Not rating this one yet because the BAT file just opened and closed without opening any application. Let me know if I'm doing something wrong here 😅 The example video looks really cool though!

If you open a terminal and run the bat file from there, do you get this:
ERROR: JAVA_HOME is not set and no 'java' command could be found in your PATH

If so you need to install JAVA, sorry. :-( I kind of thought that was still standard on Windows.

EDIT: I have uploaded an .exe version!

I have have the same problem. Installed Java from their website but it seems that Java 8 is not enough, i have this message :
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: no/kodingnights/peggy/lwjgl3/Lwjgl3Launcher has been compiled by a more recent version of the Java Runtime (class file version 55.0), this version of the Java Runtime only recognizes class file versions up to 52.0

Currently trying to install Java 17 to try this game ^^

Very nice. Visually it's very impressive with all the dudes walking up slowly. It's a bit hard to identify when to use the keys because the characters move so slowly, but once you really listen to the music it works out, if you identify which instruments fit to each track you can really get into it. Took me a while to figure out which keys to use to play because the 1-4 was so small though. Nice work!

Thank you for your feedback @ben-burnes and @mortith!

I have uploaded a new build where you should just be able to run the HellgateHarvest.exe - can you please download that version and try again? (The WINDOWS EXE URL)

@feor Thank you so much for your feedback!

Tried again with the new exe, works fine (but now my java is installed so it might do something...).
Fun game with nice simple style, i like this kind of music too!

@mortith Thank you for taking the time to try again, glad it worked out in the end!

Yeah sadly JAVA PATH is not set by default even after installing Java on Windows, so might be harder for newer people to play. But otherwise, it's a pretty cool game! Great audio. Good job :)

@forevertrash Yeah I realised, I have created an .exe version though!

Overall a lot better than mine haha :) +1

This is pretty neat! Visually it’s very impressive

Not a fan of rhytm games, but I have to say, yours is well executed and the gameplay is smoother than I would expect. Also the audio-visual part is just so well made :)

I had a lot of fun playing this. Not super original in terms of the gameplay but really well executed. Only suggestions for improvement would be more levels/songs and to put the "finish line" a bit closer to the point where you actually have to hit the notes, as I found that a bit confusing in the beginning. Overall really great job!

Very addicting game. It was a bit difficult for me because what I heard and what I saw was a bit out of sync. Maybe some kind of calibration option would fix that. Recently I played Metal Hellsinger and it had simple but useful audio & visual calibration (you can see examples on youtube)

Either way after couple of tries I was able to finish the game :)

I enjoyed the feeling of being reaper. I harvested souls a little bit too much which also made me feel guilty haha

The first track was a little long, just given how often it repeats, but honestly it was a nice ramp into the more complex second round. Very good rhythm game, once you get into the rhythm.

Really enjoyable rythm game! Took a while to learn how to get the timing right, but once I got it down it was a good experience. Played the browser version which felt a little small, wished I could have increased the size a bit to better enjoy the graphics :)

played the web version.
could just be me but it seems the people come closer together than in the demo video

Good idea and theme incorporation, i thought it was a little too hard, but it could jus be me being bad at rythm games

Overall it's fun, I always like playing music game. But since I played too much music game I expect the perfect timing is when the human step on the "line", so I got really low score in the first few tries.

Nice game!

I've always been bad at rhythm games so there's no way I'm beating this, especially when it seems to be one of the harder ones I've played. The perspective makes it a bit disorienting when I need to hit certain notes. But otherwise, fun game.

@tolmera Thanks - but I liked yours!
@vigneshwa, @iluvatar - Thanks a lot!
@zonoxx, @jeff-chiu - Good point about the finish line, I should fix that. If people like the game, I can also create a lot more levels with the help of MuGen! https://kodingnights.itch.io/mugen
@owca - Congratulations on finishing! A calibration option is a good idea!
@mikyokyuji - did you make it to the end?
@geraldfingburke - I agree the first track is too long, I should cut it in half. It is the tutorial song.
@timon - Yeah that was actually bug in the version that should now have been fixed along with some other stuff (see description)
@togo-sepultraut - Do you mean the demo video? That was taken after 24 hours, I spend the last day of the Jam on polish and have not gotten around to creaete a new video
@twilightrh - Thanks a lot! Practice! (Actually you can just hammer the keyboard to get to the end, just not with a great score).

Feels like a chaotic version of DDR.

@moonlightbomber I will take that as a compliment!

For some reason the web version music wouldn't play, which is a bit of a bummer :(. I like the style, but definitely was a bit hard to know when to press the buttons to successfully harvest those souls! I'm pretty bad at rhythm games, so it may have just been poor skill on my part or my computer, but when I was supposed to press all 4 buttons, it didn't seem to register at all. Cool concept and art though!

@adamwigs Some keyboards don't register more than a couple of keys at once unfortunately... I will investigate that music problem!

There must be something wrong with the web version, its insanely difficult and the comments don't fit with whats happening. Dunno I will try the downloadable version tomorrow.

@digitaldude555 which system/browser?

Edge browser. windows 10.

I'm pretty bad at rhythm games in general so understandably I struggled at this one (this one is definitely one of the harder ones I've played) but it was visually good and I'm a fan of the audio.

@digitaldude555 Can you try Chrome browser?


@ex3d0 Thanks for trying! What made it so hard?

@adamwigs May I ask about which browser you tried?

Safari!

@adamwigs Aha, it seems like the music format I'm using (.ogg) is not well supported. Maybe I can convert it to .mp3 for better results.

Had fun with it, reminded me of old-school guitar hero! Music was a little simple though!

@arthur-mairs Thanks! I unfortunately ran out of time so the music is a little simplistic. If the game is well received I might make a lot more, and better, music!

