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SAGE 2022 - Demo Scratchin' Melodii (SAGE 2022 Demo)

General Information

ScratchinMelodiiThumbnail_extrasmall.png


General Information

Scratchin' Melodii
In this game, you're playing as the young DJ and musician, Melodii. After getting caught doing graffiti, they've gotta scratch up some melodies to pay debt for their felonies! Defeat your rivals to get to your jobs (Bosses) on time!

The current demo has:
1 tutorial level (Astral Advisory),
3 Rival Battles (Cream Cheese Icing, Nami.WAV, Stir & Mix),
And 1 Boss Battle (Grease Poppin').

You can play through it all with the rpg-inspired Story Mode* or select songs as you please with Quick-Groove!

*(The story mode overworld isn't super populated at the moment, but rest assured that will change in the future.)


You can play through it all with the rpg-inspired Story Mode or select songs as you please with Quick-Groove!

TROUBLESHOOTING

"Why isn't my controller mapped right?"

If your control isn't working properly, you should try restarting the game or adding the game to your Steam Library as a non-Steam game.*

Other possible reasons for controller issues may include: DS4Windows running (Ps4 controller), playing game natively while Steam is running in background (NS Pro Controller), Controller not player 1

How to add non-Steam games to your Steam Library*

"I'm experiencing a bit of lag."
From my testing, I've only experienced hiccups at the beginning of a song when I have a program open that's using up a lot of my PC's power while the game is trying to run (Usually the Unity Editor). BUT, if you do run into any a quick "Retry" from the pause menu should let the game run everything smoothly from there. Try turning the quality down in the Options menu if needed as well!

Mechanics

"If the LINE stays BLUE, you repeat the bar. If the LINE turns PINK you support bar."
The "Rhythm Box" will change colors depending on how you're expected to react to your opponent or mentor's notes.

If it's blue, repeat their notes back on your turn!

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If it's pink, you'll both have a turn at the same time and you'll have your own set of notes to do! (Don't worry much about what your mentor is doing on these!)

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Always feel free to throw in a little "extra style" to improve your score!


Your "Fidelity" is your health. If you're doing well, you'll be "Hi-Fi".
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GOOD! -> OKAY! -> BAD!

All of this will sound less insane once you see it in action for yourself. Stay on the beat and you'll be just fine! Good luck!
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Latest reviews

This was an interesting little gem to trip over this year. Very Parappa inspired. I don't have too much to say that hasn't been said so far. I adore the game's aesthetic. It feels like a Parappa game but with the art style of the Rhythm Heaven games. I love how dynamic all the background animations are during the songs, but its a little unfortunate that it's difficult to fully pay attention to them when you're being bombarded by a butt load of notes. Not a gripe against the game or anything.

Now, as far as gripes ago, I will echo what I've seen on some of the other reviews. Holy heck, it is jarring to be suddenly switched to Pink/Support Mode with zero warning and just fumble everything cuz I wasn't prepared for it. The only suggestion I can think of off the top of my head is to change that big circle at the end of each bar/line. It's almost always just a pink circle with Melodii or the Rival's face in the center. Make the circle blue or pink depending on what color the next bar is going to be. That circle is big a very noticeable. You could use that to warn the player of what's coming next.

As far the shortened bars in Nami's stage, I'll actually disagree with the complaints there. While it IS jarring the first few times cuz the game never warns you that that could happen, I've noticed these shortened or half bars or whatever you wanna call em have the dotted lines in their bars abruptly stop halfway. You can see it coming if you notice the dotted line cuts off abruptly. At most, I think you should put a tutorial that warns the player that that can happen.

Those issues aside, I'm interested in this game now. Definitely sharing this with friends.

EDIT:
ALRIGHT! Right after writing that, I redid the tutorial and another stage and I JUST noticed that the game DOES tell you what type of line is next on the top left. Also quickly figured out what those two sliders on the left meant. The sliders seems to just be there to judge your performance and freestyling so I don't think those need to be changed. But the "Next" indicator needs to be much more visible and the tutorial needs to also point it out for the player. That alone would make the sudden shifts to Pink Bars less sudden and violent for the player. Although, I still think that some of the Pink Bars shouldn't have notes near the beginning of the bar. Even knowing they're coming, they can still violently blindside the player. Jamtine's Stage, Stir and Mix, is the biggest offender of this. Without knowing they're coming, you're guaranteed to fail those bars. Even knowing the Pink Bar is coming, you're going to fail the two where the first note is near the start of the bar and that last Pink Bar because of how fast the song is.
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how do i play it?
i found this game on youtube, and after trying it out for a bit i can say that i like it, somewhat. the songs are great and fun to play.

