Drum`n`Ice by LDJam user 426774
— GAME VERSIONS —
Up to date there are 2 versions of the game: 1. Jam version - you can play it on Ludum Dare website, before the description, and there is a link to itch down below; 2. Post jam version - link to itch below description;
Both updates have there distinctive names in links and game name.
— SYNOPSIS —
Deep within the glacial mountains, towers the fabled Party Peak—a realm of endless beats, where gods come to rave.
— HOW TO PLAY —
This is a rhythm game!
Spellbook: Study your spellbook on the left and choose which spell you want to cast next. Important: You cannot use the same spell twice in a row.
Each battle takes place in several phases:
Preparation — Feel the beat and get ready for combat!
Player Turn — Perform one of your 4 spells.
Enemy Turn — The more beats you miss, the more damage you take from the Walrus Guardians. Stay on rhythm!
Controls:
move - G
Drum 1 - Q Drum 2 - W Drum 3 - E Drum 4 - R
Fire - ↑ Wind - ↓ River - → Stone - ←
— STORY —
Victoria, a penguin shaman and master of the Sacred Rhythms, senses a powerful and unsettling pulse. A strange beat runs through the mountain’s atmosphere, echoing all the way down to its roots. Snow, snow, snow...
Play as a shaman and create rhythms to unleash powerful spells!
Use the elements to defeat the guardians of the mountain.
As you wander the streets, collect walrus tusks — your currency. Spend them on duct tape to repair your drums, or buy even more destructive spells.
— GAMEPLAY —
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFCINUvf6mc

| ITCH (Post jam version) | https://venomousmouse.itch.io/drum-n-ice-postjamupdate |
| ITCH (Jam version) | https://venomousmouse.itch.io/drum-n-ice-jamversion |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/drumnice |
Ratings
| Overall | 482th | 3.5⭐ | 174🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 411th | 3.39⭐ | 174🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 342th | 3.5⭐ | 173🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 694th | 3.032⭐ | 174🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 480th | 3.652⭐ | 173🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 247th | 3.705⭐ | 173🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 226th | 3.365⭐ | 165🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 499th | 3.512⭐ | 169🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 451🗳️ | 633🗨️ |
Try a different browser.
Also in the description, under the "Story" block, there is a link to itch
We'll be releasing the game archive for download in a couple of hours.
Sincerely, the developer.
P.S. It works for me in Mozilla Firefox, so you may want to try that browser.
Loved it !
The beat is cool but the beats could have been more in sync or more prononced with the rest of the game but I know it rather difficult to do it properly ;) !
Great interpretation of the signal theme otherwise. I like the progression system!
Unusual graphics and cool voice acting.
I think it lacks a signal for when exactly the player should attack.
Overall, it's fun to play for a certain amount of time.
The music, the art, the voice acting, remind me of the Crash Bandicoot series.
In other words, there's a lot of quality involved.
PS: I had to play the PC version - ZIP because on both sites, here and on Itch.io, there's a problem with FullScreen (and without fullscreen I couldn't read any of the text and game commands).
Fortunately, the Windows executable version works perfectly.
Again, great game, great visuals and good mechanics.
Here's some feedback:
Really cool that you marked the last used spell, without that it would be a hell.
I noticed that upgrades stay after death and I guess it wasn't supposed to work like this.
In my opinion boss could've been a bit more challanging.
As someone mentioned before, it would work better if you used a song with the same meter as the number of elements in a spell (or at least a multiplier of it). That way. the first key the player presses in a spell would always land on a strong beat. It would allow the player to time the start of ther turn just by listening to music, without focusing on the indicator (which I found anoying because I would rather look at spell inputs).
As others said it would also benefit from some additional indicator that it is players turn now.
Overall I think this is a really strong prototype with a fun mechanic and a big potential for expansion.
Also, I was getting really flustrated because the beat was really off, but then I realised I've been using wireless heaphones that got a pretty noticible delay xd Played without them and turns out everything was on beat xd
If you could add 1–2 bars of pause between the player's attacks and the enemies' attacks (as a preparation before each new enemy), it would be absolutely fire!
The style is unusual and that makes your game really stand out :sunglasses:
I found your game quite hard and wasn't able to get too far. But I love the mechanic of integrating the upgrades as additional inputs to your spells!
I really liked the low poly aesthetic and the funny kind of not so serious setup of it all and the combination could also really land really well imo!
