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

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.

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.