at least, most of the time. the biggest flaw has to be pink lines by far. they feel flawed by design, and that is solely because you're expected to react to new information on a dime (as opposed to a blue line, where you have the entirety of the rival's turn to process the information coming toward you). this is fine in songs with slow bpm or when the support section gives you enough reaction time, but does not mix well with a song such as stir and mix (pun not intended), which expects you to react fast to notes you can't read in time, making for some really not fun blind playthroughs.

an idea i had to fix this was to let the player see a pink bar (in a preview shown during the line before it, perhaps through an "overwriting" effect where the new bar reveals itself as the current bar progresses?) before being forced to play it, this wouldn't work great always as in most cases you would be too busy focusing on the current line, but just a thought.

a few other issues that made things slightly more complicated, but not as high priority like the pink bar issue:

figuring out the length of a blue bar isn't always straightforward, and i was caught off-guard by the half-bar that nami.wav uses

the settings menu is annoying to navigate, i could never figure out where the cursor was, could never figure out how to switch tabs, and could never figure out how to actually reach the option which changes the screen resolution (are mouse controls for just menus not something unity can do?)

perhaps it's just my hardware, but the game felt buggy at times. i couldn't progress through the story without getting a random freeze after one of the first cutscenes, and other times certain things failed to render (usually being controls and helpful ui elements in the menus) leaving me confused and usually following up with a freeze.

being on lo-fi can be quite disorienting with the beeping added, which personally has caused me to screw up even more and turn a "last chance comeback opportunity" into a "last struggle of despair", if it was meant to help the player with getting the rhythm back there are much easier ways to do it



now, i'll add a few things that are done very well as well:

the songs are great, some may not find them great, taste is subjective, personally i find them great and it sounds like a lot of effort was put into them

just the fact that controls show what you actually have them bound to during a song is helpful, makes for a much easier experience than, say, playing parappa the rapper with an xbox controller



i feel this game has a lot of potential, loads of it even, it's just that pink bars feel flawed in multiple ways which hurts the game substantially.
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Comments

Will the final game have custom controller support? My Xbox controller is currently in for repairs so I've been using a Pokken Tournament controller (for Wii U, not Switch) and the game doesn't recognize it at all.
 
Will the final game have custom controller support? My Xbox controller is currently in for repairs so I've been using a Pokken Tournament controller (for Wii U, not Switch) and the game doesn't recognize it at all.
Yes, that is planned! Not sure when it will be implemented, as it would require new assets and such, but until then you might be able to resolve this with the Steam solution mentioned in the troubleshooting section of the game's page. Thanks for playing and sorry for the inconvenience!
 
Loved the game, the music is great and the visuals are so pretty! Quick question, is it only possible to enter freestyle mode in the boss battle? I was trying to access it in the rival battles to no avail, so I just wanna know if there's something I'm not doing right or if it just isn't in the rival battles. But yeah, I'm super excited to see more from this game in the future!
 
Loved the game, the music is great and the visuals are so pretty! Quick question, is it only possible to enter freestyle mode in the boss battle? I was trying to access it in the rival battles to no avail, so I just wanna know if there's something I'm not doing right or if it just isn't in the rival battles. But yeah, I'm super excited to see more from this game in the future!
Yes, at the moment freestyle mode is accessible in the boss battle. Thanks!!
 
once again this game never disapointed me
i already made a review last year when the first demo first came out and i checked it out once again to see what changed based on my "flaws points" i will start with them first:

last review i mentioned the game defeculty level i will be honnest i think the gameplay got a little more smoth and improved from last time

i also mentioned the games settings and how(sorry about these harsh words)unorginized it is but now its better


anyways now that moved out of sight let talk about the real deal what got my eye in this new demo

the gameplay never changed it still that great nostalgia rollercoster to my favourite childhood rythm game with your wonderfull flavour added to it

the cartoony art style made the characters both old and you main or NPC really charming i really love how each character look like and i can see how their design represents there personality and who they really are cuz afterall the artstyle is what got my eye in this game

the OST is still great and funky and now with the addition of the two new songs the playlist is getting more and more larger with great beat

and speaking of OST and characters let me talk about them along side the levels cuz what i noticed is that how the first act levels are kinda like a big intro to the game

  • the tutorial stage is to learn about the games mechanic
    level 1 is put those tutorials in play which explain why the level was short and easy
    level 2(which is have for now my favourite OST) is smooth and lovely
    level 3 is fast and chaotic in which layout and song could also represents that levels charater's personality so it gives the player a harder challenge now that they are getting used with the game
    boss stage is putting all those 3 skills you earned in one to test you
finally the story mode that i was much exited about since last demo let keep it short i enjoyed it alot even tho its was huge and a little empty but you already said the overworld is a subject to change so need to cry about it
i really loved every thing from it how it explained the games plot the jokes,references and easteregg everything

but ofc i cant keep it all positive there are some things that need to complined which are not too much
just a couple of bugs that i think you get them out soon


anyways i know this is a really long article i need to say everthing i got but agin i really loved the game and i cant wait for the next update keep iy up with the good vibes maan and take care
 
