I'M LOVING THIS NEW DEMO!!! But I have one issue which is with the anti aliasing effect, it makes the textures/sprites look kinda ugly (though its only a really minor issue)
Absolutely loved playing this! There's a small error though. I could be wrong with how I read the textbox, but for PS4 controllers when melodii uses their hoverboard the instructions say to hold X when its actually the Square. Just letting you know
I played the game and I love it. It gives very chill vibes and the vocal revamps are amazing!
The only problem is when i play this on my laptop after I finish the tutorial the camera sinks in to ground/floor. If you have any way to fix this, please let me know.
I really love the charm of this game! and the music slaps really well! love the mix up on the classic Parappa formula by having supports and the DJ parts, gives some extra depth! my main issue with the game is bugs.
I have a few screenshots but accidentally hitting both retry and continue on the result screen will completely bug the hell out of the game! not only will the stage just be broken, the pause menu and UI will just not work, also the story mode text is just there lol. Also I had to force shut down the game as trying to use any button wouldn't work on the "bugged" result screen! also moments I clipped through trees outside the map and fell through. Has to just reset the game
really sucks cause I love the style, music and gameplay even! just the game is heavily weighed down right now with bugs :( easy 7/10 for now
hope the final release will iron them out, cause this could be an amazing rhythm game to rival the big guys! truly a fun and charming game!
Hey, just wanted to say that theres a tiny glitch I've encountered on the quick groove menu where side chain fever has the Supastar Tennis title lol. Other than that this updates' been amazing! Keep up the groovy work!
Small critique, some of the remade buttons look similar and I've mixed them up a few times (I am using XBOX buttons, this might be less of a problem with other layouts)
yoo I think I found a bug that is still in the game from sage 2022. in grease poppin' you can pause right before the game over screen and the song continues playing. I might have to test this a little more..
I opened a song and instantly hit retry to be able to skip the intro, (stir & mix) and the vocals were kinda screwed up, it would be taking vocals from other parts of the song or from jamtine or just not play any at all.
but for me this doesn't take away anything from the Christmas update!
20/10
EDIT: I made a video of uncut bug finding, mainly first 4 minutes of actual bugs
The songs are really cool, specially Stir & Mix, the art style is cool too, however, there are 3 bugs that are very annoying,
-when you don't move yourself in the free map at story mode, the camera just moves down, I don't know if this is due my own controller but seems odd
-After you finish Nami's rival challenge, the dialogue doesn't load, so you can't progress in the game, you can't move or even press pause, I reseted the game and even the computer but the bug stills there, so I can only play in quick groove mode
-I noticed that if you open the game, but minimize the game window, the game stills thinking you're playing it, so if you press the space bar or s key (i don't remember which one I pressed) the game recognizes the command, so you can play the game even with the window minimized, that is...annoying to be honest
So my review for the Sage Xmas 2023 demo is...6.8/10, a really cool game that is deeply affected by bugs
Seen dis pop up on the feed and played this game over again, new designs and better voice acting, A lot of changes that I love! I like the two new stages that LG added onto the game, They were a lil bit harder then the others but nonetheless fun
Amazing update, I personally really like the remasters. And with the old demos available I can go back to the old mixes and the older version of the first song. But... I found a Bug. Make sure you don't have your headphones or speakers on. If you clear all saved data in options then go to Quick Groove, it will BLAST you with One Terrible Scream. Destiny 2 style. I wonder if there's any code savvy people that could explain how those two interact.
I know there must be a lot of comments and feedback to consider, but I feel it is EXTREMELY urgent to get across, as someone that really really really REALLY likes and appreciates this project, that the introduction to this game for a new player is GOD AWFUL.
The fact there's no mention of Remixing and how Expression works, so one third of the scoring system that is entirely just not mentioned to the player is completely unacceptable. It is a CORE MECHANIC, you can't describe the game as "press the buttons in time" and have them find out there's a whole third of the game they're doing wrong. Even a person that plays rhythm games is completely hopeless to actually understand why they get a D rank on the very first stage after hitting every note correctly if they happen not to know about freestyling in Parappa. It's an entirely broken onboarding, they CAN'T figure it out.
That's before even mentioning that completely honestly, the first song is EXTREMELY DIFFICULT for the very first moment of gameplay a player gets. This is not a skill issue, think SINCERELY of a player that has never player a game like this, and now think of what the first song of this game is like. There's a good reason Parappa starts with just verses of one button. Playing these sequences is REALLY HARD ACTUALLY. As it stands, this game doesn't seem to have a difficulty curve at all which is REALLY BAD ACTUALLY.
