Mel's Bells

Wow I'm bad at inverting tones! Neat idea!

Great game! I like the difficulty of tone matching without visuals, but might be more fun to introduce the buttons one at a time to learn the sounds and then ramp up the difficulty.

I like the mechanic. I wasn't great at matching tones so I sort of smashed my way through. I really like monster designs. I wish I could have defeated them a little more quickly. Bell done!

Wow this is a really fun idea. I wasn't able to beat it, but I got a lot better by the end. For some reason I had a really hard time differentiating the middle and high notes, but that's probably just my lack of musicality. I appreciate that you couldn't really 'die' you just had to keep going around the loop if you didn't have enough mana. Nice job!

@rhoff95 Yeah, I'd wanted to have a tutorial sequence but didn't have time. I could have had each bell stored in a different building so that you'd unlock them separately after first fighting through weaker enemies.

@nick-rafalski I'm way too bad at this game to get anywhere if I could die. :blush:

@neonjeff @mohdi Thanks!

That got difficult fast. I thought that I had the hang of it when I started breezing through zombies, then got demolished by inverted + reversed land. Matching the tones was a fun mechanic that I got the hang of quite quickly, and the background music was perfectly low key to not distract form the bell tones. The voiceover at the beginning made me laugh. Overall very well done!

Very interesting mixing Genius with this theme. Everything here, principally the graphics, give the sensation of a flash era game. The dificulty with sounds can be frustrating tho.

OMG I loved this so much. I timed it and I spent about 25min on it.

* I loved the style and the gameplay mechanic
* I'm really happy you didnt punish us by starting us over because I absolutely would have quit and was about to the second time I failed on the boss.
* I really liked it though and kept going
* The zombies gameplay I loved and could memorize way longer patterns for later levels and would love doing it
* The ghosts were straightforwardly tricky,
* The bats were messing with my brain (I understand it 100% logically but in the heat of gameplay it was really difficulty)
* I never got the hang of the boss just kept getting one hit in and dying and finally winning!

For the record, personally, I dont want a visual mode. that would just distract me, of course as an option that would be totally fine (I would turn it off though). I love finding games that are perfect size for a jam and still have lots of potential to make into a fuller game. Thinking ahead to a full game I would want/need more time spent on easier enemies and a more gradual learning curve building to the difficulty of the boss.

​Finally if the buzzer when you get a wrong was different either quieter or a little click instead of a tone (or maybe just visual) I would have had more fun and success with the game especially the bats and the boss, but as it is when I made a mistake the error sound wiped out all of the notes in my head and I didnt stand a chance of recovering.

What fun. Thank you so much for making this.

Oh this is a great game. It is challenging and very fun to play, I like the concept of using sounds instead of visuals to do a memory/reaction game. It is a great core gameplay loop. Once I encountered the special monsters and bosses, I got wreaked because I can't for the life of me think in reverse, lol. Also, the art reminded me of the old school PC games. Anyway, great work!

Nice take on the 'memorize the pattern' genre. It's really cool that different types of enemies require different handling. Nice to spice things up.

God I love this idea so muchhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!! Seriously I was surprised how actually fun it was. Having to invert AND reverse the notes in your head and actually doing it right feels amazing. I actually beat the boss in my second attempt through the loop.

Have to agree with above. Hard but really fun :) Well executed!

It is hard enough but good idea. The music sounds like a little scratchy but not related with soundset.

It's a good idea. Maybe I'm tone deaf or not feeling the rhythm but I didn't enjoy the game. It's not bad, just not for me. Maybe if there was a beat or the bell patterns matched with the background music I would be on board. Nonetheless it's a solid entry. Good work.

Good idea. When one has to reverse and invert it becomes quite mind blowing! I liked it.

Way too hard for me, I must be tone deaf :). great concept though.

Great game, had an amazing time playing it! Definitely suck at inverting the tones in the time limit though. :smile: Good job!

That's a nice concept, I like the idea of using sound as an attack mechanic. It was maybe a bit easy and repetitive in the beginning but overall I liked the game. Good job!

My musical senses are terrible so the inverting was veeeery difficult. But the style is great and I love the literal looping you do with it. One potential note is to just introduce the sounds before you start using them so the player has an idea of which one is which. It probably wouldn't help someone with my lack of musical skills but it would help others.

I enjoyed getting some musical ear training in this game. I wish I got some points, or some progression. I know the theme is being stuck in a loop. But does that mean I have to not be rewarded for my efforts? The idea of being literally in a loop, did actually work a bit towards the sense of everything being repetitive but in a more interesting way than just a simple line that never ends. With that said, I expected something to happen when I got back down to the bottom. I did enjoy this game, and the music, while annoying, it did get me hyped and in the mood to kill zombies. Maybe consider less treble effects, and a bit more melodic and harmonic tones in between the vibe setting tension parts of the music to give the ear some rest from the tension. Thank you for the game!

@ubershmekel There is progression -- it's the process of filling your mana. As your mana gets higher, you do more damage with every success, eventually reaching the point where you start one-shotting the enemies. Once your mana bar is completely full, you get to do the boss battle and take a stab at winning the game and seeing the victory animation. Maybe this would have been more obvious if I put the mana bar across the top of the screen instead of next to the character.

I agree about the music. I'm okay at doing bare melodies, but I'm still wrapping my head around chords and how different parts of a song interact with each other. Need to practice more so I can build up intuition.

Nice idea. It felt like I was communicating with aliens. hehe Good Job

Brilliant little game that is more than the sum of its parts. My brain melted trying to identify and transform the different sequences. Made it to the boss once but couldn't defeat it. The retro graphics and sounds did the job of making this feel like a complete package. I especially liked the visual feedback on "levelling up" as you defeated enemies. As others have pointed out, some kind of difficulty progression would be a good next step.

I haven't played any game at all that used sound the way you do. This is awesome!! Great job.