Despite not having a lot of time/energy to throw around this month, I somehow managed to finish working on level 5-5, tentatively titled "Brilliant Boulevard":
As is usual with the last level in each world, there are no new mechanics here, so it's just combining everything from the previous levels and amping up the difficulty. The tempo is significantly faster than the slower-paced level 5-4, which makes the chart a lot more dense in terms of inputs.
For visuals, I experimented somewhat aimlessly with different shapes until I settled on this sort of "spiked" design, mirroring the top and bottom so it kind of feels like stalactites and stalagmites. It's reminiscent of the design from level 5-1, just with different shapes. Again my lack of visual "complexity" is showing here with the simplistic shapes -- the visual detail really lies in the layering (translucency!) and parallax scrolling.
I also experimented with having syncopated / offbeat spike enemies in the tail end of this level (so far they've only been on downbeats). Normally this is a little hard to read, but adding the green enemies actually makes it fine since it gives you a static marker to read the rhythm (even if the spike enemies were invisible you could still play this section fine):
This is one of those curious instances where adding additional obstacles (having green enemies, instead of just rolling spike enemies) actually makes the chart easier, not harder. There are many types of possible difficulty in Rhythm Quest charting ("random" notes that lack patterns would be incredibly awkward and difficult to read), but I'm following rather specific charting philosophies in order to feature difficulty in the "right" ways -- at least, for the main campaign.
That wraps up the entirety of world 5, which means next up I'll have to find some sort of musical and visual identity for world 6, where I'm supposed to introduce triplet-based speed zones!
Devlog 51 - Levels 5-2, 5-3, 5-4
The bad news is that it's been 2 months since my last devlog post! The good news is that I've finished 3 entire levels in that time:
Level 5-2
This level introduces green enemies that are placed at the beginning of a flight path, so you need to pretty both buttons and hold down the jump button as you do:
As with level 5-1, I wanted to try using large partially-translucent shapes for the backdrop. One of my experiments while drawing level 5-1 was these large circular bubble shapes that I didn't end up using, so I used them here instead, along with an "undersea" theme.
Level 5-3
In this level we have green enemies combined with spike enemies:
We also get green enemies plus water columns:
Visually, I decided to stick to the generally "geometric" theme for backdrops (matching level 5-1 pretty closely) and just used a bunch of thick lines at 45-degree angles that form a sort of maze-line pattern. Again, there's large translucent shapes at play here.
Level 5-4
Level 5-4 introduces the tricky notion of placing a green enemy at the =end= of a flight path, so you need to release the jump button while pressing the attack button. This can be pretty tricky to get the hang of, so I made sure to dial the tempo back for this level to compensate.
For the visuals here I kept things pretty simple and just used translucent rectangle shapes with colored borders. It may seem like I'm being lazy here, but at least I've managed to get away from the big cloud layers that I was seemingly using in every level for worlds 2 and 4!
The patterns in world 5 actually introduce a new physical tapping motion, so I can see the potential for mixed reception of the charts and mechanics here -- something that I'll have to prove out and test in future user tests. For now, though, there's only one more level to complete in world 5, which means I'm about 80% done with all of the 30 main levels in the game! Level 5-5 won't have any new mechanics, just putting together everything on display that we've encountered so far.
Unfortunately there are some extenuating circumstances going on in my life that are pulling my attention a little bit away from Rhythm Quest. This isn't anything new (I had similar "real life" stuff to deal with in January, and late last year as well), just thought I'd note it in case anyone wonders why things might feel a little more quiet around here for a bit. My current focus is still on finishing out the 30 main levels before I turn back toward polish and other game features.
Rhythm Quest Demo v0.26.3 Released
The Rhythm Quest Demo has been updated to version 0.26.3! This patch fixes accessibility cue volume and makes some other minor tweaks.
Full changelog:
Version 0.26.3 - Fixed audio cue volume balance not affecting music/sfx volume - Slightly increased saturation for wing sprites - Fixed enemies sometimes fading in suddenly on respawn - Fixed minor texture rendering issue during respawns - Fixed level 1-1 tutorial not respecting screen filter - Changed menu player control behavior - Minor menu tweaks
Devlog 50 - Level 5-1
I've completed work on level 5-1, tentatively titled "Gleaming Glassway"! This is the first level in world 5 (Crystal Caverns). I've got a =ton= to talk about for this level, but first, here's a video of a full playthrough of it:
Mechanical Identity
World 5 is going to focus on the green "combo" enemies where you need to press attack and jump simultaneously. There are a bunch of different ways in which these can be used, such as:
By themselves In the middle of an air jump pattern Combined with the beginning of a flight path (press attack + hold jump) Combined with the end of a flight path (press attack + release jump) In combination with a spike enemy Mixed in with water zones / ghost enemies
I'm hoping to introduce these slowly over the course of the world, especially the flight path-related ones since those might be tricky to get a handle on.