It is tremendously disappointing to see this after waiting this long for a demo.
for the second part of this comment i agree especially the first level is REALLY hard but for the first part of the comment, in the old demo they had an npc explain how remixing works and i assume so will the full game. as for the most resent demo if you read the itch page you would know about all the criteria the game ranks you by, it literally says "Expression - This will increase every time you gain points from remixing the suggested line" and if that's not "good info" then the Rhythm would probably let you know that you need to remix on Rhythm so you can get a better score :|
Explaining on the itch page is good and all, but that doesn't replace explaining it within the game. A player shouldn't be expected to learn something from outside the game in order to know how to play it, that is not acceptable. Along with that, this description of "remixing the suggested line" is actually STILL really vague and it doesn't get across well what that translates to in gameplay. What is "remixing" a line? That could mean a lot of things, and it's not an obvious conclusion for it to mean "make up notes that don't appear in the song", especially when the game trying to do that tends to sound bad unless you're already really good at making it sound good, and the game has already explicitly told you to play the notes that appear on the screen.
It's very strange they would remove that NPC, and it's really concerning to see them commit to doing that considering that while yes, having an NPC just describe textually what a mechanic is not good game design, just removing ALL explanations of the mechanic without replacing them is infinitely worse. I wish I could assume they will just put it back but I cannot imagine a reason for them to remove it to begin with.
More proper in-game explanations for the mechanics are planned for the final game. For this version of the demo, everything in the hub world had to be completely remade, so as stated in the launch screen, not everything has been finished yet at this time. Sorry for the confusion.
I appreciate addressing that, but I feel hugely compelled to highlight that teaching the game and getting the player to the skill you want them to have should be something far more prioritized than it is being right now, honestly even more so now knowing that there was an NPC that explained this and they were not the first one to be put back after the hub was remade. It is sincerely a very alarming mistake that this demo, which would be the first time of so many people playing this game through SAGE, seems to put this off almost entirely. At the very least I very strongly want to suggest a more thorough tutorial process, as someone that has seen fun games die by their onboarding. Ideally working more advanced aspects naturally through the experience past just the one single tutorial song is a good place to start.
my pc isnt the best idk if i should run the new update my pc doesnt like 3d things and i wanna play it but at the same time i dont want it to crash can someone help me if i should?
i love the new update but im not sure how to feel about some of the remade songs and melody's voice kinda hurts my ears just a tad. the old one imo was a lot more soothing to the ears
Edit with more clarity: This game appears with a lot of contrast with hdr monitors. You can fix this by turning it off in your system settings, but that's a bit annoying.
Also this game is very resource intensive right now. Both on memory and cpu usage (although again it could just be on my end) Other than that I really like the new songs and overworld! Sidechain fever is my favorite out of the two.
This was probably the first rhythm game I've played after like 10 years so I have no muscle memory or expertise when it comes to them pretty much. I had a lot of difficulty with the game and I didn't realize there was an easy mode for the songs until I beat the story mode (although I'm not sure if I could've changed the mode in the story anyways). There's a lot of things that aren't really well explained, like how expression works or the double tap (?) input that's needed for the final part in Cream Cheese Icing. As someone else pointed out the character icons kind of get in the way of the beat instructions when they pass over them. I also had some issues with the double line timing, as in not having a visual indicator as to when the top line ends and when the bottom one starts Without looking at the end of the top line directly as that wouldn't let me see the inputs needed inmediately as the bottom line starts. After I set the game to easy mode I couldn't notice any major differences in difficulty, at least not with the only song I tried it on (CCI). There were some parts when I would make a correct input to the beat and even though it would play the beat sound, Melodi wouldn't sing and it was left to chance if it registered as a correct note (especially in the first CCI double line part). CCI felt really difficult considering it's right after the tutorial, and all the other songs felt around the same difficulty. I didn't have any problems with the overworld, although it kind of felt empty being so big but having only buildings for important areas with a couple of exceptions. I liked the songs themselves, none of them sounded off (without taking into account me being horrible at rhythm games thus ruining Melodi occasionally). Animations were really charming too, although it's a shame I couldn't look at them in full since I had to be constantly looking at the notes. Take all of the gameplay criticisms with a grain of salt since as I've said I haven't played rhythm games in a while and as such, it's possible all of them are skill issues on my part. I hope the rest of development goes well for you.
I didn't really know where else to put this, but I just wanted to blab about my thoughts while playing through all the songs a bunch of times. I'm coming from this as not a hardcore rhythm game player, but i have played a lot of them(i'm like in the middle), I also have experience with gamedev and testing.
