LudumData

Baby Boom by Whirlwind

[raw]
made by Whirlwind for Ludum Dare 53 (JAM)

Feathered Funkmaster, the owner of Lullaby Logistics, needs your help. Delivering babies to hopeful parents with his factory powered by sick beats has always been a most efficient process, but there were so many babies this year that the chutes broke! You'll have to operate the chutes manually (and musically) to sort the babies and save Funkmaster's factory.

Instructions: Press the corresponding keys to the beat to deliver babies to the right stork! The key needs to be pressed precisely on the beat that the babies reach the launchpad. If the babies are already on the launch pad, it's already too late to press the key.

```

|Q|W|E|

|A|S|D|

|Z|X|C|

``` The color of each baby's blanket matches the stork to send it to, which matches the position of a key on your keyboard. For example, the middle (blue) stork in corresponds with the middle letter of the grid above, "S".

We recommend learning the game by matching colors and keys in this way. But if for any reason you simply prefer to see keys on both the babies and the storks, you can press Shift to turn on a helpful overlay that shows which key goes to which stork. There is no penalty for turning this on. Esc quits song.

There are 3 songs with 3 difficulties. Go for a high score, and post it in the comments! (yes, negative scores on Hyperstar still count as high scores) image.png

Link https://github.com/tredden/baby-boom
Link https://tredden.itch.io/baby-boom
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/baby-boom

Ratings

Overall 689th 3.483⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Fun 480th 3.55⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 412th 3.55⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Theme 502th 3.983⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 893th 3.15⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Audio 398th 3.517⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Humor 446th 3.339⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Mood 906th 3.16⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Given 49🗳️ 38🗨️

Feedback

aushijo
01. May 2023 · 09:54 UTC
a little difficult to learn but once you get it it's very fun, gj
OminusGalaxy44
01. May 2023 · 14:25 UTC
didn't expect a rhythm game, really cool! it's a bit hard to read the letters sometimes though.
Nathaniel Kaplan
02. May 2023 · 02:46 UTC
Thanks for playing and for the helpful feedback, we've updated the letters in the overlay hopefully be a bit more readable!
tetrapteryx
02. May 2023 · 03:32 UTC
I'm terrible at rhythm games, but I gave it my best effort anyway! I love the music. This may just be a skill issue on my end, but I found it hard to work out what the timing was supposed to be. I think maybe if the babies moved more smoothly along the conveyor belt, it might feel more intuitive? Or some other visual indicator to show the precise time to press the key? (I know it's probably supposed to be obvious from the beat, but again, skill issue :sweat_smile:) Seeing the sprite linger in the right location for a bit but failing because I had to time it right within that window really confused me at first.
Zettelkasten
02. May 2023 · 03:50 UTC
I will practise for the rest of the day to perfection Twinkle Twinkle Hyperstar.
This is the perfect game for people to learn where the keys are. For the difficult songs, I was so lost :D Maybe it would be nicer to have three arrows (up, middle, down) instead of the key codes (Q, A, Z)?
All in all, sweet game! Great music! I enjoyed it a lot!
Zefphyer
02. May 2023 · 05:45 UTC
- This is a neat game, I love the concept. Rhythm games are fun even if I have no rhythm, and definitely didn't expect to see that given the prompt.
- Music is pretty good too, well done on that. Graphics too.
- Challenging to know where to send the babies with enough time. 9 keys to keep track of is a lot. And that last song is brutal. (I feel like the KeyHelper might make the game harder)
- It wasn't all that obvious when the buttons needed to be pushed at first, because it's not "when the babies are on the launchpad", but I figured it out eventually

