Took me embarassingly long to realise the bottom graphs also tell me what amplitude and freq should I set. The graphics were cool!

It took me a second to understand what I needed to do at the first puzzle, but once I got the trick it was really cool! great interpretation of the theme!

@head-priestess-ari fair lol originally I didn't have the reference ones on the bottom and it WAS hard. It also didn't snap the dials to discrete values and in testing I randomized the targets and it sometimes took me like 20+ minutes just to get out of the room. So if could have been even harder! I love the idea though so I'm going to keep messing with it after the jam tl see if I can find a balance of challenging to satisfying

Perhaps my brain is too small or tired after the jam, but man I had a lot of trouble getting the signal to match x_x

Nice concept and thanks for sharing! I can see that I would enjoy the signal matching bit if it were tightened up but 2 things got in the way:

1. Mixing mouse and keyboard for input meant I kept forgetting and making mistakes (thinking I was changing things with the mouse when I wasn't).
2. It wasn't completely clear to me what I was adjusting with each dial. Several of them (primary and secondary frequency) I kept mixing up.

@snowdrama Yea, I did the first one without noticing the ones at the bottom and it took me WAY too long. After I figured out the bottom ones, the rest was a bit too easy for a change. Maybe 3 dials would work ideally?

Hello fellow waveform enjoyer. The platforming and puzzle interface felt very smooth and polished to me. The camera transitions from room-to-room in particular.

There was a small visual bug when moving around sometimes, a tiny gap appeared between the background tiles.

I love the very visual take on the theme! The waveforms look great and are fun to tinker with, and it's satisfying when you finally manage to make them click.

It did feel like a little trial-and-error though - I understand vaguely how waveforms sum together, but not well enough to do on the fly in a puzzle game. I think if you had some more puzzles I would've been able to figure it out. I also didn't feel like the platformer part of the game added very much - it was never very challenging, and kind of just ended up as a delay between puzzles.

Great work overall!

Really cool platformer! I liked the graphics and music - they create a great mood together. As an engineer I loved the puzzles with adjusting the amplitude and frequency of the signals to match the final signal. I struggled a little bit with the moving platforms - the player wasn't properly glued to them (maybe by design) so whenever the platform moved, the player was sliding off the platform (played the HTML5 version). Also the movement of the platforms was quite clunky. Overall, great game - had a lot of fun playing it. I wish it had more levels!

very smooth controls and nice concept! enjoyed it.

Finally awake after a long sleep, so just getting back to people

@carterjbx Yeah every time I saw Signal come up the last few LDs I was thinking about something like this so I was excited when it came up. it's expected that people would need some time to figure it out the first time.

@hammerfrenzy That's okay I appreciate you trying! If I had more time for a full tutorial, I would have made more simple versions and stepped up difficulty but didn't have time.

@tbk-david I get what you mean, originally there was an intention to use the mouse to rotate the dials but that got scrapped as I had to simplify controls, so I went with mouse wheel instead to simulate rotating the dial.

@nathmate Ahh yes we love Unity tilemap floating point error BS. I'll do a hotfix when I can to fix that by baking a texture atlas for it. That's the core bit it's supposed to generate that when it builds but it did not.

@sam-gorman Thanks! I think that's most of the feedback I'm seeing with those struggling with the puzzles, having a base knowledge of how waveforms work is basically kind of key to understanding what it means. The reason the lower 2 windows also have the yellow reference wave is to make it easier. Originally those were hidden and it made it MUCH harder, so I simplified it because I expected some struggling.

As for the platforming part yeah I intended to add more puzzle elements like timing elements, where doors would only stay open for a few seconds, before closing etc, as well as more complex multi switch/door puzzles, these first sections were designed to teach the mechanics, not to be challenging, setting you up to take on more complex puzzles later.

@goodwayman Apprecitated @clymm did a good job with the art and sound stuff. I have wanted to do something with waveforms for a while cause I thought it'd be cool for sure. Yeahhhhhh moving platforms are hard, I plan on spending some time building tooling around moving platforms so next time I do a platformer they're already set haha. But Yeah I also wish it had more, I mentioned in another comment that this was SUPPPOSED to be just the tutorial to get you familiar with the controls, but it ended up being all I had time to make.