The big issue for me was: I only had to look at the spell list and couldnt look at the metronome/beat preview thingy in the nmiddle and it wasnt even synced for me, I had to click whenever I was in between these blue parts to get it working but it felt quite off and it was really frustrating to get a mistake in the beginning because there was no indicator apart from the one red key and no indicator that I was not allowed to still try and get the rest of the spell done. Due to that I often sat there missing things and not knowing when the beat was actually on sync and I got one run where I even got past the first right turn where it goes up a bit but I died there then.
I liked the Idea of buying other spells but maybe one should only start with one easy spell and small damage to begin with and get bigger more damage spells with more inputs later on because right now it was a no brainer to just buy the 12 damage spell from what I could figure out because I just had to input other keys but not more ore anything which made that spell just as easy to input as a 6 damage spell and by that made the other spells useless (except for if the elements did anything like more damage to certain enemy types, but I didnt figure out that there was such a system!)
Cool idea and a nice humorous take I think! A bit more polish and this could already be really goo imo! :3
I like the style and simplicity of the art.
I bet it was hard to make a rythm game, but it feels good, when you undertand what to do(maybe a little explanation would be nice)
The concept is not new, but you summed up few ideas into a very nice game. Great job!
The music and the beat was nice, but it didn't match the gameplay quite right, it always felt a little off.
Majority of the text was really hard to read.
It was pretty easy to mess up spells when I was thinking I was doing it to the beat. I also wished the spell legend was in the middle instead of in a corner.
Got to the boss, but couldn't get a single spell off and lost.
This may had worked if weaker elements were like 2 or 3 keys, but 5 even for a basic spell is insane. On top of that q, w, e, r are such odd keys. For something like this it may have been far easier if you did something like WASD or Arrow keys, there are 4 drums so that would work perfectly! It does feel very nice when I hit the string of 5 it just doesn't feel too beginner friendly.
Overall, this has potential to be a great game but the design of just throwing me in, and everything I mentioned is holding the game back. This could really be fleshed into a great game if taken the proper steps!
We have to wait waaaaay too much time between each attack IMO.
The button mashing doesn't work really well with the music beat.
Having an azerty keyboard for sure did not help !
Really nice dubbing at the beginning, though !
Checked out your game and I like rythm games, so a cool take. I like the grungey graphics punchy vibe. Didn't realy manage to do one attack, so I guess I need to practce. I think the timings for the buttonpresses could be a bit more forgiving, And it's a lot of information on screen to take in at first, kind of being thrown into the battle ^^
Cool Walrus man!
Is the music sync'd up with the beat? I have had to manually make my hum my own metronome to the pips popping up in order to land attacks, I think the music may be out of sync adding to difficulty? That got a little frustrating.
Overall cool project. Great job :)
- The game is cool; it’s a really creative take on the theme
- The rythm works well, and I know how hard it can be to get that right!
- I think there needs to be more feedback from the drums (and the same goes for signaling when it’s your turn)
- I had a hard time playing at first because of my azerty keyboard layout; changing the key bindings would really be a must-have for a post-jam version ;)
Overall, it’s a great game; the foundation is clearly there to keep polishing it :)
I haven´t seen many rhythm games in LD, it´s a great choice! I only wish I could upgrade the spells instead of changing them for stronger ones (by the end of the playtrough, I had 2 same spells I couldnt use in sequence).
Great job, hope I´ll see you next time again! :slight_smile:
Anyway I enjoyed myself here, although it did crash twice at the shop (the option to press 'g' to continue never showed up'
I died several times(
It wasn't until the late game that I realized how spells worked.
Also, I would suggest adding the ability to change keybinds, cause it's a bit hard to press Q/W/E/R after the arrow keys on a 60% keyboard, but other than that - great job!
The sound are great and the vibe. I struggled ALOT to get the timing correct, and felt the difficulty was due to input challenges: similarily as coyote time is for platformers, maybe something would be wanted here to give a small wiggle room for player.
i felt the different spells were not balanced; one did 10dmg while some did 3 dmg in the beginning. This gave the feeling I only want to play the strong spell. This got better after shop tho!
It would be cool if there was more strategy to your actions, for example different enemies can have different elemental weaknesses or some moves can protect you from enemy attacks.
I also liked how you actually created a full other element of game around it with the upgrades!
The timing felt very strict to me.
I also made a kind of rhythm bullet hell game, I’d be happy if you check it out :)
I wish you to get a win!