@kodingnights No worries, but that's good to know! I'm new to game programming, so I didn't realize different browsers supported different music formats :)

@adamwigs if you try the polished version it should (hopefully) work.

I really like the music and its a fun take on the theme. I've never been the best at rhythm games so take this with a gain of salt, but I did find the difficulty to be a little high for me.

The music did not play for me, also holy heck this was hard. I'm not the best with rhythm games but this was a whole level of hardness. Nice idea though!

@mrchickenboy Can you try the polished version?

I'm a big fan of music games so I was looking forward to this one, I know music games are quite difficult in game jams (I learnt my lesson years ago :cold_sweat:)

I think the concept is really interesting, slicing up souls to a beat is a funny way to look at harvesting. I agree with some other comments however, the timing felt a little off and it was hard to tell when to hit the beat, and what was on and what was off beat. Maybe if you had the souls come a little more linearly towards you (as they sort of slowed down when they got close), or introducing some beat lines into the souls like in other music games that might help with some of the visual clarity. I think having a way to skip songs might be good as well, song one really dragged on. Interesting game though, and I like what you did with the concept.

@porcus-pie Thank you for your quality feedback! The souls actually do move linearly but the scaling of the sprites makes it seem like they slow down. Beat lines is a good idea! You can skip songs with the 'N' key.

The game was nice and working well. The only thing that feels a bit off, as others mentioned, is the timing for the keypresses (I guess that the placement of the horizontal line was tricking me).

@tttt thank you for your feedback. I will have to look into that timing issue. Kind of important for a rhythm game!

@tttt If you would try the polished version now the timing issues should hopefully be fixed!

I have played the original and also the polished version. I can see that there has been some improvement with the timing indicators with the polished version but even with the indication lines, there was no real regular indication of the music moving forward, for instance only seeing lines when "measures" were playing. During rests the lines would go away so the visual frame of reference I had made went away.

Ways to improve this could be:
- Always have a measure line at the beginning of every measure, whether you're playing or not
- Make the notes/people be viewed from a more top down perspective so that it is easier to tell where notes should be played


This was an ambitious game and I applaud you for taking it on. However, I quickly realized that it didn't matter if I played correctly or not, the music kept playing just the same. I was able to repeatedly tap all of the buttons all the time and hit everything, even if there wasn't a note to play. I wasn't penalized at all for missing, aside from losing a hit streak, but that didn't seem to be too big of a deal.


Ways to improve this could be:
- Hurt me is I miss too much, if the visuals are helpful enough that I can see what and when I'm supposed to play, then having the game end for missing notes too much would make sense
- If it is too difficult to make an actual note-for-note play on button presses while tracking with the music, you may consider muting the music altogether until I start playing right.


Keep it up and thanks for making this!

@pyspher9 thank you for playing and for your valuable feedback. I will keep improving this game after the jam.

Okay, I liked that! I have a few points I've seen a few people point out, so I'll keep it concise! I feel like everything moves a bit slowly -- in the case of the notes (or people, I guess?), it makes it extremely difficult to have any amount of depth perception; there were times where the notes were really close together, because there's only a second or so between them, but immediately I categorize them as a double note and therefore miss one or both of them (:sweat_smile:), but if the speed of the people were turned up a few notches, time gaps would be visually distinct as note-press gaps. And to go hand in hand with that statement, the area where you need to catch the notes seems a bit small, making timing even more precise then it would be otherwise; instead of pressing when they reach the line as I would expect, it seems like I need to wait for the line to intersect their torso after they've completely walked over the place I'm aiming for...

But overall, this was a nice entry! Seriously you just need to tweak a few values and this would already be bumped up a star from how I see it now! Great job, especially for a first LD submission, keep it up! :beers:

> Do you like rhythm games?

Yes, and I'm tired. The basic concept of clicking to the music is basically limitless, and yet, most of the time when you see a new rhythm game, it's yet another reskin of DDR that just makes you want to ask: why bother? What happened to creativity? We've seen it many times. We've had FNF here at Ludum Dare, and it never deserved the attention it got, since there had been numerous other 4K simulators that just did the same job but much better.

4K has to have split controls. DFJK minimum, and better yet something like ASKL. 1234/QWER in a 4K with triads is indefensible; if you want the smaller two fingers to be involved, go with 6/7/8/9K.

And, I can't stress it enough, **you need sliders**. A note speed slider and at least one timing slider (preferably three: audio/video delay and grade offset). **They are as core as jumping is in platform games.** The original version's note speed is fixed to some incomprehensibly low value, and I have no idea what's going on.

The post-jam version is much more playable, but it's just yet another 4K sim without holds, with nothing to stand out. The note speed is still an order of magnitude too slow for my preference.

Sorry for the rant, and congratulations on finishing a jam game.


Thank you anonymous reviewer! Much appreciated. That's why I enter game jams, to be enlightened. All very good points, some of which have been addressed in the post-jam version. I will keep working at the game!

@sephowepho thank you also for your comments, it seems I really have to make some sliders to accommodate different players.

Oh wow thats chaotic, personally felt like I didn't have the best overview over when the people entered the line (apart from the yellow indicator) and in my opinion I wouldve preferred a control scheme of maybe DFJK or anything more central on the keyboard. Pretty good entry tho overall, I'm a huge fan of DDR games, tho not particularly any good at them.

we can spam the keys without being punished and I had a sound bug

@patrickrmc Thank you, you can actually choose a different control scheme in the settings for the Post-Jam version, several options are available.

@dimesto52 You are right - you will miss your hit streak but yes you can pass the level that way. I wanted to fix that but just didn't have time at the end. WHat kind of sound bug did you have? Has it been resolved in the polished version?

This was a very good take on the theme!