Neko Dance Party: Alpha update!

I think it's about time I shared the game I've been working on in my evenings (note the posting time).

Some of you may remember the Neko Factory, a little animation I made a couple of years ago. Well, those Nekos are back in the Neko Dance Party!

This is a game I'm aiming to put up on shockwave.com. It's an action game targeted at 8-12 year old girls. Expect lots of colors.

Update 11.17.07: new environment other additions:



Play Neko Dance Party

This is a streaming web player, so you can see approximately how streaming works if you haven't experimented with it yet.

It would be great if anyone who tries it out could give me a bit of feedback. I'm looking for stories about what you liked disliked about the game. I'm also interested in performance, so posting your hardware info and frame rate visible in the upper-right corner) would be superb.

Enjoy, and look forward to updates over the next couple months!

 

Nice work Sam!

It's oddly addicitve and mesmerizing... appearantly I'm a 12 year old girl because I like it!

Edit: I like the personality in the bird animations too btw

Keep dancing,
-Jeremy

 

lol i guess there's a little 12 year old girl in me too ; )

the combination on action control on the neko is fantastic - its very responsive fun to look at. i love the disco ball too (i'd consider putting a sparkly PS over it to fill out the effect).

questions:

-what is the slider on the neko for?

-do the other nekos serve any purpose other than getting the disco ball?

issues:

-framerate overall was good (50-70 FPS - intel imac 2.0) but the first time i played it i got a heavy hit down to 11 or so for a second and another down to 20 or so in the first level. instantiate maybe?

-one ballon fell to the side was half on the screen, i could visually move over it but could not get it.

-i stayed on one side of the screen for a while (trying to figure out if the other nekos did anything) and 6-7 ballons piled up on the other side - when i finally hit them big drop in framerate from all the PSs firing at once.

i know its a WIP but one suggestion - i'd try to make the notes, ballons backround more closely match the visual style of the nekos - sharper less flat visually. IMO they kinda suffer by comparison at the moment.

very fun so far, good work sam ; )

 

MacBook Pro Core Duo 2.0 GHz, 2 GB RAM, ATI X1600 w/256 MB VRAM:
fps ranged between 60 and 130 (tended towards the higher range)

The music and characters and great. The notes and balloons have a cool Charlie Brown-esque look to them. However, I find the backgrounds and the gameplay itself to be kind of boring. It gets more interesting when the disco ball comes in, and when the neko starts doing flips all the time.

I think that more control over the dancing would be good. I assume that you're trying to keep this simple, but if it doesn't matter what kind of moves you're pulling, you could assign one to each key, or use mouse gestures, and just let the kids play with it, like an extreme sports game where it doesn't matter if you land on your head. Maybe you could even have the score go up faster if they are pulling many cool moves off.

(Here's the kind of thing I'm talking about, except audio-based. Go to the Mountain of the Tapping Dwarves.)

http://www.guitarshredshow.com/

Anyway, Neko Dance Party is a very nice, cohesive presentation. I have been seeing too many things lately that, while the music is good, it doesn't fit at all with the visuals. It really helps out when you can get that synergy happening.

 

It is simple and kind of fun which is good. But I while I played I noticed some things that I thought were sort of off. First off, though you warn of its colorfulness it's not actually that colorful, compared to peggle for example.

And second, it feels very wrong that there is no timing.. These nekos have no sense of beat! I guess this isn't really a rhythm game, but I want it to be.

Of course I think it is too simple as well, but its not targeted at me.

I think a good way to improve it is make more interesting graphics and different things that you can collect, that move differently.

 

I totally agree with Forest about the colors. Black is a "scary" color which most women want to avoid. We did a color theory test with CuttleCandy and blue shadows won over black shadows with the ladies.

Your Bouncing Bird-Cats are pretty cute, but the scene is no dance party. I would crank up the saturation and make it a 'shiny' as you can. Lose the drab black and it will be much more friendlier.

Points bursting and floating up would give some meaning to what actions are better to do than others in regards to point gathering.

Level 3 had no music for me. 60+FPS on my MBP 17" 2.16Ghz Itel Core Duo 2Gigs or Ram. Opening Menu Loading in 8 seconds on my Sprint EVDO Card. The levels took a little longer but not too long.

