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[TheFuntastic]

TRAILER:


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CADENCE WEBSITE
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Born out of the minimalism themed Ludum Dare 26 - I've been working on Cadence for about five months full time. The game's come a long way, but still has a way to go.

So far my biggest challenge has been taming the wildly emergent and often confusing play space into package and format such that people don't get overwhelmed and experience the joy of experimentation and music creation. It's been quite a challenge so far, and I still discover something new every single time I watch someone play the game.

STEAM GREENLIGHT! - Currently in need of all the votes!

ONLINE ALPHA - (Unity web player)

[ashtonmorris]

I really like what you have so far! I love audio games or puzzles and am always wishing there were more of them. There is definitely room for innovation in that genre, and untapped potential for it.

Controlling it seems to be pretty smooth and intuitive as well, I had no problems figuring out how to do anything with the demo.

I will definitely be following and will upvote on greenlight. Not sure if you are a musician as well but, if I could be of any assistance or you had any questions I'd be hapy to help.

Keep it up!

[metlslime]

Nice concept. Some ideas/suggestions:

- Levels shouldn't have any 3 nodes in a straight line, because if you connect A directly to C, it passes through B which is visually ambiguous.

- To delete a link, how about just clicking on it instead of dragging from the start node to end node?

- highlighting links or nodes when the mouse hovers over them would be good feedback.

- For people that like to learn by experimenting, it would be nice to have a faster way to get past the tutorials -- maybe just a "skip tutorial" button.  The text at the bottom of the page already gives 95% of the information i need in an efficient way.  And the only remaining things, which are what each node does, and what happens when two pulses collide, can be learned by trying stuff.

- I beat the first level but it doesn't recognize my solution, is this not implemented yet?

EDIT: I guess the level I beat without being recognized is technically level 2.

[acatalept]

I really like the concept and execution, the minimalist aesthetic and musical basis are right up my alley.

But I'm feeling a little dense ;)  Maybe this is lack of sleep/caffeine, but I'm not quite getting the mechanic, esp on the more complex puzzles: exactly why a solution works, or equally why an "incorrect" solution doesn't work.

If nothing else, I would gladly pay for a copy just to create little musical sequences, especially if there's some sort of "sandbox" / free play mode.  This sort of interface would make for a very interesting synth/sequencer ;)

You have my vote!

[TheFuntastic]

Thanks for all the replies:

@ashtonmorris glad you found it intuitive. A lot of people struggle, but a sign the tutorial is getting there

@metlslime a lot of good points!
- 3 nodes in a line. I totally need to solve that.
- deleting a link - good suggestion. Though the current way makes sense with future features I have planned.
- Yeah, the tutorial is not 100%. I'm working on it
- By first level, do you mean the one where it's still trying to teach you about drawing nodes? If that's the case thanks for finding this bug

@acatalept Don't worry. It's a complicated game - making sure everyone understands is my challenge. Yes there will be a sandbox mode!

[Nandrew]

Hey all, it's been a while since we've updated here but there's one or two cool announcements that Made With Monster Love would like to put out.

First off: my name's Rodain Joubert and I've just hopped onto the Cadence team, bringing over design experience from Desktop Dungeons to buff up the puzzle aspects and 'feel' of the game.

This has allowed the company's other half to make considerable progress on the audio engine, and a sneak preview of its capabilities can be found in our first published Developer Chronicle:




We'll be making more regular updates from this point onward, so if you're keen to see this project evolve rapidly, now is the time to hop aboard and keep tabs on our progress. We hope to make this thread a lot more active and exciting in the coming months.

[TheFuntastic]

Cadence got Greenlit yesterday! Thanks everybody who voted! :D

To be honest though my feelings about it are mixed. On the one hand there is a sense of validation - my game's going to be on steam! I'm a real developer now! But at the same time it's tempered by the fact that being greenlit means less and less. Steam have adopted a policy greenlighting 75 games every two weeks. Whilst there are still a 1500 games in the greenlight queue, it's clear the floodgates are starting to open.

Comparing the number of yes votes on my game to a very early Greenlight game (Broforce), I needed an order of magnitude less (round about 5600 yes votes). This leads to a situation where I haven't heard of a single one the fellow Greenlight games in my batch. Many of them seem...not good. In this sense the goal posts have shifted. Yes Steam is democratizing, and this is good. But getting on Steam itself is no longer a means to an end.

You now need to catch Steam's eye not for distribution, but so you can secure critical shelf space on launch. When they open the user curated store fronts, none of that will change. As ever effectively marketing your game remains a matter of indie life and death...

[Nandrew]

Hey all! Bringing you some more positive vibes from the Made With Monster Love crew!

As we work towards our next playable release, we've continued efforts on the Cadence developer diaries and have our next episode freshly-pressed here:



For viewers who want a little more substance and knowledge-trawling, this will be a much more satisfying video that goes into the technical aspects of our audio stuff in much more detail (Peter knows more about it than I do, but explains it in a way that even my monkey brain can understand).

If you've been following Cadence closely, you'll also see some background evidence of how our puzzle and music creation skills have been bolstered. Stuff is starting to sound more like full melodies/loops rather than cute one-note-at-a-time ditties! :D

[Nandrew]

If any of you are keen on comparing some hard mechanical techniques, I'd love to bring your attention to our latest dev diary vid, where I offer an overview of something I like to call "Parallel Prototyping":



I strongly doubt that we're one of the first to think of this, so I'd like to know how this has worked out for others who've tried the concept, for whatever reason.

[acatalept]

Just wow.  I'm so floored by the audio work under the hood, how well it works in-game, and hell, how simply nice it sounds. 

And really liking the videos, keep them coming!