Really fun game and I really enjoyed it. It's very charming and I love the new song additions from last time. Music is super, super catchy, Stir and Mix is playing in my head right now! Animation is great and full of personality, I bursted out laughing in Stir and Mix when the butter turned huge and started dancing in the middle and Jamtine and Melodii just stare wide mouthed in shock. The characters also feel very real and I love that. The visual style of the game is very distinct, combining simple 3D, beautiful 2D animation and much more. This creates an almost surreal visual style that leaves me intrigued and wanting to see even more. I also appreciate some of the smaller touches like little jokes in the game such as the Thunder, Rain and Lightning joke. Controller support worked a charm also.

All in all, I really enjoyed it. The only suggestions I have for growth areas are:
  • perhaps a replay button so we can watch our runs again
  • for the main world, perhaps making it feel a bit more alive, but again this is a demo so I suspect you'll fix it upon release of the full game.
  • maybe a freestyle mode where you can do your own rap to each song where it plays the instrumental and we can freestyle, would be cool but not sure whether it is actually a good idea (up to your discretion)
I can imagine this game doing well commercially and it would absolutely deserve it. I love the little details sprinkled throughout the game all the love and care that's gone into it. I've already had so much fun replaying the levels trying to get to A or S rank. I look forward to the day when I can play the full game. Tested it on Steam Deck and ran great under Proton, only issue that the dev may want to be aware of is that sometimes there were a few visual issues, like the screen whites out for transitions, it only whites out a portion of the screen - I assume this is because the white out is rendered in a 16:9 aspect ratio, whereas the Deck is slightly taller at 16:10 so you see a white rectangular block cover the screen during transitions but can see what is happening behind the scenes beneath it. I assume this is something the dev intended to fix anyway and will fix this minor issue in the near future. Cannot wait to see the full game from the dev, keep the amazing work up! One question though, in Nami.wav, what's with the Wii pointer randomly appearing, did I miss something?
 
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Encountered a bit of a glitch by spamming buttons where I was able speed up menus which then keeps everything else sped up after, can't remember how exactly I did it but thought it was worth you knowing:
 
Okay, so I can tell this game feels really good! Visually the game is beautiful, the animations look superb and the music (from what I've heard so far) sounds great! But honestly, I could only barely get past the first battle against the siblings and after that I had to stop. Initially, I was using an Xbox controller to play but quickly realised I don't know the layout enough to stand a chance in the game, so I restarted with my Nintendo Switch controller only to find out I had just switched the game to hard mode; every face button prompt that appeared on screen was reversed, so while the game was telling me to press "B" I actually needed to press "A" and vice versa. The same applied for "X" and "Y" and wasn't just happening during the songs but also in the overworld.

This made playing the game super frustrating, especially since I was looking forward to this one. Overall this feels like a great game that I, unfortunately, couldn't play due to this issue. Thank you for reading, and now I'm off to curse console manufacturers for always mixing up the face button placement on their controllers.
 
Okay, so I can tell this game feels really good! Visually the game is beautiful, the animations look superb and the music (from what I've heard so far) sounds great! But honestly, I could only barely get past the first battle against the siblings and after that I had to stop. Initially, I was using an Xbox controller to play but quickly realised I don't know the layout enough to stand a chance in the game, so I restarted with my Nintendo Switch controller only to find out I had just switched the game to hard mode; every face button prompt that appeared on screen was reversed, so while the game was telling me to press "B" I actually needed to press "A" and vice versa. The same applied for "X" and "Y" and wasn't just happening during the songs but also in the overworld.

This made playing the game super frustrating, especially since I was looking forward to this one. Overall this feels like a great game that I, unfortunately, couldn't play due to this issue. Thank you for reading, and now I'm off to curse console manufacturers for always mixing up the face button placement on their controllers.
Switching to the NS controller layout in the game's Options menu should help with that, thanks for playing!!
 
It seems like HUD doesn't properly work on aspect ratios other than 16:9. I only noticed this when a friend streamed their gameplay and they were running in 16:9, but on my 16:10 monitor some elements are improperly cut off (such as the health display not aligning with the background image, which gets cut off). The main menu also doesn't render properly at the very top and bottom. The rest of the main gameplay works fine, so it would be nice to get that fixed.
 
I really have to say, that game was really amazing I even got an S rank on all of the songs and got through the demo of the story mode and I just can't wait to see what will be coming up for the second act of the story mode. Oh yeah one more thing I just found another error in the game, for the music box that you play that is already open and get the same sticker you got before will freeze your game, so you guys better watch out for that.
 

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