Musical References
I've been trying to mull over musical style ideas for world 5 for a while now, and only recently had much success settling on something. I don't know exactly how to describe it succinctly, but it draws a little bit on "kawaii bass" influences, featuring big synth chord stacks that are sidechained to the kick drum.
World 4 was pretty "lush" and "atmospheric" in its overall sound so I wanted to contrast that a little by going for something a little more punchy and crisp. Not "dry" like the 8-bit style of world 3, but something a little more "upfront" if that makes sense. I referenced things like the vibe of the chorus in nachi - 賢者の極北 (Nhato Remix) and especially the big chords in the drops of Snail's House - Pixel Galaxy and did a sketch called "Flight Experiments" during One Hour Compo. That sketch worked out really well, so I took most of the same ideas and put them into the track for level 5-1.
Block Chords
The main chorus features these characteristic chord stacks that I was mentioning earlier, along with some added arps to spice things up a bit. After freeing ourselves from the pentatonic scale limitation that I used in world 4, it's nice to go back to using 7ths and 9ths everywhere in these chords:
https://rhythmquestgame.com/devlog/50-chords.mp3
One interesting issue that came up with writing these sections was the rhythmic structure of the second chorus, which initially sounded like this with a "four on the floor" beat:
It sounds okay, but in the context of the game, those first three quarter note chords (red enemies) are quite boring. In fact, the attack/jump patterns here go along with the main rhythm of the block chords, so there's really only one thing going on, which makes it very...monotonous, rhythmically. I ended up changing the drum beat around, adding another bassline layer, and ended up with this instead:
The tweak is subtle, but I think having two different rhythmic things going on at once really helps make it less boring and one-note.
Musical Cues
Writing Rhythm Quest music is fascinating because there are rough rules that I find and discover for myself, but they usually aren't very strict. There are common patterns that I'll use a lot -- for example, flight paths are usually represented by sustained notes -- but those aren't always true: flight paths are sometimes represented by arpeggio patterns instead.
It's the same thing with these green enemies. Sometimes I represent them in the music with chords (jump + attack at the same time = 2 notes at the same time), but I've also developed 16th note rhythms that I've started to use for them instead:
https://rhythmquestgame.com/devlog/50-16ths.mp3
Other Details
I actually really love everything going on in this song, there are so many little details here and there that I want to talk about that I enjoyed putting in.
One is this washed out glassy synth layer in the background that fills everything out and provides another element of rhythmic contrast. Here's what the first chorus sounds like =without= that synth:
Listening to the first example you might not think that anything is "missing", but I really feel like this element helps fill in the space effectively even though it's in the background.
Just one more audio snippet for you all:
https://rhythmquestgame.com/devlog/50-outro.mp3
You'll notice that some of the leads have different timbres here than in earlier worlds -- I'm going to be trying to use alternate waveforms for my leads in world 5 to break away from the pulse/square waves that I use all the time.
Really love the high filtered noise fill that happens midway through this snippet as well, that's just a simple synthesizer using white noise that goes through a high-pass filter. Also, there's that glassy synth line in the background again!
Visual Identity
World 4 used a lot of these translucent cloud layers (easy to draw!) to provide a lot of depth and adding additional colors to the scene without actually increasing the number of colors in my main palette (still always limited to 4 or 8 at a time!):
I knew I wanted to do something different in world 5, but I still liked the translucency effects, so I decided to take a different spin on it and instead of clouds, thought about other large transparent shapes, like bubbles and gemstones:
So here instead of having large bright cloud layers, I'm using geometric shapes (triangles, circles, diamonds) and using decorative outlines with translucent fill areas.
You'll notice a lot of parallax scrolling with the light beams, which I think really makes the scene click visually. They vary in width, sorting layer, and color/intensity, so they create nice subtle visual appeal when they scroll past / through each other.
Something else you'll notice is that the ground is also partially transparent here! I happened to stumble upon this idea and I think it really works for this world to set it apart from the others. It also makes it much easier to create visual interest on the bottom half of the screen since you get to see the (mirrored) bottom half of all the backdrops now.
