The Lute & The Liar by ConnorThompson

In a small woodland somewhere in albion lies a beast that can only be quelled by the sound of a young adventurers lute. With the power of rhythm and a lute in your hand only you can repell the beast hidden within the forest. Venture forth, dodge the ancient beasts attacks and successfully calm him to delay the invasion of your town.
Combining rhythm game & frantic 2d action
How to play: - WASD to move - HJKL to strum - Space bar to jump
By Josh Duffety Wong & Connor Thompson
| HTML 5 Web | https://kingcon.itch.io/the-lute-the-liar |
| Source Code | https://github.com/WongKongPhooey/LudumDare50 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/the-lute-the-liar |
Ratings
| Overall | 263th | 3.875⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 862th | 3.225⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 85th | 4⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1159th | 3.158⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 20th | 4.675⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 13th | 4.475⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 775th | 2.794⭐ | 19🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 171th | 4.025⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 21🗳️ | 20🗨️ |
This game is super impressive! from the visual style and design to the concept and game mechanics, it felt complex yet simple enough to enjoy.
Though I did find myself struggling to follow the rhythm game while avoiding getting hit from the bosses attacks, I couldn't help try again and again to improve my skill.
It was a truly innovative experience, bravo.
My feedback would be to have the lute music notes vertically oriented (travelling from top of screen to bottom maybe) to match the orientation of the HJKL keys. I think my brain really broke trying to do the 90 degree turn in my head while playing...which was made worse by the difficulty ramp being quite high! Also the strumming of the strings doesn't quite match the notes as they come in (or maybe that was just on my end?).
I think if you tightened it up a bit it would be a really fun game and I would love playing it!
I love the idea, it's very unique and it looks really great! I'm just waaaay too uncoordinated to get very far. Seriously great looking game. The mechanics are very intuitive - you can immediately understand how the game is meant to be played. The music and lute sounds fit perfectly, too. I'm just so bad at it, though!
Well done!
The music and art are very cool and coherent. As mentionned before by @foxwater I think the game would be a bit easier with the music notes and keyboard keys oriented in the same direction. Having to use 2 controls, one for the characters and one for the mussic is very interesting and challenging. It did lacked visual feedbacks tho especially when hitting the right notes, I felt kinda lost regarding if i did right or not.
Over all the game is a great exeperience nontheless!
It would be nice to have a less steep difficulty curve though, having to time 4 notes right away at the same time at that speed is a bit hard, and the timing window seem to be a bit narrow, as I missed a lot of notes even though I pressed the button at almost the correct time, making it feel like it didn't register my inputs. Visual feedback such as the notes getting highlighted or changing colour based on timing would make it more readable as well. Knowing when you hit the notes is crucial to learn how to time!
Would love it if you developed this further after the jam as the concept, style and mood is really great!
My issues with the game's difficult are about the same as everyone else. I tried for awhile but I could never get the hang of the timing and it being disjointed from the sound of the music messed with my ability to get into any kind of pattern. I understand the extreme amount of work that would have to go into making a random generated music play long without it sounding like garbage so consider this a very slight complaint.
Overall, this game is a great!
Overall this is a very solid entry, awesome work.