A Knight of Music by Danny88881
Made by Danny88881 for Ludum Dare 41
You play as Mr. Knighty Knight, fighting to the rhythm of the music. Playing too early will cause you to take damage, you do not have to play every single note. You can press the space bar to activate a combo attack; during the combo attack, instead of attacking you build your notes towards a combo meter, the higher the combo, the higher the damage. During the combo attack if you miss a note or play too early you will take damage. Follow Mr. Knighty Knight on his amazing journey!
Timelapse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MTxdTxqSLg
Things Used - Godot 3.0 Open Source Game Engine (Programming) - Graphics Gale (Sprites) - Microsoft Paint (Gamephotos) - Photoshop (TileSet and Map) - Bfxr (SFX) - Beep Box (Music)
Hotfix history - you can get past tutorial now!
Ratings
| Overall | 216th | 3.59⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 422th | 3.154⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 178th | 3.679⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 104th | 4.077⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 81th | 3.987⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 48th | 3.821⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 309th | 2.736⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 238th | 3.27⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 27🗳️ | 29🗨️ |
After I reached the end of the tutorial, though, the screen went white and I could jump, but nothing ever faded back in? (I played the mac build link, online without downloading it.)
It should work now!
Keep coding :)
Congratulations for the game!
Anyway, congratulations on the game!
I really liked the implementation of the rhythm system with the attacking. It was better than other mashups with rhythm the rhythm genre. It would have been helpful to have a different visual cue though, closer to the character, maybe above his head or something so you could see how close an enemy is to you when you are getting ready to attack.
@fenwick Sorry about that, I didn't make it clear in the game but the longer the combo is, the exponentially higher the damage you do is. Around a 10 combo should do it for a normal door.
I also take issue with the rhythm part of the game. The songs you have should have a very clear and deliberate beat, typically with just straight quarter notes in the base line. This way, the player gets a good grasp for what the beat is and can play in time. Speaking of time, I noticed one of your songs plays in 3/4. You really should keep your songs in 4/4, common time, so the player has an easier time keeping time. Being a musician myself, I find that counting the beats in a measure to be extremely helpful in keeping the beat, and I'm sure most people who enjoy anything rhythmic do, too. Also, your songs feel entirely too slow. I get that having slower songs in the beginning level and slowly increasing the tempo is a way to establish a difficulty curve, but your songs should still start with a higher BPM. Keeping time with a high tempo may be difficult, but keeping time with a very slow tempo can be worse. Lastly, your rhythm bar, to be frank, is poor. The rhythms are generated randomly, often with large gaps between notes and some sections that suddenly throw a ton of notes at you at once. Your notes should come at a steady pace, and should try to follow the song.
Taking all these criticisms into consideration, I'm sure this game could be really great!
The game need some tweaks to get his true potential, like getting Combo working, and maybe put a letter in the circles, because it's a bit hard to follow like this ^^ Well done

To make five tracks within 48 hours, atop also doing the other aspects of the game, is very impressive. I like how the tracks did sound different from each other, but still had a similar sound design connecting them. I do agree with BeamKirby in that while the tracks are good, they're not really fitting for a rhythm game. You don't necessarily have to make tracks that are 4/4 but the rhythm patterns did feel quite counter-intuitive and did not match any beat within the audio at all. I think you can totally keep the chiptune sounds, but have more focus on the drums and allowing the rhythm based portion of the game match those drums.
The art style was nice, and I liked that you had an in-game tutorial, as well as an overworld map. Those were great touches that I don't see in a lot of compo games in LD. You've tapped into an interesting concept, though I think the focus needs to be on reworking the rhythm game aspect and figuring out how to blend the two genres together more seamlessly without it feeling like the player has to juggle two completely different games. Keep on keeping on. :wink:
The music is very good too. It took me a while to understand how it works, but then I was able to play the game well. Great job :smiley:
Take a look on my game (is a pixel art too :smile: ): https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/vector-rabbits-slayer
Good job!
I hope I get to play an updated version of this in the future!
(also, thanks for playing and rating/commenting on our game!)
But the native version works fine!
Great game. I love the sprites. Balancing the rhythm gameplay with the platforming feels pretty nice, but I wish the UI for the rhythm part was closer to the knight so I don't have to take my eyes off the action.
The jumping feels like it's missing delta time calculations. Another comment said that they couldn't jump high enough, but when I jump it nearly puts me into orbit.
Graphics and music are simple but it works. You found time for tutorial and a map : nice job !
https://youtu.be/eE9DkHUc4cU
Lastly, and this isn't really a critique in any way, but nice use of Mort's pixel art tutorials, your overworld map looked great! ;)
The on-screen tutorial could be improved (perhaps with icons and with a less clear source, to counteract with the background; it also depends on the sensations you want to convey).
The phases increase in difficulty (in terms of how the ground, number and position of enemies), this in itself seems sufficient; however, to what I noticed, there is the added difficulty when the character has to do the combos. As I see it as a suggestion, I would say that the difficulty of doing the combos should be applied only while advancing within the same sequence of combos and not in advancing the phases (because it is difficult to hit the buttons all the time).
Suggestions...
I would say that continuing the project was very interesting.
I do not know if it would fit here, but items (equipment, powerups, coins etc) and character progression can be cool.
Then I'd say the font of the tutorial text is a bit hard to read.
I'm stuck at the start of the 1st non-tutorial level because it's not possible to jump the gap.
All in all I'd say the mechanics are too punishing, you don't have a nice margin of error right from the start with this "either make damage or take gamage" approach.
The music and the graphics and Mr Nighty Night are all very cute and adorable but the gameplay could be better polished IMO..
Anyhow, it's original nonetheless, good work :-)
I also was a little down because the rhytm didn't match the music, but it's a jam game, I ask for too much !
Because, in the other hand : the idea is great, pretty well implemented (maybe the block who need 10 combo, could have a visual hint to understand that, cause it was a little unsure how to break it...) and the polish on some feature was awesome !