Reviews for TREBL

[birkenstock]

Love it!

I know the game is a work in progress, I've been playing it for a couple days now and seen u make a lot of changes, but keep it up!

So far, I really like it - reminds me of tap tap revolution on steroids: it's almost as hard as playing piano for real, lol!

The easy modes are nice, should be good enough to play even if you don't play an instrument IRL.

I know there are still bugs though, like i kept losing my chain on the 'golden lights' song for no reason.

So far, I really like it! Keep adding more music, maybe something like some quiet just piano pieces, make it a real Piano Hero game!

bigdumbgames responds:

Thank you!

Nice of you to show up and do pretty well on the hard modes even after I spent all that time making easy modes! ><

No, but seriously, glad you liked it! I took a look into that issue on "The Slow Dance of Golden Lights," and it turns out that I made a mistake while converting it to the new middle-difficulty mode, so there were hidden notes causing you to lose your chain. The issue will be fixed shortly!

And yep, I'm in the process of researching more music! I'm trying some new avenues this time, hopefully I'll be able to grab some more that you like!

[carnivoracious]

TROUBL?

First of all, this is great! Don't let any of the criticism dissuade you from continuing to make games (or improvements to this concept).

However, there are some improvements to be made. First, you guessed it, number of keys. Eight sounds like a good number to me, at least for easy mode. I would also suggest moving the keys to the home row (asdf = left hand, jkl; = right). It just feels more comfortable to me (I'm sure others agree). Maybe even an interactive tutorial would help the learning curve a bit.

Song selection is going to be the other barrier between you and your audience. While I liked all the songs in the game, other players are going to be more discerning (read: picky). Personally, I'd make this game into a "Piano Hero" of sorts (as opposed to that popular rock guitar game) Theme the game with songs played on piano, organ, keyboards/synthesizer, or even accordeon.

I'm sure others have suggested artists to include, but keeping the above theme in mind here are some artists I'd like to suggest; Jerry Lee Lewis, Ben Folds, The Dresden Dolls, The Doors, Cat Power, Daft Punk, The Fiery Furnaces, Queen, Radiohead. Just to name a few XD. Really, all these artists play piano/synth and are fairly well known. Obviously all that is just a suggestion. If you want to take the game another direction obviously it's yours so... I just thought it'd be cool.

Finally, the in game backgrounds are a bit, umm... bland. Though I suppose they work well enough for the purpose (separating the notes from the background) the same could be accomplished with borders around the notes, freeing you to pursue more interesting backgrounds (nothing too busy though! The notes are complex enough!)

Whew! Sorry that was a bit long winded. Keep it up! I look foreward to seeing something outstanding from you soon. Just don't let people that say stuff like, "FAIL, dis is teh SUXORZ!!1" get you down.

Carni

bigdumbgames responds:

Hahah, no worries, I tend to get long-winded myself!

Yep - I'm pretty much convinced that I need to reduce the number of keys: at least for easy mode. Hopefully, I can run through and make that change in the next 48 hours or so, before my next check-in. If not, I should definitely have the time to do it before my capstone deadline (just 8 days away!).

I do have an option to use the ASDF home row instead of the number keys, and that's what I personally use. The little "ticks" on F and J make a world of difference when trying to navigate complicated melodies. I might end up making this the default option.

An interactive tutorial would be much better than the (already outdated) video I have on there: and I think I know just the way to handle it, too!

And yep, song selection is gonna be a bit tricky. To be quite honest though, right now, I'm just taking whatever I can actually find and license. I've had some people gracious enough to contact me through Gamedev.net and submit their work (Including Strike911 and Colorpulse), but pretty much everything else is the result of digging around for free, CC-SA-BY licensed music, which leaves me with somewhat slim pickings.

With any luck, if the game gets a little more popular, I may have more artists to choose from, allowing me to be as picky as my audience! I would -love- to have more Ben Folds / Daft Punk / Coldplay style songs in my selection - that's definitely the genre this seems best suited for. :D

And yep, the backgrounds are, indeed, a little bland. That's something I need to seriously revise, probably in TR2BL (omigod see wut i did there?).

[Fulgore-X]

...

just a music game clone but 1st the music is gay 2nd to many buttons to press

[vundevah]

Eh.

Don't get me wrong, it's a good game, and I do like it a lot- it's just, there's a lot of stuff that's not so fun in it. Some of the songs were a bit too long- The trick to music games is to have fun, short songs that are catchy and can keep peoples attention. Also, it was a bit confusing with so many keys to press, and the fact that you could get your score really high on the easy parts and then let everything else slip yet still get a good score.
Overall, good game. Keep trying!

bigdumbgames responds:

Thank you for the feedback. :D

Yeah, one of the things I found myself struggling with during development was song length: I was sort of torn between leaving songs at full length and using abridged versions. I ended up aiming for about the 3-minute mark, and I did make some cuts. Perhaps I should have made some more. ;D

I have been getting a lot of comments that having so many keys is too confusing. I'm thinking about chopping down the number of keys used for Easy mode to 8, or maybe even just 6.

Either way, I'm glad you liked the game overall. For my first game, I'm pretty happy with it, too. :D

[Trechix]

A wonderful game

A great, entertaining game I thought it was. I would just like the graphics to be a bit sharper (in play) and it seems like it takes too long to load everything. I mean, I am able to play it but when I get to the actual play screen, it takes and immense time to load can adjust and sometimes just freezes! Other than those minor issues, I'd say it was pretty awesome. You know you just get me on Guitar Hero and Rock Band type games, but you executed it pretty well. Keep it up! :D

bigdumbgames responds:

Thank you for the feedback!

I believe I've fixed a couple of networking issues that were preventing background textures from loading, which left the in-game graphics looking pretty bland, indeed!

As for loading times, that's pretty much up to your connection and my server quality. There's a pretty decent chance I'll need to upgrade my servers if this gets popular, those MP3s take up a ton of bandwidth!