Puzzle game prototype, for your perusal.

[techbear]

I spent the weekend developing a proof-of-concept for a puzzle game Idea I had. Now I'd love some feedback about it.

The game asks you to harmonize multiple music tones, by dragging a ball near one or more electrodes.

screenshot: http://www.exegame.com/screen1.jpg

download (300k): http://www.exegame.com/harmony.zip

Requires DX8 (and sound, of course).

Thanks for the feedback!

[Diodor Bitan]

The sound is brilliant. I played through 9 levels but I didn't really understand why do I win or not win and what am I supposed to do. My playing method is to move balls basically at random, hoping to win.

[Tom Cain]

Neat. :) I believe I understood how to win, but there two issues that were immediately obvious to me that may be easily solved. And let me preface my comments by saying that I realize that this is a proof-of-concept piece and as such I think you succeeded.

First, are you defining the win state "harmony" as a major chord? It sounded that way to me. The instructional text indicated "Balance the tones", which does not necessarily mean a major chord. I will admit, however, that most western people would consider a major chord to be the most "harmonious". Maybe this is something to think about as you develop the idea more. For people with musical training, you could also have the target chords for advanced puzzles be other types, such as minor and seventh chords.

Next, the feedback mechanism is pretty good, but it seems to be missing a part. I could always tell that I had a note wrong, but I could not tell which color beam represented the note I needed to change. Thus, it became a random guess as to where to move the ball. If I could have clicked an electrode to mute it, I could have singled out which note (color beam) needed tweaking. Better yet, if clicking an electrode cycled between mute, 50% volume, and 100% volume for that one electrode, I think I would have had an even better system to pick out the wrong note.

I hope this helps some. I think it is a neat idea.

[tolik]

New Sveerz and Rez! Neat :)
I love the game, I'll have more comments later.

PS You should put a warning about the level of sound the game is going to produce, I put my headphones and didn't expect so sudden WEEEE!

[Diodor Bitan]

Oh, it's really a musical game, not geometrical :p That explains it :)

[Rainer Deyke]

The "harmonized" chords didn't really sound any more harmonic than the non-harmonized chords, so I had to rely on the green bar. The game is very frustrating if you rely on the green bar, since you don't know which ball you have to move in which direction.