Overall a lot of fun!
3LSTMsInATrenchcoat
02. May 2023 · 05:49 UTC
The control scheme is not super intuitive, because instead of having a direct 1-to-1 correspondence between key positions and the position of the "notes"/babies there's a lot of extra cognitive load involved in trying to associate colours and/or letters with positions. I think there's a reason why most rhythm games either put the notes on tracks in one-to-one correspondence with the physical locations of the buttons, or else use a physically-interpretable symbol (e.g. an arrow) on the notes. I agree with @zettelkasten suggesting that arrows, rather than colours and/or letters, would make it a lot more intuitive.
Adam Gaskins
02. May 2023 · 06:22 UTC
Very cool rhythm game! Love the idea of launching babies as the notes in a rhythm game :laughing:
Trevor Lentz
02. May 2023 · 18:45 UTC
Very neat concept here. Using lullaby music fits the theme well, but in in my opinion, it's a bit too loud. A simple drum beat would probably help players hit the beat just right, then again, lullabies don't typically have drums. XD Nice work.
Ryabchik
02. May 2023 · 20:45 UTC
good game! In jams, the rhythm of the game is a very rare guest, so well done for realizing this, but I didn’t pass the difficult levels, because you have to be a real pianist)
Peco
03. May 2023 · 03:31 UTC
hehe cute game
cortexdeveloper
03. May 2023 · 12:33 UTC
Loved it. Good idea how to combine theme and rhytm game.
LDJam user 360310
03. May 2023 · 12:42 UTC
This is so funny! And also finally FINALLY a game about baby delivery, I was searching for one! Great job.
I missed the first few babies because I was paying attention to the birds. If the controls weren't written on them but maybe on pipes it would be easier to understand. But after I figured it out it was fun.
kasperhangard
03. May 2023 · 21:45 UTC
Super cool concept. I am really bad at rythm games, but this one was really fun!
Lvl99Chicken
04. May 2023 · 03:29 UTC
Did not expect it to be a rythm game! It was fun once I got the hang of it. Great job!
Rigel
04. May 2023 · 05:41 UTC
Rhythm game! So cute! I really like it and look forward to the version that supports the dance machine XD.
Nathaniel Kaplan
04. May 2023 · 07:15 UTC
@tetrapteryx @zettelkasten @zefphyer @3lstmsinatrenchcoat @adam-gaskins @trevor-lentz @ryabchik @peco @cortexdeveloper @freakyzelga @kasperhangard @lvl99chicken @rigel Thanks for all the feedback everyone! Glad people are enjoying it.

I updated the description to try to help clear up some of the timing confusion, but there's definitely some work to be done to make the timing clearer in a visual sense and the controls more intuitive.
YurisCat
04. May 2023 · 12:00 UTC
:innocent:What a cool music game! The music is full of rhythm. The different key operations made me fumble around, which was very fun!

:pray:I'm a little worried about where the uncaught children will end up in the end, haha.
Looking forward to your future works!
Falk Hoeppner
04. May 2023 · 21:19 UTC
I'm a huge sucker for rhythm games. I love this concept and execution, though it was a little weird having all of the controls on one hand. Would have preferred the keys split across both hands. Either was, this was way fun and I had a blast playing it. Thank you for making it!
Dreunin
05. May 2023 · 11:07 UTC
What a neat little rhythm game! Had trouble with the higher levels initially, but enjoyed playing the first levels to perfection.
Nathaniel Kaplan
05. May 2023 · 22:08 UTC
@yuriscat Glad you enjoyed it! We like to think the factory is designed to loop the babies back around into the chutes again if they miss the first time--like an airport luggage conveyor belt.
Nathaniel Kaplan
05. May 2023 · 22:11 UTC
@falk-hoeppner @dreunin Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, the controls definitely seem to be a point of contention here, we originally were going to allow any 3-letter combo within the grid and I'm glad we didn't 😅.
LDJam user 279622
06. May 2023 · 11:45 UTC
hi! you submitted this game on my stream and I played through it :)

here's a link to the VOD: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1812705828?t=4h35m16s
Nathaniel Kaplan
07. May 2023 · 10:51 UTC
@badcop Thanks for playing, the team had a blast watching to stream together. I'll repeat my comment in the description: A negative score on Hyperstar still counts as a high score 😅 it's a pretty major difficulty spike.
lillatorp
07. May 2023 · 21:42 UTC
Cool entry! Had a lot of trouble navigating the keys here and could only trigger by using shift? But maybe that's how it's supposed to work? Love all the creativity involved. Very out of the box.
MrEliptik
08. May 2023 · 09:47 UTC
Cool concept and a great take on the theme! Cognrats for your entry :)
adjo
10. May 2023 · 22:15 UTC
The music is great, and I had fun playing it. It got very difficult very fast though!
ironcutter
12. May 2023 · 14:30 UTC
This could be a typing training program, really difficult too. Cool idea!
Pouyan ShekariKiani
15. May 2023 · 12:51 UTC
really innovative and cool game but too difficult for real, this is like torment 15 difficulty on diablo lol.
chispaLBC
18. May 2023 · 16:38 UTC
at first i thought "this is too easy" and went to the last level and WOW, can someone do that? haha good job! The best i could do was the 5th level