The Menu could use some pretty action - maybe the balloons floating up or a laser light ball spinning. Looks like this could be a winner!

Cheers,

 

Cute and fun. I think the idea of popping balloons or getting points to get more dance partners should appeal to kids. And you have two fans in the 3 - 6 year old market - my kids really enjoyed it. Although, my daughter (3) got the gold medal her first time playing level 2 so it is probably too easy for your target audience.
I am on a 2 GHz Intel Duo Core iMac and was getting FPS of between 200 and 400 (!) for most of the game.
My kids are eager for the next levels!

 

Woot! Having too much fun. Will get that posted to WMG first thing in the morning. Great work Sam!

 

If I was a little girl, I would be pitching a fit until somebody got me a real Neko. I want it nooooowwwww!

Very cute, easy and mesmerizing. The Nekos are great! Colorful, toon-style backgrounds are all that's missing. I'm w/ Yoggy, I want the dancing to be sync'd somehow with the music. Or at least, some of the collisions could trigger sounds.

I got 70-100 fps, on a quad mac pro w/ gf 7300.

 

I do like the music inside the game, nice themes. Who did it?

The level3 tune reminded me of the theme in farbrausch's popular demo:

-> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq-aLBNwpPQ

 

I'm also apparently a 12yr old girl...

loved the style, loved the execution, loved the simplicity...

in short, I loved it!

Thanks for sharing Sam!

 

Ill try to get you some more info later but for now, I played a little and the main thing I didn't like was the BG, its to plain and empty and that bed could use some poly love. Maybe use some spiced up prerendered BGs.

Also, as others noted, the color wasn't as colorful as expected. Not necessarily bad, it has a pastel look to it that I think looks less harsh than bright colors.

CEH

The more I see it the more that bed bothers me... mesh detail is similar to texture detail in that it should remain consistent within a narrow range so things don't look to different from one another in pixel or mesh detail.

 

Thanks for the feedback, everyone! Here are some answers to questions...

That slider tracks the Neko's "excitement". When it fills up, flashing white notes start to appear. I'm probably going to ditch the meter, and simply use the Neko's jump height as an indicator for this.

Yes, they will do dance moves on their own in the background. They used to do this in earlier versions but I have been reworking things and need to fix them.

Not sure what could cause this, other than initially loading everything for the first time. I can try instantiating everything (and therefore loading it into RAM) before the level begins and see if that helps.

Dang, I'll look at this.

That's bad. I'm going to make the balloons slowly scale down when they hit the floor, so big piles of balloons can be avoided.

The nekos shouldn't really be sharp in the first place, so I'm a bit surprise to hear this. I think I can make a more glossy cubemap for the notes and balloons though. Thanks for the suggestion.

The backgrounds are still incomplete. Out of 5 levels, 0.2 levels have been completely created I'm still doing level design too, so hopefully it won't come out too boring. Remember this is for little kids though.

I did a lot of experimentation around this concept at the beginning, but I decided that I want the game to be played with only two keys - left and right. Notice how there isn't even a jump button. I couldn't figure out a way to make the dancing more interactive while keeping it simple.

Right, the assets aren't complete yet, so the levels are not as colorful as they will be.

I tried making all the jumping dependent on song BPM, but ultimately it caused more problems than it solved. So I reverted back. I've still got a couple of musical tricks up my sleeve though!

I've changed the black notes to light grey now.

I definitely agree. Will add that asap!

Weird, you're not the first person to say this. I'll look into this.

The music isn't yet optimized. I'm still working on ways to get the scene sizes as small as possible.

Good to know! I still have a lot of level design to do, it seems...

That credit goes to Mark Houck, known on the forum as Macupuncture. He's an incredible musician, and he's pumping out some great tunes for this game. I couldn't do it without him. He helped out with textures in the Neko Factory animation I did, and we met up at Unite. It just made sense to ask him for help again.

Yeah, I definitely need to finish the backgrounds. The bed is not final by any means, but I hear that you don't like the current shape of it

 

I would def agree that its to easy... im not in the target but very very easily get over 5500 points and.. still the silver trophy all the time >:[

I think the 1k limit would probably be reached by grabbing one to two balloons and setting the character over to one side... allowing it to just jump up and down. As in... it doesn't really require anything to get the 1k limit to points.

