Low Notes by mhorth
Intro
Low Notes is a game of many firsts for me. This is the first Ludum Dare game jam (or any game jam) that I've participated in. I've also never dealt much with music. While I didn't end up creating any original tracks for this game, I did have to learn a lot about audio in Unity as well as how songs are measured in time.
I'm really happy I decided to jump into the game jam, I had a ton of fun with the process and I'm very pleased with the result. It will likely be a project that I continue working on. I'll just need to figure out a better way to sync notes to the music and make maps faster.
Tools
- Unity for all the big work.
- GIMP and Inkscape for art.
- GarageBand for examining mp3 files.
- Trello for task management.
https://youtu.be/mi6Z-6rsr44
Future Plans
I've already gotten some really great feedback from your reviews. There are a few main improvements I'll need to focus on: 1. It needs to be easier to tell which order the notes are in, especially during fast sections. 2. I need to add more juice to make it really feel good to hit notes correctly. 3. Don't change the pitch for every change in health. Only change after a large change in health.
If you have any ideas on how I can improve those areas, please let me know!
Updates
I've taken a first pass at a few of the main feedback items. - I've highlighted the next note to be hit (highlighting all if it's a multi-note). - I have a circle linking notes together when they're hit at the same time. - I've broken the health bar into 4 sections and only change pitch when crossing a section. - For good hit feedback: I gave the paddles a ton of shake when hitting a note. I tried adding a sound effect but all the ones I tried were disruptive. Maybe there's a sound effect that will sound good, but for now I'll stick with visuals. - Whenever you hit a note, it a graphic will show how well you hit it. Color coded green, yellow, and orange for how good your timing was, as well as the location whether it was early or late. - I added a few more color sets including glowing colors with bloom. (Flat color with no glow still exists because glow gets a little intense).
I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post a new build since these are new features after the competition, so here's a video: https://youtu.be/lCy99wA4Hlk
Changelog
April 28th I uploaded a new build because I noticed that the track "Adventures in Suburbia" had a few duplicate notes. You'd hit the note just fine but then the 2nd copy still went through and caused a miss. This has been fixed.
Ratings
| Overall | 485th | 3.783⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 201th | 3.935⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 791th | 3.315⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1150th | 3.457⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1185th | 3.424⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 46🗳️ | 75🗨️ |
The 4 sided circle isn't really unique but it is a nice gameplay idea.
I love how you tied the theme with the pitch of the songs (although I personally enjoy listening to the normal song)
Also huge :thumbsup: for adding megalovania.
A really nice experience and I hope you continue developing the game!
Some thoughts: Hard to tell how far notes are along (meaning it's hard to tell with notes on alternating sides which is first), and hard to tell whether you've missed early or late on some notes. The detune is also a bit aggressive early -- I like it, but maybe at low health instead of not-perfect health.
This was really fun to play! I didn't experience any issue with synchronization of triggers and audio. The one thing that I would have found helpful, would have been better feedback on whether I hit the note correctly or not. I am really curious how you created the "levels" for these songs?
Anyway, good job!
Still not quite caught up on sleep so I couldn't make it all the way through anything but the first song, but it was good fun all the same!
The appearance of which note comes first in quick alternating patterns is definitely an issue, I’ll have to do some more thinking on the best way to solve that.
Glad you had fun!
One of my friends also mentioned better feedback on successful hits, so I’ll look into cranking that up more.
I mean, I don't have too much to say here. It's a nice rhythm game with clean graphics and nice beatmaps. Although sometimes (especially in Megalovania) it's sometimes difficult to see if the next notes are three rapid fire notes or one note on three keys. Other than that, no complaints here, I had fun!
I mean, I don't have too much to say here. It's a nice rhythm game with clean graphics and nice beatmaps. Although sometimes (especially in Megalovania) it's sometimes difficult to see if the next notes are three rapid fire notes or one note on three keys. Other than that, no complaints here, I had fun!
Since you're gonna keep working on this project, something I would suggest trying out is instead of the music changing "deepness" everytime you get something wrong or right, only change it after the player misses or gets it right a certain amount of times, so the music stays consistent for longer.
Also, I think you can punish the player a bit more haha. I felt like I was getting a bunch of notes wrong and still never got close to losing. Punishing the player for pressing the wrong key might be a good idea too, otherwise I can win by just pressing every key on beat!
Lastly, I was reading some ideas on the comments and I agree some visual cues like changing color as the note gets closer would help too.
Anyway, really enjoyed it overall! The graphics are very polished and the gameplay is quite fun. Congrats!
If I ever go for online leaderboards then yeah I'll have to punish wrong presses, but as long as it's local, I know that I like the freedom to fidget with the keys between actual notes.
@goggleskitty both great ideas! I had spawned the notes off screen because I didn't want them to just pop into existence. I think spawning on screen at a consistent radius will help with ordering and I can do like a fade-in and grow animation to avoid popping. I also really like that circle idea. It could get cluttered but I'm definitely going to try it and see if that helps.
Either way props! I can't believe even in a jam, there's always a undertale reference. :laughing:
Here's some thoughts on improvements, not really anything you did wrong, just thoughts if you wanted to add more.
There needs to be more difficulty options and they should follow a similar note layout. The ones you had in there were good, but it felt like it was swaying between a bunch of difficulties, which can make it hard to follow. For example, if you want it to be hard and follow every note, then it needs to follow every note so the player is expecting constant notes on the melody or wherever. Expert or something could have even more additional things. For like a medium it could follow slower melodies, but it should be something like only the major parts, but whatever it is it needs to be consistent.
Lastly, additional inputs would be awesome. Something like clicking space changes the spots the arrow keys hit (Giving you double the notes) or maybe you have two circles, one for arrows, one for wasd. Or to be really difficult have a lot of different keys so you have to move your hands around the keyboard.
I'm mainly just rambling at this point. haha but very good job I enjoyed it a lot!
- It felt like when the pitch went down you maybe did that in such a way that the tempo slowed down slightly as well, but the visuals didn't slow down at the same rate so at slower speeds it seemed like I couldn't get a hit on the notes by going off of the song rather than just the visuals.
- Because of this, I found that I often was just button mashing to get back up to fast speeds, rather than trying to line up the hit to the song. Maybe if the button hits gave a sound it would disincentivize that sort of button mashing gameplay.
Overall though, I had a wonderful time and actually wanted to finish all the levels which doesn't happen often! You rule!
Rhythm games are my weakness, so this one instantly grabbed me. I love the unique interface you got going on here. It's both visually and mechanically super interesting!
You've already made some serious improvements to the game already in your post-jam version, I noticed. I'm super interested to see where else you plan to take this one!
I play a lot of console rhythm games and maybe because of that I found using WASD keys really difficult, especially for three-note chords. If it's not already something you're working on, difficlty levels (Easy-Normal-Hard) would be nice.
I like the idea on your itch.io page of having the submitted game for rating and the current game post jam. I may copy that in the future.
Starting with Megalovania totally kicked my ass and not in a good way.
But! It's a really polished game, feels great to play and I love the take on the theme. Would love to see that expanded with something like a MP3 parser oder something to play any of my music with it?