@magus77 Thank you! I spent a fair bit of time on the controls and I'm pretty happy with how they came out. I may expand on the character later but this was one of my most complex character controllers because I spent so much extra time making the jumping and movement feel good.

really cool, i love the frequency mechanic and would play a whole game of just that! but the platforming is also cool and unique. awesome jam game with helpful tutorial and great use of theme

very interesting concept. Had a lot of fun playing it (it took a moment to realize how to adjust these waves :)) but i really love the graphic look of this game! Very great work :)

I remember that there was a similiar game where it was a quest or something to adjust waves but i don't remember what it was.

@val-ociraptor Appreciated! There was a lot of ideas surrounding the mechanic initially, I just thought this made the most sense for a game jam. Glad you liked it!

@neowhoru Yeah once you get how the wave adjustment works it goes a lot smoother, I mentioned in another post I had intended to start the game off with even MORE simple wave stuff to like start you off just adjusting just 1 wave's frequency, with no amplitude and then graduating to both frequency and amplitude, before introducing the second waveform which would have probably helped people understand, but that's something for a post jam update maybe.

The graphics are awesome I think they came out great @clymm did a great job for sure!

I'm offering this critique so the developers can notice the shortcomings of their game—I don't mean to offend.

If you replaced the signal-tuning mechanic with a simple button press, almost nothing would change; in other words, the integration of the theme feels weak. But that's not even the main issue—the real problem is that it ends up being a very primitive platformer with just a couple of locations where you press a button and move forward. There are no puzzles, no enemies to fight, so you're left hoping the graphics and atmosphere will carry it. But there are issues here too: the background is really well done and I like it, but then other problems stand out. The phone booth has a different resolution compared to everything else, so it looks out of place. There's no lighting or shadows, and without those, it's hard to create any real atmosphere. And finally, the music: it's just four choral notes from some asset pack, looping every 3 seconds—you'll get tired of it in literally 10 seconds.

@borisfrommurmansk that's fair enough, it's a game jam so these kinds of things are expected. I've mentioned in other comments that this set of areas was intended to be a tutorial for all the base mechanics, and supposed to be much easier. The puzzles were planned for much later, and the signal mechanic was supposed to become much harder over time, for example not showing the yellow tutorial reference waves in the signal inputs, adding more interactions like timers and gates, adding in mechanics where the signal affects objects like having platforms follow the signal path or opening a door when the signal is high etc. but again, game jam so you can't get to everything so I focused on the basics of just matching the wave and doing a toggle.

As for the art and sounds, the amount of time they had for working on this was VERY limited, only a couple hours overall, due to their schedule so it was whatever we could get in the time that we had for that.

I got a bit stuck and couldn't get past level 1. One thing I noticed is WASD to change the frequency when you're already using your mouse to hover and scroll felt a bit off to me.

I'd think I was changing one but really it was a different one I wasn't hovering over. Also not entirely sure what the two other waves are but they seem to change when I adjust dials so I wasn't really sure what I was supposed to be matching.

Fun sound effects and I enjoyed hopping around the platforms :)


@whoisethan Thanks for giving it a try! I 100% get what you mean, I unfortunately built it for gamepad first and then adapted those to Keyboard/Mouse like... in the last hour or so, so I didn't have much time to actually do something else with it so I have definitely seen and agreed with the feedback surrounding the inputs for it for sure haha I know it would have been more intuitive to just point the mouse at a dial and then mouse wheel but I didn't have time, so this is what it had to be.

To try and un-stick you, The bottom 2 screens are the input waves, and the top is the output wave. The dials to the left of the bottom 2 screens adjust the waves on the right of the dials. The blue wave represents the things you can change, and the yellow wave is the solution. The "Amp" dial changes the Amplitude which is how tall the blue wave is, and the "Freq" dial changes the frequency, or 'how often' the wave goes up and down. High frequency means the wave gets more compact and goes up and down more frequently.

