Reviews

Review by amarillion all reviews by amarillion

Wow, this is a great entry. It's clear that lots of work went into this.

There is a lot of content to explore. The game is set in a series of rooms connecting in a hallway that is covered with hexagonal 'redrum' carpet. There is lots of witty, fourth-wall breaking dialog full of random pop culture references. I love the robot model, which you inserted as a plug for your own work, which incongruously occupies one of the rooms. The game starts with overhead view, but for some rooms the camera shifts to a different perspective (e.g. birds eye view) which is a nice surprising effect.

There are a few puzzles I haven't been able to figure out. I have found a key in a maze in the cellar, and there is a locked door in your apartment. When I leave the maze, it says 'got it', but I still can't open the locked door.

The puzzles are quite basic - the puzzles are sokoban-like, but definitly not as difficult. The game uses a real physics engine for moving the blocks, and you can move blocks in any direction: push, pull, and sideways. This gives you great freedom but makes most puzzles easy. I believe more restrictive tile-based movement of blocks would have worked just as well, actually felt more precise, and would have allowed you to design more interesting puzzles. In some places it's also possible to glitch blocks into the hallway. Even though you control two players, I believe every puzzle can be solved solitary. This seems like an idea that was left unfinished.

The game is very quiet most of the time, until the moment that you start playing with the beats that you've collected, which is the whole goal of the game. I don't know if it was a conscious choice to keep the rest of the game without music - I can understand it fits the storyline, but it does make the rest of the game feel a bit less atmospheric than it could have been.

Another nitpick: the game uses a lot of buttons to control. There is a helpful explanation screen, but a bit more contextual help would be nice. To give an example, sometimes a dialog starts while you're trying to solve a puzzle. You can keep playing the game while the text is showing, so you can ignore it, and then you discover only later that there is a lot more dialog waiting for your key press.

But what I'm really missing is some sort of progress indicator. I managed to score up to 10210 so far, but it's not easy to find out if this is good or bad. There is at least one sample clearly missing for me (behind the locked door), and maybe there are others I haven't found yet.

Overall: 5. Excellent game, really playable. Lots to discover. The puzzles could be harder.
Art: 5. The puzzles with the 3D stairs, and the constant shifting perspective, give this a clear Escher vibe. The plug is cool. The game looks good and is stylish.
Tech: 3. Hexagons are there but I feel they're not that important to the game. There is some glitchiness in the 3D environment. For example, pushing blocks into the hallway. Also the hallway walls sometimes disappear and I'm not sure if that's on purpose.
Genre: 4. The writing on this is really funny.

Scores: Overall 5 Artistical 5 Technical 3 Genre 4

Review by marcdev30 all reviews by marcdev30

Very cool!

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 3 Technical 5 Genre 5

Review by Joiltt all reviews by Joiltt

We Lost The Beat features a truly astonishing amount of content for the time it was made in. Being a fully 3d experience, with multiple characters, a dialogue system, various interactive oddities and at least a dozen puzzles to solve.

At it heart, it is a block pushing puzzle game, where the perspective shifts around to make various interesting challenges for the player.

The menu mentioned something about a Music Composer area, which unfortunately I was unable to locate.

Truly a display of speed-hacking skill by its developer (or perhaps I am just an incurable slowpoke in comparison)

Scores: Overall 5 Artistical 5 Technical 5 Genre 4

Review by NiekZndt all reviews by NiekZndt

Very cool idea for a game. Overall it was very enjoyable, the art was cool and a great use of 3d space.
The game did have some bugs for example you could move blocks through walls and pull them out of the otherside to use them in other levels. At some point I could get my partner character stuck on a block and move him by moving the blocks. But overall the bugs didn't bother me too much.
The humor was basic but charming. I did find it annoying that the dialogue would prevent you from interacting with objects. So often I would just skip through the dialogue so that I could continue playing.
The controls were a bit confusing and it took me some time to figure them out. I feel like the game did miss some mechanics to fully utilise the game idea. I practically beat the game with only one character and didn't need to drop any items.
Another small design oversight was that you could finish all of the vertical levels with only the stairs. So you could just stick all the stairs in order from small to big and you would have your solution.

Luckily most of these points are easy fixes and I do think that with some more interesting levels and environments the game could be something bigger. Pretty good game.

Also I created this absolute masterpiece (pretty sure it's the highest score anyone can achieve): https://streamable.com/d55lcl

Scores: Overall 5 Artistical 5 Technical 4 Genre 3

Review by SiegeLord all reviews by SiegeLord

An interesting Sokoban-like puzzle game where you're collecting beat samples; while the puzzles were basic, I enjoyed the switched up camera angles, it reminded me of the old school PSX final fantasy games. I managed to collect quite a few samples (I missed the one behind the locked door because I forgot about it) and made a sick beat in the end (although it seemed that you couldn't edit the notes after they were placed). I ended up with a score of 3170, if I recall correctly.

I think my least favorite part of the game was the keyboard movement control scheme, as it was inverted (press left to move right etc). Otherwise, I enjoyed quite a bit!

The game authors inquired whether it made sense to push the game further... I'm not sure, the puzzles as they are are kind of basic. One interesting thing is that the different camera angles sometimes reveal what is harder to see in other rooms. Perhaps that can be leaned on more heavily.

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 4 Technical 4 Genre 3

Review by Tijzz all reviews by Tijzz

My first reaction: Awesome game! You really did a great job, especially in the limited time of the jam.

The art style is really cool. I am a big fan of pixel art and have personally never seen it used like this for the player character. The changing perspective on the players was very interesting and provides a lot of opportunities for unique gameplay. I am already thinking of ideas, maybe you first play the room top down, after which it switches to a more isometric view, revealing that some blocks are stairs. Lots of possibilities.

The puzzles where not that difficult, but fun. I think you hit a good balance there.
The characters were sometimes a little difficult to control in the 3D space (especially when trying to go through doors and sometimes when moving blocks around), but it was not a big deal.

There were two elements that can be improved. The first is the explanation of the player controls. It was sort of explained in the dialogue, but sometimes I clicked too fast and missed some explanation of the controls. This had me ramming the keyboard until I found the correct key. I later found out (at the end of the game) that everything was really well explained when pressing 'Esc'. Maybe you could just have a pop-up at the start that tells the player to press 'Esc' to see the controls.
A second improvement is in the music. I get that the concept of the game is to find the beat, but a game without music and very little sound effects is a no go. Music makes or breaks a game. Maybe in this case the beats could have a different implementation, for example adding a beat to the background song everytime you find one (this would require some music composing skills). But I adding some background music would really benefit the game.

The Escher rule has been implemented well, but could potentially be explored further with impossible staircases etc.
I am missing the hexagonal rule. You can find a hexagonal in the robot room, but that's all.
I see how you tried implementing the humor rule, but I think you could have added some more. Maybe adding some more interactable elements such as the poster (that one made me smile).

Lastly, you could maybe have added some sort of ending screen. (It could be that there is one, which I haven't discovered) After putting in the beats it just tells you your score. Adding an end screen just wraps up the game in my opinion. (You can have a button that allows the player to go back in and search for the remaining beats)

All in all, I think you did a wonderful job and created a game that you can definitely be proud of!

Scores: Overall None Artistical None Technical None Genre None