I actually ran into some issues when I first implemented this, since my level generation code previously generated overlapping ground areas in some cases. This wasn't an issue when the ground was just a single opaque color, but when it's translucent, it's a problem:
Luckily, those cases weren't too rough to track down and fix.
During the chorus sections, I spawn simple diamond-shaped particles that fade in and out as they scroll by. Simple effect, but it fits the aesthetic of the level nicely and provides another element of parallax scrolling to add depth.
Menu Work
Since this is a new world, I also needed a new menu theme for it. Here's a video of the transition between world 4 and world 5, so you can see what that sound like when you unlock world 5:
Again, you can hear the use of block chords and sidechaining here, same ideas as within the level itself. I really like how different all of the menu themes are; you can actually hear my styles evolving and shifting over the course of the years as I work on the game and experiment with new sounds.
That's it for now! Next up is going to be level 5-2, which is probably going to start touching on green enemies + flight paths!
Rhythm Quest Demo v0.26.1 Released
The Rhythm Quest Demo has been updated to version 0.26.1! This patch implements some minor bugfixes and quality of life tweaks, as well as updated Sayuri sprites and a new Vietnamese localization.
Full changelog:
Version 0.26.1 - Updated Sayuri sprites to properly feature her ears - Added "Perfect Clear Mode" / disable checkpoint setting in cheats - Auto play mode no longer saves progress - Buffer pause inputs during respawn - Added Vietnamese translation - Fixed bug that prevented click input on initial calibration screen - Select TTS voice based on language for OSX - Allow/implement pausing during level 1-1 tutorial sequence - Fixed position warping bug when game loses focus or fails to update
New level added to demo! (v0.26.0 release)
The Rhythm Quest Demo has been updated to version 0.26.0! As thanks for reaching 10,000+ wishlists on Steam, this update includes a brand new level in the demo, level 3-4, which features the purple "ghost" enemy mechanic!
Full changelog:
Version 0.26.0 - Made level 3-4 avilable in the demo! - Added missing pixel font diacritics for Polish - Fixed Chinese, Ukranian localizations not forcing smooth font for low resolutions - Save data validation tweaks - Text wrap/padding tweaks - Fixed doubled web browser link opens - Fixed calibration squares sometimes not flashing - Tweak graphics settings submenu layout - Prevent mixing of different pixel fonts for unicode/non-unicode glyphs - Keyboard bind displays now account for keyboard layout
Happy holidays, everyone! I've got another new level to show off today, but before we get into that, I'd like to celebrate the awesome milestone of hitting 10,000 wishlists on Steam!
I'm really astounded by how much traction the game and demo have gotten so far (despite being admittedly mediocre at effective promotion). Of course, Steam is not the only platform that matters to me (iOS, Android, Switch, itch.io), but it's the one with the most defined marketing metrics, so it's a nice way of getting a pulse on interest.
As a celebration and thank you for hitting 10,000 wishlists, I'm planning to add one more level in the Rhythm Quest Demo soon -- probably something like level 3-4 that involves the multi-hit ghost enemies. That would bring the demo content to 9 levels in total. There are 30 levels in the game, so that is actually quite a fair bit, but I don't think I mind too much. I will have to figure out how to make the demo work with including levels 3-1 and 3-4 but not the levels in-between (ick...) so that might take a little bit, but I'll try to work on it at some point.
Level 4-5
Aaand back to your regularly-scheduled update. here's the last level in world 5, tentatively titled "Moonlit Mesa":
As usual for the final level in each world, there are no new patterns here -- just a mix of everything else that's appeared earlier. In this case, that means vanilla water columns, water columns with spike enemies, water columns with triple flying enemies, and syncopated air jump patterns in water. I do have a little bit of new experimentation with ghost enemies + spike enemies + water columns at the same time in this level, though:
I don't go too crazy with that here since I haven't done a lot of offbeat ghost enemies in previous levels, but it's a minor curveball that makes these sections a little bit more challenging.
Backdrop-wise, I was having a bit of trouble at first deciding what to draw for this level, but eventually settled on a night-time water background with the reflection of a moon/planet. As usual for this world, the translucent clouds really do a lot of the heavy lifting in making things look nice. These have been a staple, so I'm not sure how I'm going to change things up for world 5.