So look at the bottom screen and use the bottom Amp/Freq dials to adjust the bottom screen until the blue wave matches the yellow wave. So from your screenshot, in the bottom screen the amplitude is too high(the blue waves are taller than the yellow wave) and then the frequency is too low(The blue wave only pulses up and down 2 times vs the yellow wave pulses like 7 times)

When you adjust the bottom 2 screens to match, the top screen is what happens when you add these 2 waves together, in this case you don't need to actually look at the top screen at all and instead just focus on matching up the bottom 2 screens to solve the puzzle!

Thanks for playing guys! Appreciate the comments and feedback :heart:

@head-priestess-ari @carterjbx @hammerfrenzy @tbk-david @nathmate @sam-gorman @goodwayman @magus77 @val-ociraptor @neowhoru @borisfrommurmansk @whoisethan

It definitely needs an gradual increase of difficulty. I definitely suck at aligning signals XD. The mouse + keyboard input felt a bit awkward (I was already using the mouse wheel, but wasn't allowed to click the dials). Spot on with the theme!

@amirrajan Yeah for sure, this was just supposed to be the tutorial, the train was supposed to take you somewhere else where the puzzles got harder, but that never panned out.

And yeah for sure I 100% get the weirdness with the input stuff, once the jam is over I've already got an update ready to go to ship a fix that makes it so you just hover over the dial and rotate with the mouse.

Thanks for playing it!

Very interesting game. Please accept this as friendly feedback, I don't mean to be harsh.

I was wondering why this needed to be a platformer.
The process of tuning the signal to activate objects feels a bit "tacked" on and unnecessary for a platformer. Reading your comments about the incompleteness makes sense, as some of those ideas seem cool - and I wish you were able to focus more on how the waves could be used in unique ways like tuning the oscillation speed of platforms or spikes, or slowing down the speed of a laser wave so it was safe to walk with.

When the signal tuner popped up my first thought was "great *another* signal tuning game" lol... but your system was actually among the better built systems that I've encountered. It was a little weird to reach for the mouse at first but it does feel natural as an input method for tuning waves. Without the 2 little hit waves was really struggling lol - good job with that!

Visually it looks good, and movement feels good enough, but also a little rough.

Overall a good entry :thumbsup:

It’s a very good platformer—the art and music are both excellent. One question though: how do I get past this part?

I loved the mechanics surrounding the signal, I haven't seen many other games do that, and it works really well here. The effect of the city moving in the background is really cool, too. Congrats :)

That's really cool!

At first I was like a mule trying to adjust the waves just by looking at the result. I hadn't realized that you only had to adjust the two at the bottom separately. :)

The art is beautiful and the gameplay is good. NOTE: Notice that the character still moves when standing still on the platforms. Maybe that shouldn't happen?

To make it even better, the music loop could be a little longer. ;)

Congratulations!

@ismael-rodriguez Yeah exactly, as I mentioned in other comments the mechanics were going to become more complicated over time, where the integration was more involved but I started with stuff surrounding the waves and how to actually match them together, which took most of saturday, and then sunday I built the one way platform and the doors and the platforming controller, and then by the time I got to actually integrating the wave into the mechanic, it was already day 3, and basically everything got cut so I could create a level with what I had which was the basic doors and the basic moving platform. Yeah I hope to make the input part better in the future with a post jam thing for sure, the mouse integration also came on day 3, so I basically just mapped the existing gamepad controls which is why mouse pointer does nothing, there's no raycasting or anything because the Gamepad controlls didn't need a cursor integration like that. And yeah the visuals were also fairly limited time, not by me but @clymm wasn't available the whole weekend to work on stuff, leading to focusing on the minimum needed. But yeah thanks for playing!

@xiao-duye Interesting It's supposed to display a tutorial there not sure why it's not showing. To fall through one way platforms it's down + jump.