A few thoughts if you keep iterating:
* Turn signaling. Hard to tell when it's my turn vs. the enemy's. A quick visual or audio cue before each player phase would help a lot.
* Beat feel. (as others have said) Music and beat indicators felt slightly off to me.
* Rebindable keys would make it much more accessible.
* Difficulty ramp. A tutorial enemy or slower starting tempo would ease players in.
I'd like more responsiveness when dealing damage to walruses (it's unclear whether damage has been dealt), and also more clear indication of who is about to attack or is currently attacking, since it's only differentiated by text. Perhaps at the end of a walrus attack, you could display "Get ready, 3 2 1, Attack!". Perhaps this hint would also help the player's first hit land with a strong note.
--

Have a hard time at first, and I try to sync with the music, but it seems that the bits are slightly different.
I liked the setting button in the main menu :laughing:, but a sound/music setting could be good.
The game is good, good job!
The only big piece of feedback I have is that I think it would've been nice if you had to push 4 buttons per "spell", not 5. I'm pretty sure the music is in 4/4, and if it could've lined up more cleanly with that, it probably would've felt a lot better synced up.
But the graphics, the music, the gameplay, I enjoyed it all! Great work you guys!
Thank you all so much for playing our game and for all your comments and support!
I'm glad to announce that we made a post-jam patch based on all your comments. Now we have tutorial, full settings to change ur keybindings, upgraded rythm engine and much more.
You can play the post jam version on itch using this link:
https://venomousmouse.itch.io/drum-n-ice-postjamupdate
## Great thanks to all of you:
@pastmoments, @rinzu, @yanruyi, @weirdbitgames, @anku, @pastry-chef, @mamboman, @liomio, @remy-lopez, @flowerfield-games, @nikaz, @oxnh, @dmitriyci, @bigdippers, @mortith, @accelerate0814, @eden-zorro, @oeuegha, @anaastaska, @hexstart, @nicardo, @rainot, @verttixpertti, @karenchik, @nathanial, @joegreen, @purrseus, @stealthorc, @denikk, @andrian, @grimslinger, @bambutcher, @maitrerenard, @myezko, @greedy-merchant, @haln, @indiepanda, @j4cko16, @johncoffee, @tyrannas, @kulfy, @zwi-zausch, @link270, @ursagames, @yuriscat, @nyxkn, @matt2728, @psevdonim, @eseniia-no, @erilhir, @fifut, @franklyn01, @xaklor, @mcbaker, @nadan, @alex-de-la-cour, @martinfernandezgd, @custodi, @frozenfire92, @fadingdreamstories, @pokeydem, @zamizmi, @woona, @bumble, @recursor, @grummelchen, @caelestial, @echo-team, @hordorsok, @timo5034, @noneegy, @dywanix, @fassenberg, @bigfatgua, @abiral, @sovande8, @jpat, @lastuck, @pipetto, @exteegi, @catanus, @panduplan, @loki-drams, @zathnic, @jungledorf, @chaseplays, @garyglhf, @turbolaser, @darizz, @itero-proto, @nothingjustaworld, @avi, @thomas-gelman.
Like some other people already mentioned, I also found it a bit too difficult to know when I had to press. I felt that it was easier in the post-jam version, but I played it after the jam-version, so maybe I was just getting more used to it. Very nice that you listened to the feedback and added rebindable keys.
The character sprites look good and I also like the scenery you chose. The implementation of the power-ups is a good addition.
Great job.
I found myself struggling to pick up the rhythm while trying to memorize the combos, which made me look back and forth between the combo board and the rhythm indicator in the middle of the screen.
The music and graphics are awesome tho and voice acting in Ludum Dare is always a plus! Great work guys!
I think what is missing is some sort of feedback "too early" or "too late" with visual and sound cues. I am trying to hit the butone to the beat but If I miss i am not sure why. Sometimes I manage and sometimes i dont and I don't know how to improve.
Another benifit of this is that it lets the player automatically adjust for things like input lag etc.
If you incorporate more feedback, i would love to come back and try again :)
I think the style is great and the idea is fun, from form a gameplay perspective and also the story/motivation
Overall, great entry, with an impressive amount to it, good job!

Besides, the seal design is so cute, hahaha.
Definitely a thumbs-up!
Thanks for the wonderful game!
Graphics were cute, the music and sound effects fit well. Overall, really solid entry!