I agree with some of the other comments that the difficulty spike from the tutorial to first battle is stark, mostly cause the tutorial doesn't teach the difference between single and double lines, something i didn't even notice was conveyed visually + labeled till after playing through all of them lol. So constantly I was confused on when it was my turn, and sometimes I didn't even realize it was my turn and would miss a whole line. I don't think it's clear enough when things switch, I imagine this might be fixed with there being more easier songs to build up the skill of reacting to the current visuals.
I don't understand why the portrait covers the end of the music line, I would consistently miss a note that was placed there or think the line was over when there was still a beat happening in that section. The overlap makes my brain think the line is shorter than it actually is. It being at like 50% opacity doesn't help, I'd rather it be tacked onto the end- there you could make it opaque. The play area should always be clear imo, unless it's being done to add difficulty.
Apologies for the big wall of text, or if you already know all of this. Overall though this is really good, once I did understand what was happening I enjoyed my time a lot.
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I'M LOVING THIS NEW DEMO!!! But I have one issue which is with the anti aliasing effect, it makes the textures/sprites look kinda ugly (though its only a really minor issue)
Absolutely loved playing this! There's a small error though. I could be wrong with how I read the textbox, but for PS4 controllers when melodii uses their hoverboard the instructions say to hold X when its actually the Square. Just letting you know
i had a similar problem
I played the game and I love it. It gives very chill vibes and the vocal revamps are amazing!
The only problem is when i play this on my laptop after I finish the tutorial the camera sinks in to ground/floor. If you have any way to fix this, please let me know.
I really love the charm of this game! and the music slaps really well! love the mix up on the classic Parappa formula by having supports and the DJ parts, gives some extra depth! my main issue with the game is bugs.
I have a few screenshots but accidentally hitting both retry and continue on the result screen will completely bug the hell out of the game! not only will the stage just be broken, the pause menu and UI will just not work, also the story mode text is just there lol. Also I had to force shut down the game as trying to use any button wouldn't work on the "bugged" result screen! also moments I clipped through trees outside the map and fell through. Has to just reset the game
really sucks cause I love the style, music and gameplay even! just the game is heavily weighed down right now with bugs :( easy 7/10 for now
hope the final release will iron them out, cause this could be an amazing rhythm game to rival the big guys! truly a fun and charming game!
Small critique, some of the remade buttons look similar and I've mixed them up a few times (I am using XBOX buttons, this might be less of a problem with other layouts)
yoo I think I found a bug that is still in the game from sage 2022. in grease poppin' you can pause right before the game over screen and the song continues playing. I might have to test this a little more..
I opened a song and instantly hit retry to be able to skip the intro, (stir & mix) and the vocals were kinda screwed up, it would be taking vocals from other parts of the song or from jamtine or just not play any at all.
but for me this doesn't take away anything from the Christmas update!
20/10
EDIT: I made a video of uncut bug finding, mainly first 4 minutes of actual bugs
The songs are really cool, specially Stir & Mix, the art style is cool too, however, there are 3 bugs that are very annoying,
-when you don't move yourself in the free map at story mode, the camera just moves down, I don't know if this is due my own controller but seems odd
-After you finish Nami's rival challenge, the dialogue doesn't load, so you can't progress in the game, you can't move or even press pause, I reseted the game and even the computer but the bug stills there, so I can only play in quick groove mode
-I noticed that if you open the game, but minimize the game window, the game stills thinking you're playing it, so if you press the space bar or s key (i don't remember which one I pressed) the game recognizes the command, so you can play the game even with the window minimized, that is...annoying to be honest
So my review for the Sage Xmas 2023 demo is...6.8/10, a really cool game that is deeply affected by bugs
that nami bug happens to me to
The Nami bug happened to me as well
Its way too laggy for my ASUS laptop. I would much rather have 2D backgrounds than 3D backgrounds. Even with simple graphics, its still too laggy
It's not the 3d backgrounds that are the problem, it's the lack of optimization.
yau
#FIXTHEFALLINGCAMERA , a thread. SPREAD THE WORD
they will, just give it time. The demo game out yesterday. I'm sure they know to fix the falling camera.
Seen dis pop up on the feed and played this game over again, new designs and better voice acting, A lot of changes that I love! I like the two new stages that LG added onto the game, They were a lil bit harder then the others but nonetheless fun
this is so cool
THIS IS SO AWESOME I LUV IT
Guys, Christmas Sage Has... FINALLY RELEASED :DDDDDD
if this game does not add easy mode to story mode by release, i am not buying the game. this game is harder than cuphead
have you ever heard of the terms "lack of skill" and or "skill issue" that might just apply to you :0
me waiting for a reply (impossible mode)
challenge ends here
NUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
Amazing update, I personally really like the remasters. And with the old demos available I can go back to the old mixes and the older version of the first song. But...