@n-o-x Thanks! I'd been thinking about this for a few jams where Signal came up and thought it would be cool.

@euler-moises hahaha you aren't the only one who didn't notice. Later in the game it was going to actually get harder, the hints at the bottom were eventually going to go away hahaha so you were playing more how eventually I intended for it to be.

Moving platforms are hard XD it's because the velocity is applied to the player based on the change position of the platform. It's

The music was supposed to have layers too, but yeah I agree, unfortunately this is all we had time for beacuse @clymm had IRL stuff and so had limited time to work on the jam stuff and they did both the art and the sound stuff, on top of that I had already made a music manager that would loop a single looped track, and didn't have time to add the logic to keep multiple layered tracks in sync so that was axed.

It was a short fun experience ! Just a little problem level-design wise on the first part with electricity (the little climb of platforms), the last one is much a trap than a useful platform, i died because i jumped from it and after that, i prefered jump from the one below and it worked, i managed to pass through it !

The game looks cool. I like the atmosphere and how it hints at a larger world beyond the game.

Small detail that could be improved is the camera. It follows the player with little to no smoothing making the movement feel very harsh.

The gameplay was a little simplistic. Changing the amp/freq match was a little too easy, but I didn't mind it. Simple gameplay like this would perhaps fit well within a narrative-focused game (if you wanted to continue working on it).

@railnof Yeah lol I realized it after publishing that it was a trap hahahah! I always made the jump from the second platform and left it because I was like "Oh that's fun you can make it from here if you do it just right" like it was a skill thing XD and not testing that you can jump from the top one. A friend who played it after the jam ended just to search for bugs mentioned it and I'm like NOOOOOoooooo!

@aruseus Thanks! Yeah I _wanted_ to do more but RIP Time. The camera definitely could be improved, It's just like out of the box settings so it has issues for sure. I've mentioned in other comments but yeah this area was supposed to be easier because it was a tutorial area, so it was intended to get harder later, but yeah. And funny you mention narrative focused game because @clymm made face sprites for doing dialog and stuff and I ran out of time to implement any story stuff so yeah IDK how much I'll update the game, it'll really be dependent on the outcome/score/interest in a more fleshed out version of the game. I'm always looking for the next "Main" project that I can flesh out and ship, and if there's enough interest I can go and actually add the challenging sections and more complex puzzles.

the last signal-scene told me a life-lesson: Don't look at the complex graph, look at the smaller ones instead :D

@trexxak hahaha truee, the plan was to eventually try and teach how to break down a wave into it's components and stuff to help use the big one haha, the hint waves at the bottom were gonna go away later in the game but never got to it lol Thanks for playing!

I liked it! Got to the end. The graphics look great and it was fun to play.

A few points of feedback:
1. The text at the beginning and end went away very fast
2. The jumping took some getting used to, for example here:
It felt like the 'logical' jump would be the upper platform, but the character had a lot of vertical velocity, but barely any horizontal.

@slay-a-stone Thanks! Yeah the text... >.> wasn't important it was like loading screen 'tips' but it was just silly quotes like "The archer class really is full of archers" I updated my template to move it to the bottom right corner to make it more obvious it's silly loading screen text and in a full game I'd probably stick actually good tips in it but... yeah It's just placeholder text lol. And I mentioned in another comment but from the beginning I was doing the jump from that platform and only after launching someone told me it was basically impossible to make from the other platform because the ceiling was like 2 blocks too low lol. I have a system for defining jumps and my jump code says that the jump should be possible... but only if you can reach the peak of the jump. The jump is exactly 5 units tall, and should be able to cross a 7 block gap, but again the ceiling is too close.

Such an interesting way to combine the theme with a platformer! The signal tuning mechanic was a really nice touch- probably my favorite part of the game. Something about it just felt very satisfying. And the art style was great. I loved the main character sprite, the color choices, and the environment. Overall, it was nice relaxing experience.