There isn't quite as much freedom with dark night sky palettes since the base color needs to be pretty dark and not too warm-colored to avoid looking strange and cloudy. As usual, the palettes alternate between 4 colors and 8 colors depending on the section of music, although it often looks like more due to the transparent layers. I decided to use lighter colors for the night sky for tame sections and then transition to black for more contrast in the higher-intensity sections:
Localization Updates
Last month I transitioned the community localization efforts for Rhythm Quest over to the Crowdin platform. Thanks to the hard work of the community, the Rhythm Quest demo is now available in 14 different languages!
There's still a lot of bugfixes and polish to tackle for localization: word wrap/padding issues, missing glyphs, and the fact that the screenreader accessibility plugin really doesn't like unicode characters...but I'm pleased at the state of things right now moving forward.
That's going to do it for this update! I hope everyone is enjoying the winter / holiday season and taking it easy. Hopefully by this time next year Rhythm Quest will be released on at least one platform (ha ha ha ha...).
As always, things are going to progress steadily but slowly here. I've got another Ludum Dare event coming up in a week, plus some hopefully-well-deserved holiday rest coming up. I'll see you all next year!
Rhythm Quest Demo v0.25.1 Released
The Rhythm Quest Demo has been updated to version 0.25.1! This release includes several new languages, including Italian, Polish, Simplified Chinese, Swedish, and Ukranian -- big shout out to the community translators who made these localizations possible!
Full changelog:
Version 0.25.1 - Fixed mouse input not working in calibration screen - Text padding and localization tweaks/fixes
Version 0.25.0 - Added several new languages and localization improvements - Accessibility fixes, especially for demo end screen - Expanded credits screen - Attempt to prevent performance hitch when enabling particles - Added diacritics to large pixel font - Fixed respawn count text spacing - Performance improvements
Devlog 47 - Level 4-4
Hello Steam folks!
For those who are unaware, I've been regularly posting devlog articles for a while now, both to Medium as well as the official Rhythm Quest site. Since Rhythm Quest is starting to get more traction on Steam (thank you all!), I'm going to try to start cross-posting those here as well.
Before we start, I've got a quick announcement: I'm now accepting applications for translation heads! If you'd like to volunteer to be in charge of the localizations for a particular language, please go to this form to learn more details and apply!
It's been too long (5 months, somehow...) since I last completed a level, but I'm finally back at it, this time with the second-to-last level in world 4. Here's a video of level 4-4 in its entirety:
Level 4-4 takes a slightly slower tempo (110 BPM, vs 128 BPM for level 4-3) and cranks it up a notch with the interplay between water zones and air jumps/flight paths. It also specifically leans into a few syncopated rhythms, such as this flight path riff:
One of the "rules" I'm forming for myself as I chart these levels is that syncopation is that off-beat rhythms are mostly off-limits when it comes to attacks or ground jumps because of readability concerns, but they're much easier to interpret when it comes to air jumps and flight paths because the height differentials give you an indication of the relative beat positioning of the notes.
Of course, water zones change up the visual representation of those beat positionings, which is what this level is all about:
Visually, I wanted to do a skyline theme, as I hadn't done that before. World 4 has a little bit of a visual identity crisis at the moment, flipping back and forth between "alien space world" and "cherry blossoms", so I don't know if this truly fits in, but as with a lot of things, I'm just going to roll with it now and question it later.
I was inspired to do this pink/purple color scheme, which feels vaguely scifi-esque to me. There are a bunch of examples I found by other artists of this sort of look (please let me know if you find the original artist for either of these works so I can credit appropriately):
My process was essentially to draw a bunch of layers of semi-random tall rectangles, then afterwards go back and add some sporadic details along the tops of several of them. There isn't actually a ton of detail here -- I decided to just stop after adding a few as it seemed to work well enough. The only other real thing going on is the sun in the very back, and then a bunch of layers of semi-transparent clouds (which are all over the place throughout world 4 -- that part at least is visually distinctive).
The color palette here is pretty straightforward by now: notice how the hue goes from purple to reddish-pink as we fade into the background layers. The colors get brighter and less saturated for the back layers.
Overall I'm happy with how this one turned out (I feel like I say that every time...), but I'm mostly just happy that I still managed to complete another full level. There's only one level left to do for world 4, so I think that'll probably be next on my list...
Rhythm Quest Dev Livestream
Hi all! I'll be doing a developer livestream of Rhythm Quest on Tuesday Oct 4, at 6PM PDT/9PM EDT.
