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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.
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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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Easily one of the hidden gems of SAGE.

Honestly, I feel this game has really high potential. There are things here I've enjoyed more than Parappa.

I guess in an attempt to help you knock this one out of the park, I should give some feedback on the glaring flaws right now.
The movement is really janky. I played on a controller, and the game really wasn't responding well to an analog stick, and then it also didn't respond well to the D-Pad. Sometimes diagonals work, sometimes not, vertical movement feels faster than horizontal, I'd get kind of stuck on random corners, etc.
Also, I'd definitely recommend scaling that map way down (literally scaling it down), it's very disorienting seeing these huge streets, and just makes me feel directionless.

Though I'd say the main problem right now is definitely conveying better to the player when they'll get to play. Sometimes I have to repeat after one bar, sometimes after 2, and sometimes after half (!!). Sometimes the notes for supporting are too faded for me to read on time (sometimes I can't see them at all). Changes happen way too fast. There should be better indications of what's coming next before I need to actually do it. After you know the song, it gets a LOT easier, but during the first time it really makes you feel like you're just guessing.

I guess if I could spitball some ideas here, you could probably eliminate the half-bar repetitions (or visually convey them differently), and animating the UI could help create the anticipation for when the player's turn is coming. Also, you should definitely add some options to make the track bigger on screen, even if it covers the amazing animation.
Change between repeat and support could be a big flipping animation or something on the track, to really change the player's mindset. Supporting could also have the buttons visualization changed. For instance, maybe instead of ghost notes the player must match (which makes sense for the Repeat sections), have the buttons appear solid and bigger, and have the player smash through them when they get it right.

The above is very much just me brainstorming at 1AM after being mesmerized by this cool demo, so if something seems weird, just ignore it.

And honestly, my feedback is just because I really wish for this game to be the great game that is underneath it all. I love everything about the vibe, the songs, the little synthesized voices. It's great. Kudos to everyone involved!
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  • It was lagging for me personally and I assume it was because I couldn't resize the window (I couldn't figure out how to do so in the settings, if you can).
  • The actual mechanics of the game is inconsistent from the tutorial (I only played the quick play so I don't know if they were explained in the story mode).
  • I really dig the visuals and the music is pretty catchy. Hearing the actual singer on the V.S. Nami level made me realize it would be nice to here real people on all of them, but I assume they are vocaloids for the sake of expenses and I think they're fine anyways.
  • The gameplay could possibly stand to improve from Parappa the Rappa in the sense that it makes more sense, but wanting to allow people to freestyle to the beat means you have to sacrafice that clarity I suppose.
  • I would give this a 8/10 if my game wasn't lagging 😅, really cool stuff so far~
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First impressions:
  • At startup the game blew my ears out when I had my volume at 60%, forcing me to navigate to the options menu and turn the in-game volume down to about 25% to be at a reasonable volume
  • Taste is subjective but the music was overall mediocre, with vocals being extremely difficult to understand without subtitles (save for one track: Nami.WAV)
  • There needs to be a better indication of when your turn is coming so there's less surprise when you're given the floor
  • The world map in Story Mode isn't necessary. A stage select would have sufficed, or just cut out the map and leave the scenes in.
Parappa the Rapper this is not. This game tries to follow in that game's footsteps while throwing in some spins of its own, and frankly it falls flat as it is. My main gripe is that despite seeing what I need to do, it feels that I'm just thrown into the action without preparation, leading to bouts of surprise when I realize it's my turn to play. Fortunately this did not cause me to fail out most of the songs, but it was still annoying that I'm just suddenly told to play without proper advance notice. This leads me to simply watch the play line with sharp eyes and not pay any mind to whatever shenanigans the characters are getting up to.

The music's instrumentals were fine, but the vocals need serious fixing, because as they sound now they actually ruin the songs themselves, which only exacerbates my problem with the gameplay. It's bad enough that I have to keep watching the line to figure out when I'm supposed to play, but throw in a soundtrack with irritating vocals that sound like mumbling than anything else, and it only further sours my mood.

Story Mode's map feels unnecessary in both size and function. It's meant to connect the songs together while giving you a chance to talk to NPCs for worldbuilding purposes, but all this does is needlessly break the pacing of the game, especially considering how slow you move even when riding your keyboard. I would have preferred if the game only had cutscenes to break up the songs instead of having to walk through miles of road to do the same thing.

The characters and writing are charming, I guess, with each rival having distinct personalities and interesting interactions with Melodii to justify wanting to get into a music battle with them. The non-rival NPCs are far less interesting by comparison, except for the neighbor, because he's the only one you're forced to talk to and you get some actually useful advice out of him. It's all presented with a fine enough art style and nice, smooth, and snappy animation.

Overall, I was not impressed, to put it lightly. It feels like more work was put into making the game charming than actually play well.
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WOW! this game is still such a vibe! I can feel the personality out of every song, character and menu UI.
I played this last year and still love it!

pros:
+STORY MODE YES! It's simple but fun!
+I'm super glad you didn't take my advice from last year and follow the trend of a FNF mod. This game is so much more than that.
+the failure screens made me chuckle and wanted to keep going.
+woah I just noticed the quick play songs play the jingle of the main songs! that's really cool!
+in fact, the animations were so good! I loved all of the songs and story moments from it started to ended.
(I couldn't finish grease popin on normal last year but now I finally have!)

improvement opinions/bugs?:
-(in overworld) using the hoverkeyboard while turning direction will make a strange after image.
-the overworld is a little big, either make the keyhoverboard a little faster or make the world a little smaller or add more NPCs in there.
-after repeating the story mode and waking up, you can use the hoverkeyboard without picking it up.
-also picking up the sticker (at least during my 2nd playthrough, it would not open the pause menu or
the sticker menu)

Nami.wav is my personal favorite song, vaporwaves and oceans are a great vibe.
Whatever plans you have for this game I wholeheartedly look forward to it!
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YOU RAPPIN' COOL!

The game is absolutely oozing style and charm. Love the inclusion of a adventure game style world map to explore and interact with the bizarre cast. Music is very catchy and the mix of quick rival battles in between proper boss stages is a great way to up the song count. There are a few bugs and the open world is a little too big with not much proper direction but it's only a demo, so I'm sure that'll be improved in the final game. We really don't get enough proper Parappa style games, so this is THE ONE to watch out for.
Oh my god, this game is so greaaaaaat!
The art style is cute as hell and the music was also catchy as hell! I had a lot of fun with the songs, even tho I had a bit of a difficult time with it XD. It was also full of funny moments and fun characters! I can't wait to see what this will come to be!
The only criticisms I have is that I had some trouble hearing the vocals in some songs and the overworld map was a bit empty in some places. Still, everyone should check this out because just this demo contains so much passion and fun to be had!
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