Show HN: Settling the Score – A point-and-click adventure rhythm game

I thought it'd be fun to make a point-and-click adventure game based around music. I thought it'd be a unique take on the gnre. I made this game for a 7-day gamejam and drew all the artwork and created all the music myself. It can be played through to completion in about 5 minutes.

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BSTRhino a day ago | parent | next [-]

I would love to hear more feedback if anyone managed to actually complete the game! I had a much bigger idea in mind but I felt like I had to water it down so that people would actually understand how to play it. I originally wanted to make it so that you just had to listen to the instruments and figure out by yourself if they were playing the same song or not. To me, I thought part of the wonder would be picking up each instrument one at a time, hearing them individually at first, then adding them together one-by-one to experience the full song. For this reason, I made quite a different lines of music for each instrument (none of that "same melody, different instrument but one octave down", they are truly distinct). I thought it'd be surprising but satisfying to hear how seemingly disparate lines can be stacked on top of each other and actually fit.

But... my experience with making games is you can never over explain to your player, and so I reduced it down to what feels to me like a bunch of glorified fetch quests, basically telling the player directly which instruments go with what. I felt a bit dissatisfied taking away what I thought was the "spirit" (haha) of the game so to speak but I thought it was necessary so people would understand how to play the game. I especially couldn't experiment too much given this was a 6-day gamejam game.

But if this idea seems intriguing to you, I could keep working on a bigger version.

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bobbiechen a day ago | parent [-]

I liked the concept! Some thoughts from me:

1. The game was fairly fetch quest-y but I think even the fetch quest format could be interesting with more storytelling around the instruments/people involved.

2. The rhythm game part was fine and straightforward but would get repetitive fast. I have like a million hours on Crypt of the Necrodancer though, which has lots of novelty in it.

3. It could also be interesting to do something like Terry Rileys's "In C" (or perhaps more interactively "In Bb" https://www.inbflat.net/ ), have you considered it? Though I did like hearing some of the parts line up together too.

	▲	BSTRhino 20 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Thanks for your comment! Yes this whole thing is tricky because I kind of do want to make the unapologetically difficult version but then I am worried it will be too hard for most people to play, but then the people who do stick with it and make it through might find it even more satisfying. So it's a tricky one! I hadn't heard of Terry Riley until just then but yes, that is very much in line with what I was going for! There's something just fascinating in itself about hearing individual lines of music come together, it's a reward in itself, and it does feel like someone should be able to make a game around it.

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pimlottc a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Looks fun. Text is pretty tiny on mobile (iOS), though.

	▲	BSTRhino a day ago \| parent [-]
		Oh thank you! That's good feedback thank you. Yes it's always a delicate balance of how much to zoom the text on mobile so it doesn't completely cover the screen and stop you from doing everything else.

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pbronez a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Tried on iOS Safari. Didn’t hear the guitar. Couldn’t reach another screen after picking up the guitar and reading the placard

	▲	BSTRhino a day ago \| parent [-]
		Oh, thank you for telling me! I think if your phone is in silent mode it just blocks WebAudio and the website can't override that. I'll have to figure out what it stopping you from advancing on your phone though. I have managed to complete the game on my iPhone 12 Mini, but it is definitely not as easy as with a mouse.