CEH

 

I actually did better by not doing anything . The Neko's default dance gets a higher score ( I think ) because it's right in the middle at the point where it can get two notes at a time. While moving your Neko it's much harder to get two at a time.

Level 3's music loaded fine the last time I played.

Cheers,

 

Hey everyone, I've posted a new build for feedback. Please give it a shot, whether you played the last version or not.

Check it out!

Changes this time around are purely gameplay changes. I've worked out some of the kinks in the system, and made some decisions that I think are really finalizing the way the levels will play out. I've also fixed some bugs and added a couple of minor but important surprises.

 

I didn't immediately notice anything too different, other than the backgrounds, but I haven't played it in a while. That weird neck on level 3 is kind of freaky!

A couple issues:

-The slider on the bottom isn't interactive, but the thumb still has an over state.

-There is sometimes a split second of graphical weirdness that happens right after the Unity loading screen, before the menu. I had this problem when I didn't have any camera using a background color (as in, none of their culling included a background to default to), but I'm not sure if something else would cause this.

 

That seems to be more challenging with the balloons sinking through the floor so you can't get them as easily, but I kind of liked the look of them piling up a bit in the old version - maybe have the balloons pile up on the floor like before but then pop several seconds after landing? Just a thought...

 

Hey Sam,

I see that the control seem to be better - at least I now do better when trying vs just letting the character run on it's own.

I like the blinking white notes - makes me *think* it's worth more - there still seems a lack of positive feed back on what is better than other things - I guess that the colors notes are better than the gray notes - but have no visual feed back to prove that.

Every time I see the black particle system I think "oh a Diesel cloud - cough cough" -- color theory - I'd suggest making white notes as you default low point note and then have a pastel rainbow animating gradation for you current high point notes.

black = scary, gray = depressing

moving in the right direction - looking/feeling better


Cheers,

 

Hey all,

I've made another update. The new version has a different environment, a new color picking feature, some gameplay additions, and lots of other tweaks. I would consider this the first feature-complete version, so I'm calling it Alpha 1.

Here's a sneak preview of the new version:



I'm very eager to hear what everyone thinks about how the game has improved. Please let me know!

Play it here

 

I know other people have been criticizing your use of dark grey colors, but I love the way you handled it this time. The nekos really pop against the background, and it feels like they are in an environment suited for dancing. I used to go to a roller skating rink as a kid, and it looked just like this, complete with disco ball. The flashing notes also look great.

However, though I never had trouble with the other versions, I can't get past level 2 on any difficulty setting now (missed it by just a couple notes on Easy). I can't even get past level 1 on hard. Some instructions might be in order. Also, those flashing red notes, while they look cool, and I like the concept, are almost impossible for me to avoid.

Lastly, I think the lack of sound effects makes it a lot less lively than it could be, too. The music is great, so I don't think many of them should be loud, but I do think they should exist.

...just thought of another thing! I bet it would look really awesome if the floor colors were animated. Sync'd to the beat changes would be even better, but if Unity could do that without a plug-in, I'd be rolling in cash from all the rhythm games I would be making...

 

I really like how this version turned out. The disco ball effect was just too cool. It took me three tries to beat level three, but I finally managed. Good work!

 

It's still pretty evident that some instructional screens are in order. People just don't understand the rules I think.

The art isn't done yet but it's getting there. And you bet your butt that the floor will be flashing to the beat! This doesn't require a plugin actually. I'll share my code when the project is done.

This version is definitely harder. Avoiding the negative notes should be tough but not impossible. It helps to be on a high jump level when they appear. And they're actually easier to avoid in the later levels because they can appear in the higher stream of notes while you're still bouncing low.

Maybe still needs some tweaking...

 

Wait, negative notes? I noticed no such things.

 

Good news about the floor, it looked a little odd just updating how it is.

My X1800 gto died on Sat, so I had to go out and get a HD 2600 pro. Both cards perform identically on your game. around 43 fps I think, Id have to check again but given the visual simplicity... I have to say it seems like a low framerate.

the red flashing notes make me want to snag them instead of avoid

Its much improved.

CEH