Alora Fane

Feedback's continuing to come in, and a lot of interesting things have been mentioned, many of which I'd like to address at some point before release. Many are thematic or aesthetic, and some are really weird bugs, but the biggest thing I feel I need to address is the difficulty. (I've pinned ∞ the feedback post ∞ just under this one; we should continue to use that for more general feedback for now. I felt this should be a separate post though.)

I like that the game is challenging, personally, but I'm also aware how off-putting it can be for new players with no vested interest to be met with multiple failures right at the start. I'm unsure of the best way to resolve this. I feel I need to add some difficulty adjustment, but they should be optional, so those who want a challenge can get it, and those who don't want or need extra help won't experience a different kind of frustration due to the game holding their hand too much.

I have in mind four possibilities:

1) Basic, familiar difficulty modes: Beginner, Normal, Master. Beginner would give you infinite lives and a lower tempo, master would give you just one life (useful for getting 200%, where every slip-up disqualifies you for that anyway). Or there could be five settings (Beginner, Easy, Normal, Hard, Master), where Easy has a slightly lower tempo but 6 lives, Hard has no life regeneration, or whatever. Selecting a difficulty lower than Normal would cap your final score at 100%; not an issue for completing the game, just for mastery. These would be selected from a section in the pre-song menu, the one where you can also select to view the singing tips.

2) Specific controls - also chosen pre-song - that allow you to set the tempo (100%, 90%, 80%, 70%, 60%, 50%) and number of lives (1 to 6, or infinite), as well as turning on or off things like heart regeneration or whatever else. Again, using anything other than 6 lives and 100% speed would cap your score at 100% (or maybe higher depending on the chosen modifiers). While this would give greater control, it might also be more confusing, especially for new players, who might not know what to change to make their experience easier.

3) A more novel solution: a per-section toggleable 'practice mode'. Pressing a key - configured at the keyboard setup - during a song effectively freezes it at the current listen/mimic or duet section, and that section then plays on loop. When you complete it, your performance is shown in the form of one of these emote faces (though much better-looking than in this quick mock-up, obviously!). The lower, purple ones would be for number of mistakes (1, 2, 3, 4+), the higher, yellow ones would correspond to the rhythm accuracy symbols you'd normally get when remembering correctly. A new face would be appended to the graph for each attempt, and you could keep going for as long as you liked with that section until you were happy with the number of yellow faces you were getting. Pressing the same key that started this mode would return to the song, to the beginning of the section, as if you'd failed, though you wouldn't lose a life. Each time you used this, your score would be affected (maybe a -10% modifier, like with misses).

4) You have infinite lives during your first attempt of Remedy's song. While this would definitely make that song easier, and it'd ideally be an easier introduction to the game mechanics (plus I feel it'd be in keeping with her personality), it might then be overwhelming to challenge Hammer without that crutch directly afterwards! Plus this would only address the initial difficulty, not overall difficulty.

It seems that different people struggle with the difficulty in different ways. Some are caught off by where exactly they're meant to start playing (I've noticed this with the two people I had test in person a while back; I suspect non-gamers might find it more of an issue?), while others mostly struggle to remember specific, longer melodies and might end up stuck at them for a few tries before they finally click. I feel that more fundamental issues, like not knowing when to start, would resolve themselves after playing for a few minutes - just like getting familiar with the basic mechanics of any game - but they might also put people off before they get to that point (while other games are more lenient while the player is still figuring things out), whereas struggling with specific, novel melodies is something that'll likely affect people throughout their playthrough.

The first two possibilities would address a wide range of issues for both beginners and experienced players, and they'd be relatively trivial to implement, but new players might not be aware of how to activate them, or they might be reluctant to out of pride (I've noticed that there are definitely players who skip tutorials and don't want to lower themselves to an Easy difficulty, so they just fail and quit instead; sigh, people!). They'd also have to either decide from the beginning to enable them, or fail the song once before they had a chance to do so.

The more novel possibility would be significantly harder to add, but it might feel a lot better, and it could be activated as-needed rather than affecting the entirety of the song, or having to fail to change the settings. Even with infinite lives, trying a particularly difficult melody multiple times, only to fail each time, could be demotivating, but having something like the faces to show that you're getting better might feel like you're making some progress with each attempt (exactly the same as with the final progress graph). It could even activate automatically if you fail a melody three times, or something.

Or, another possibility that came to mind while re-reading this: I need to add the ability to pause songs anyway, so perhaps a pause screen could contain a speed setting, and a toggle to disable or enable life loss, which is kind of a half-way point between the other possibilities.

Yet another possibility: the first two (difficulty modes and specific controls) could be combined, so that the difficulty modes are essentially presets for the controls, so selecting one would set the controls to certain values, but they could be configured beyond that if the player wished.

Yet another possibility: specific keys (the arrows, say) could adjust tempo mid-song without requiring any menus or anything, and another key could toggle 'immortality mode' (fits with the themes) which disables life loss. As before, both cap the max score you can achieve if enabled at all.

While these would definitely help, they'd also probably trivialise the songs, and make the final progress bar somewhat obsolete, except when seeking mastery...

Or maybe you have to earn immortality mode by successfully completing bits? If you're at full hearts, the 'energy' that would normally go to regenerating them when you completed a section could instead go to a metre that, when full, would allow you to use an immortality 'powerup' for a short duration (one section, several, or a few seconds). A very video-game-y solution! Not much use for people who were actually struggling though...

Or maybe you start with a limited number of 'immortality charges' that you can spend on sections as needed?

As you can see, I've got a few ideas about this; I keep coming up with more each time I re-read this before posting!

I'm interested in hearing thoughts about this! What do you think would be the best solution to the difficulty issues that would suit both yourself and other, less patient players?

(I'm still interested in general feedback, of course - I'm curious about who'll finish first! - and we should, as I said at the start, keep that to the post dedicated to it. So post there if you've more to say; I'll keep it open in a tab and check comments on it whenever I get a notification that there's a new one!)

EDIT: I wrote this a few hours ago, and have another mock-up:

This might be the easiest way to do it? This would show whenever you started a song. I'm still open to alternative suggestions though; this is just a mock-up, I haven't added any new functionality to the game yet.

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