Hello!!!

Rhythm-Ta [demo ver] is now available to play :) Thank you for checking it out ~~ ♫♪ 

This is currently a prototype (or technically in development in terms of itchio definitions),  so there are a few bugs and missing levels, which will be addressed in the next patch. But here are a few things I'd like to mention as to me they are important to take into consideration when playing:

• The way I sync'd the gameplay with audio is not optimal at all and is the first thing I plan to tackle for the next patch
  • This is due to me just lacking the experience of creating a game in unity (this is my first game, heyooooo). There are a lot of resources online that help address this main fundamental for creating a rhythm game, but at the time, I was overwhelmed because I didn't know what I was reading LOL
  • So my plan was: first, build it the way I can, which is manually. And then after the prototype, fix it with the proper way
  • Now that the incubator program is over, I can confidently say I understand the formula much more now, and since I have no pressure of a deadline, I can implement it for sure!
  • What this means is- you may experience some audio desyncs due to lag (aka, notes not lined up correctly with the sound of the metronome)
    • This is especially evident in the final lesson (#5) when you finish the level and then press "Try Again"
      • Which means the way to correct it is to leave the level, go to "Lesson Menu", and reload to level again 
        • Still investigating why this is the case, because it's not for the other levels (at least when I tested it myself). I feel like it might be related to the audio itself- it's the only one out of all the current levels that is the longest.

• The current lessons do not guarantee a nice onboarding in terms of difficulty
  • What I mean about this is that the levels go to 0 to 100 real quick in terms of difficulty lmao 
  • Due to a deadline for the showcase, my thought process was this:
    • Create 1 level each of the notes I wanted to show (quarter note, eighth note, sixteenth, and triplets)
    • And one last level that combines them all, which is supposed to represent the main gameplay of the game
  • Since I manually included and adjusted each note, it took up a lot of time. But I plan on including levels that address difficulty and ensure a more seamless transition. (But in the meantime, the point of all the levels is to play them multiple times and practice!)
  • I also may include a very quick tutorial in the beginning, but I'm still unsure if that's completely necessary or not.

• The browser version of the game is not optimized either for various screen sizes
  • There are some inconsistencies depending on the screen size you're using. The gameplay itself is adjusted well no matter the size, but the other scenes aren't. I didn't really pay much attention to these while building the game, so I'll have this fixed for the next patch.
  • The browser version was a very last minute decision that came up while I was building the itch.io page. It's meant to be downloadable only, but knowing me who would rather just play if it's available on the page, I figured to create a package for it. It seemed easy enough via unity since I just needed to switch platforms. 
  • Anyways either way please play full screen for best experience :)

Personally, I feel like the difficulty and balance of the game will be a continuous topic for as long as this game lives. Mainly because I come from the profile of having a tremendous amount of musical experience and rhythm games. During the showcase, a lot of people struggled in levels that I felt were beginner-friendly enough, but it could be multiple factors that affect that such as:

• How to play not clear enough
• Lack of rhythm-sense and experience
• Hard time adjusting to UI of the gameplay

(and that's why playtesting is important :'D )

I've also come to realize that rhythm and teaching music is hard. Well, it's not that it's hard...it just takes time. Meaning I can't expect players to do well in this game right from the get go if they have no former rhythm training. (Hopefully playing this game makes it a little bit interesting and accessible????)

Two more feedbacks that were received that I would like to mention:

In regards to the feedback of including actual songs:

• I've considered this for later later levels, like classical pieces. But I want to keep the metronome beat audio only as this is the most fundamental way of learning rhythms. Maybe I can do different sounds, but I'd like to know if the reason behind this is due to metronome being boring (*cues me in practice rooms with nothing but metronome lol*), if it's easier to internalize rhythms with songs, or if it's from an already learned behaviour from other games such as Guitar Hero, Rhythm Heaven, and Osu.

Lastly, in regards to why the UI/UX is topline = right hand, bottom light = left hand:

• This is to recreate the experience of reading music sheet for piano. It probably makes sense for others if the hands were switched (ie, left hand topline, right hand bottom line) because that is how you would see it if you turn your head 90 degrees to the right... But the intent is to have this game somewhat translate into real world music reading. But who knows, maybe at its current state, it doesn't achieve that objective. I can go more into this in the next devlog where I discuss why I even created this game in the first place (if it interests others)

On a side note- I am extremely proud of the main theme song that you hear in the main menu. It's my first time composing something and creating it in Reaper and I reaaaalllllly enjoyed the process that I want to continue experimenting with it! 

That's all for now, again, thanks for checking out my game, I'm a little shy because it's not optimal and I can go on about things I want to fix, but at the end of the day I'm happy that I finally created something I've always wanted to create :) it's a first step!

Till next time,
♪ KDL ♪