I found a Bug. Make sure you don't have your headphones or speakers on.
If you clear all saved data in options then go to Quick Groove, it will BLAST you with One Terrible Scream. Destiny 2 style. I wonder if there's any code savvy people that could explain how those two interact.
Don't worry developer LJ, the audio bug goes away as soon as you leave the menu.
I know there must be a lot of comments and feedback to consider, but I feel it is EXTREMELY urgent to get across, as someone that really really really REALLY likes and appreciates this project, that the introduction to this game for a new player is GOD AWFUL.
The fact there's no mention of Remixing and how Expression works, so one third of the scoring system that is entirely just not mentioned to the player is completely unacceptable. It is a CORE MECHANIC, you can't describe the game as "press the buttons in time" and have them find out there's a whole third of the game they're doing wrong. Even a person that plays rhythm games is completely hopeless to actually understand why they get a D rank on the very first stage after hitting every note correctly if they happen not to know about freestyling in Parappa. It's an entirely broken onboarding, they CAN'T figure it out.
That's before even mentioning that completely honestly, the first song is EXTREMELY DIFFICULT for the very first moment of gameplay a player gets. This is not a skill issue, think SINCERELY of a player that has never player a game like this, and now think of what the first song of this game is like. There's a good reason Parappa starts with just verses of one button. Playing these sequences is REALLY HARD ACTUALLY. As it stands, this game doesn't seem to have a difficulty curve at all which is REALLY BAD ACTUALLY.
It is tremendously disappointing to see this after waiting this long for a demo.
for the second part of this comment i agree especially the first level is REALLY hard but for the first part of the comment, in the old demo they had an npc explain how remixing works and i assume so will the full game. as for the most resent demo if you read the itch page you would know about all the criteria the game ranks you by, it literally says "Expression - This will increase every time you gain points from remixing the suggested line" and if that's not "good info" then the Rhythm would probably let you know that you need to remix on Rhythm so you can get a better score :|
Explaining on the itch page is good and all, but that doesn't replace explaining it within the game. A player shouldn't be expected to learn something from outside the game in order to know how to play it, that is not acceptable.
Along with that, this description of "remixing the suggested line" is actually STILL really vague and it doesn't get across well what that translates to in gameplay. What is "remixing" a line? That could mean a lot of things, and it's not an obvious conclusion for it to mean "make up notes that don't appear in the song", especially when the game trying to do that tends to sound bad unless you're already really good at making it sound good, and the game has already explicitly told you to play the notes that appear on the screen.
It's very strange they would remove that NPC, and it's really concerning to see them commit to doing that considering that while yes, having an NPC just describe textually what a mechanic is not good game design, just removing ALL explanations of the mechanic without replacing them is infinitely worse. I wish I could assume they will just put it back but I cannot imagine a reason for them to remove it to begin with.
More proper in-game explanations for the mechanics are planned for the final game. For this version of the demo, everything in the hub world had to be completely remade, so as stated in the launch screen, not everything has been finished yet at this time. Sorry for the confusion.
I appreciate addressing that, but I feel hugely compelled to highlight that teaching the game and getting the player to the skill you want them to have should be something far more prioritized than it is being right now, honestly even more so now knowing that there was an NPC that explained this and they were not the first one to be put back after the hub was remade. It is sincerely a very alarming mistake that this demo, which would be the first time of so many people playing this game through SAGE, seems to put this off almost entirely. At the very least I very strongly want to suggest a more thorough tutorial process, as someone that has seen fun games die by their onboarding. Ideally working more advanced aspects naturally through the experience past just the one single tutorial song is a good place to start.
My camera going down into the bottom of the map can you fix this?
my pc isnt the best idk if i should run the new update my pc doesnt like 3d things and i wanna play it but at the same time i dont want it to crash can someone help me if i should?
i love the new update but im not sure how to feel about some of the remade songs and melody's voice kinda hurts my ears just a tad. the old one imo was a lot more soothing to the ears
agreed
Edit with more clarity: This game appears with a lot of contrast with hdr monitors. You can fix this by turning it off in your system settings, but that's a bit annoying.
Also this game is very resource intensive right now. Both on memory and cpu usage (although again it could just be on my end) Other than that I really like the new songs and overworld! Sidechain fever is my favorite out of the two.
