) or its due to optimitization problems.

I liked very much the first levels, I love rythm games and you did and excellent job of creating a good one! But the difficulty sparked immensely fast: almost immediately after you introduced two and three notes at the same time, you requested playing different notes with two hands. I'm guessing that you know how to play piano yourself and thought that it would not be too hard, but I've never played, so, for me, it was a huge jump.

The graphics are beautiful and the narrative is interesting, but the level design prevented me from enjoying the game completely.

Other than that, it was a great entry!

I think it's a really sweet and heartwarming game. I wish there were easier levels, but I kept trying cuz I loved the music so much. I also like the little details you had (i.e. awkward lines on the girls head when I mess up). Thank you!

This was sweet, I liked the little narrative, and the rhythm gameplay was fun. It was fairly easy to get to the end with a few retries, but the patterns were complex enough that it was satisfying to do so. Surprisingly satisfying to just play the number keys like they were a piano


@jeremy-ryan, this one is tough. I really want to love this game! For a compo game, the presentation is phenomenal, the gameplay and narrative association are on-point and the music is amazing. But the difficulty was a bit alienating for me. I was wondering before playing from reading the comments if it was really as tough as the description and as other commenters were saying, and it eventually checked out for me. :bow:

I'm not sure if it's because I'm not the biggest (nor really a good) rhythm game player, but I really couldn't make it past the third section even after multiple attempts (to the point my wrists are actually hurting as I am typing this comment) and balancing all eight notes was very hard for me. Even then, despite my struggles, I really need to reiterate that I think there's a fantastic bit-sized story to tell here that's really pretty and emotional for anyone that has an attachment or love for an hobby and for their family.

The polish was incredibly well put together with the screenshake, particles and feedback from hitting the notes, and it genuinely feels like a game made for the jam done in compo time. It's really that good in my opinion!

I hope that you make a post-Ludum Dare version of this with a more accessible mode for those of us who aren't as good in rhythm games. I really want to give it the best opportunity and shot I can. I really believe this game truly deserves it. I look forward to seeing your next compo entries! Cheers! :whale:

This was so good! It felt very fair and responsive for a rhythm game, and the story and music was moving- I was all 🤯 when it came full circle! Amazing work for the compo :o

This was absolutely gorgeous work, especially for the compo! As I'm not familiar with rhythm games I, like others, found it super difficult. Luckily for me though, I had a friend who is super familiar with them as I played it, and he was able to finish it in one go! The story was moving, the art gorgeous, and the music absolutely stunning!

If your interested, we played it on stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1020802507 starting at about 01:00:00ish.

You are always making the most polished PyGame games! If you are having trouble with PyInstaller, you could try stealing my own packaging method, which just uses wheels, portable Python for windows from python.org, and a batch file. It works well enough in the itch client, and can be deployed from Mac or Linux.

I wish there was visual feedback for pushing the button, not just for missing a note.

As for keyboard controls, now that you are using pygame 2.0, maybe consider using asdf hjkl and scan codes instead of 1234 7890

...or a MIDI controller, or perhaps one of those Rock Band controllers...

@blubberquark Thanks for playing! And glad to see my LD46 entry didn't scare you away for good.

Do you have a link to a repository for the packager? I've been looking for alternatives to PyInstaller since Defender decided to universally mark it as dangerous.

The reason I opted for the number keys was a streamer way back in LD38 who had an AZERTY keyboard, completely throwing off my QWERTY-based control scheme. This seemed easier than making it configurable, with time limits and everything, but is there something slicker I could have done with scan codes?

> And glad to see my LD46 entry didn’t scare you away for good.

I'm not a fool, I run all games inside firejail

As for scan codes, they are the codes of the position on the keyboard. Keyboards report the scancode, because they don't know if you changed the keycaps out. The OS does the mapping to actual characters. Pygame 2.0 keeps the scancode in the event, so you *could* use those, but then you'd have to make a UI graphic of an unlabelled keyboard and refer to the keys by position.