@wormkingboo Thanks! I want to expand on the signal mechanics at some point in a post jam update to make them integrate into the game more! @clymm did a great job with the art and atmosphere I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Really liked the mechanic of matching the waveforms. Would be cool to hear them too :smile:

If you're using the mouse , would suggest allowing the user to click the buttons, or shift + arrow /WASD to move the dial perhaps?

Really liked the environment art, especially at the end- as someone who's spent many years on the tube :smiley:


Original idea! I really enjoyed the visuals, and the concept of building a complex wave from two simple periodic ones is a great touch.

The length of the game was well chosen. I was motivated to play it till the end. :)

Like @ismael-rodriguez mentioned I also have been playing a lot of "signal tuning games" in this Jam, but I found your system very satisfying. Having the two seperate waves was a very good addition!

Having more complex levels would be nice, but as you mentioned the time was ticking. The levels which are in the game are fine for the beginning, but I found them a bit too slow. The moving plattform could be faster or the lenght of the lanes shorter, because you just have to wait on them.

The graphics in the background are nice and the overall mood you have created was very atmospheric for me.

A fun platformer. Great soundtrack. The wave puzzles are interesting.

@johnnysix Thanks! Yeah lots of stuff was just getting caught with no time and needing to finish.

I wanted to make it so the mouse would just point at the dial and you'd rotate the wheel that you're pointed at, but ran out of time to make them different so the the KBM and Gamepad controls are the same system.

@kaze-todoroki Thanks! I thought of the basic idea last LD when I saw Signal come up but didn't think much deeper until now. Eventually I'd like to expand cause I think it's cool.

@lllarso Yeah it's a bite size game for a jam, don't need games to overstay their welcome too much but I agree adding some more content and a bit harder stuff at the end would be nice for sure haha. And yeah the platforms could definitely use an upgrade, one consideration I had was to make them have buttons so you pressed the button once you were on. Thanks!

@indiepanda Thanks! Appreciate you playing it!

I absolutely loved this game! The core mechanic is really easy to understand, and it fits the theme very well. At the same time, it still feels quite challenging, especially since interpreting the amplitude of the waves isn’t so straightforward.

As a puzzle, I think it’s really interesting, and it could definitely work as part of a larger, more complete project if you ever decide to expand on it.

Overall, congratulations! It's an amazing result, especially for a game jam. I enjoyed it a lot!

I tested another entry with the idea of remake a complex signal, combining simples ones, but your's is way easier to understand and finish! (the other had more signals to combine, with more paramaters - including phase - and, most, no clue for each, just having to find the good combination only with the resulting signal…)
I enjoyed going through the scenes, having sometimes to solve signals, sometimes plateforming. It's really short as it's for a LD, but I would have played more with this. I like the arts too, so: well done!

@hagamosvideojuegos Thanks! I'd love to get time to add more content post jam for sure! I think with more integration into the mechanics It's a really solid idea for sure! Thanks for playing!

@lereveur I tried to ensure it wasn't going to bog down the experience too much for sure. Eventually I'd like the platforming and the signal stuff to integrate more closely and make it into a more unique experience, but this was really the beginning of the idea. I'd have liked it to be longer as well haha I wanted at least a bit more but time crunch haha

I am a sucker for waveform puzzles so this was really cool to me! I can see how it can be confusing to some, based on feedback I've seen, but I guess it wouldn't really be a puzzle if it wasn't somewhat difficult lol

The platforming, music and SFX were all solid, although as a sound designer/arranger I felt the music loop could've used a bit more sauce, and the jump fx could've used some high pass filtering, light reverb and upwards pitching to make it seem more distant/small.

Heyy, fellow waveform enjoyer!
Good job on combining a beauty of added sine waves with some working puzzles - I failed at this during gamejam and decided to make it a bit simpler :)
I've seen you initially didn't have reference waves and it was way harder - good call on adding them nevertheless. I don't think regular people have an intuitive way to comprehend these (maybe if the amplitudes for two waves are really far apart? Idk)

The music was very fitting... but the super short cycle broke the magic for me unfortunately. I think even 1-minute long (unique) track would be enough to not bother too much!

In any case, this was fun!