THE CAMERA KEEPS FALLING IN THE OVERWORLD HELP
SAME
Here's my feedback:
This was probably the first rhythm game I've played after like 10 years so I have no muscle memory or expertise when it comes to them pretty much.
I had a lot of difficulty with the game and I didn't realize there was an easy mode for the songs until I beat the story mode (although I'm not sure if I could've changed the mode in the story anyways). There's a lot of things that aren't really well explained, like how expression works or the double tap (?) input that's needed for the final part in Cream Cheese Icing. As someone else pointed out the character icons kind of get in the way of the beat instructions when they pass over them.
I also had some issues with the double line timing, as in not having a visual indicator as to when the top line ends and when the bottom one starts Without looking at the end of the top line directly as that wouldn't let me see the inputs needed inmediately as the bottom line starts.
After I set the game to easy mode I couldn't notice any major differences in difficulty, at least not with the only song I tried it on (CCI).
There were some parts when I would make a correct input to the beat and even though it would play the beat sound, Melodi wouldn't sing and it was left to chance if it registered as a correct note (especially in the first CCI double line part).
CCI felt really difficult considering it's right after the tutorial, and all the other songs felt around the same difficulty.
I didn't have any problems with the overworld, although it kind of felt empty being so big but having only buildings for important areas with a couple of exceptions.
I liked the songs themselves, none of them sounded off (without taking into account me being horrible at rhythm games thus ruining Melodi occasionally).
Animations were really charming too, although it's a shame I couldn't look at them in full since I had to be constantly looking at the notes.
Take all of the gameplay criticisms with a grain of salt since as I've said I haven't played rhythm games in a while and as such, it's possible all of them are skill issues on my part. I hope the rest of development goes well for you.
true dat
in setting is a option for clear data and lol i cant walk when i beat Nami
pause then unpause it fixes it for all the levels that do that
Thanks man. i only tried accessing the options menu while ingame so i didnt really see that option.
bruh i just went to replay the game and the same happened to me
re-enter the game, the progress in Story Mode will not reset and the dialogue with Nami will simply continue
At random points in the game, game just softlocks for some reason.
the story mode map its really glitchy, you should patch that (i cant even see melodii
I'd like to second this, I tried playing and the map keeps going down! Was so excited to try the demo but this kept happening :(
To also back this, the random softlocks are so annoying
Same, the game needs a 2.0 patch ASAP
This game is so cute, exudes charm, and is an absolute blast to play! I will eagerly await the game's full release!
YAY
YOOOO ITS OUT!!!!!!
ОХУЕТЬ Я ПО ПРИКОЛУ ЗАШЕЛ А ИГРУ ВЫЛОЖИЛИ 23 МИНУТЫ НАЗАД
Things just fall together, when they're dropping by the rain.
Fever means it rocks, baby, four pops make a chain
Things just come together when their colors are the same:D
so puzzled
Listen up now, you own this town :D
https://lj-lephemstar.itch.io/scratchin-melodii/devlog/586578/progress-checkup-s...
listen up now, we own this town! :)
Clown look like Mr Monke put good game
can you make linux ver of this game piz
I didn't really know where else to put this, but I just wanted to blab about my thoughts while playing through all the songs a bunch of times. I'm coming from this as not a hardcore rhythm game player, but i have played a lot of them(i'm like in the middle), I also have experience with gamedev and testing.
I agree with some of the other comments that the difficulty spike from the tutorial to first battle is stark, mostly cause the tutorial doesn't teach the difference between single and double lines, something i didn't even notice was conveyed visually + labeled till after playing through all of them lol. So constantly I was confused on when it was my turn, and sometimes I didn't even realize it was my turn and would miss a whole line. I don't think it's clear enough when things switch, I imagine this might be fixed with there being more easier songs to build up the skill of reacting to the current visuals.
I don't understand why the portrait covers the end of the music line, I would consistently miss a note that was placed there or think the line was over when there was still a beat happening in that section. The overlap makes my brain think the line is shorter than it actually is. It being at like 50% opacity doesn't help, I'd rather it be tacked onto the end- there you could make it opaque. The play area should always be clear imo, unless it's being done to add difficulty.
Apologies for the big wall of text, or if you already know all of this. Overall though this is really good, once I did understand what was happening I enjoyed my time a lot.
I'm new to zip files, how do I open it to play this game?
copy the file then u will be able to play!
clck extract now extract all or it will break, then le it do its stuff thenn open the filles untill your see the gam
When will the SAGE 2023 DEMO arrive? I'm bored of waiting. At least let the exact date be known.