GameClub Melodive (by Johan Gjestland)

I am absolutely loving this little game!

I can understand why some may be having a difficult time, but it would be a shame to miss out based on initial impressions.

Although the game presents itself as a calm and casual experience, it actually requires quite a bit of finesse and skill to fly. In fact I can see where some may have trouble even controlling the 'ship' at first.

Those with flight sim experience will be at an advantage here. The game uses roll and pitch controls usually reserved for an advanced control option outside of pc sims. In other words you have to roll and then pitch to turn.

The game also requires you to control your momentum. If you try to 'glide' you will probably find yourself drifting towards walls and generally moving in directions other than where you are pointing. You have to tap the screen to boost in the direction you are facing. So each time you reorient you need to tap boost to actually readjust your momentum. This is especially important in tight tunnels. You need to aim, tap, aim, tap etc... You definitely don't want to hold boost down unless you are very skilled and going for insane speed.

It seems as if the saturation of the rocks determines both your boost 'fuel' and your life. As you boost or hit walls the color will drain from the rocks until you can no longer boost. At this point you are in danger of dieing if you hit a wall. Diving deeper restores color to the world and refills your boost and life.

The big floating collectable chunks seem to be what you want to collect in order to purchase upgrades. I think only speed and boost cost points. Handling appears to be a sensitivity slider. You may want to turn this down if you are having a hard time. I keep it below half. Speed appears to be the speed at which boost propels you. I prefer this at only about 1/3, otherwise things just get too hard to manage. Boost I think adjusts how much the boost drains your fuel/life so I max this out. Gravity is pretty obvious, much harder with high gravity.

The tuning menu is a little weird in that as you touch the arrows to adjust settings the screen dissolves. I'm not sure if this is intentional as it is very confusing trying to adjust settings this way. You cannot simply hold to adjust, you need to tap tap tap.

It is interesting that the controls have been described as both tight and loose. I find that the controls are actually very tight. In terms of your tilt being directly and instantly linked to your orientation, I don't think they could be described as anything but. The feeling of looseness for some perhaps comes from the way momentum works and the fact that you can get moving in a direction other than where you are pointing. Also, it is extremely important to make sure that you are holding your device in a neutral position square to your face when you hit start. Failing this it can be very disorienting and lead to the feeling of spinning out of control. The sensitivity is very high in this game and it is important to make small controlled adjustments and keep your speed under control. This sensitivity is required once you get deeper and need to make rapid rolls in tight tunnels.

My main purpose in writing this is to plead to the developer to not change anything about how the game plays currently. While I think that an easy mode with simplified controls and physics may be a good idea, please make this an option and leave the existing gameplay and controls intact. Games that offer sophistication and finesse of control are so rare on ios. The feeling of smoothly managing momentum through a tight tunnel at high speeds is exhilarating. This would be compromised by any simplification of control or physics.

I do feel that many people will be instantly turned off to this game on first impression. I think most's first contact will look like Sanuku's video followed by a low rating, which is a shame. To this end I think a better tutorial and explanation are necessary as well as an option for an easier control method. Perhaps simply allowing the 'ship' to move more directly in the direction it is pointing minimizing the need to manage momentum. Or maybe a control method like the old x-wing games where roll and yaw work together.

In any case this is one of my all time favorite ios games and I hope any changes made will extend accessibility without compromising what we already have.

 

I am on my iphone right now on a crappy line, but when i get to a decent connection, i will answer you all. I just wanted to say that HWest is about 98 % spot on. I also realize that the instructions are a bit lacking (to say the least!). I will eloborate on the gameplay mechanics later today. I might have released a bit early, but please bear with me and i will try to make the game more accessible in a future update. There has been a lot of good suggestions, and I thank you all for your interest!

 

HWest, thanks for the tips. It really helped. I am enjoying the game, it's kinda like Flower (ps3) if anybody is into that game.

 

I was still pondering whether to get this game or not because I like music rhythm games and sound reactive games. However, I don't want to be to quick to jump on what may just be something like an audio visualizer more than a game that I might get bored with too soon. Especially since it does not react to my own music like Synsthetic does but only to in game music. Also, maybe because I am a cynic, I am a little skeptical of the lengthy thorough glowing review from a first time poster.

 

Ok, i should have read the wikipedia-article. I apologize for my lacking english skills (i am a Norwegian). This is a fully featured game, but what i meant was I spent most of my time making the game-engine before making the game, so Melodive is a complete product, but I will make more games from the same engine. That is what i meant by what i said. I did however spend about 6 months on Melodive itself, so I don't feel it's unfinished.

Melodive is experiemental, I am trying to push the medium. I never ment that the game wasn't finished, or is only a tech demo, in the sense for instance Topia is a tech-demo. HOWEVER, i will listen to my customers and try to incorperate any suggestions I like. Feedback is important to me, because I would like to create a community around this engine and my approach to iOS gaming. Me for one, is very tired of the dumbed down controls and repetive motifs that consitutes most iOS-games. (Zombies and endless runners and physics puzzlers?). I'm fine with this being the mainstream, and I am fine with everybody chasing the same horse, but my mission is to create unique experiences and not imitate the successfull.

Melodive (and the engine) was born out of the frustration of having the perfect gaming device (ipad imho), but without any good flight games running at 60 frames per second (think SSX tricky smoothness) with a detailed 3d-environment. So i made it myself, but I am no professional, so the product is not well polished on the gui-side of things. No 3-stars ratings, sorry, and no sharing on facebook. BUT, it is very polished in-game and NOT a tech-demo in the wikipedia-sense of the the word.

Sorry for the confusion, I hope this clears things up a bit... I spent about 4 years on this (since i got my first iphone) on my spare time, so it would really be nice if you could reconsider your position and maybe give me a second chance.

 

Ok, this is not a sound-reactive game per se, but I will try to make it an option, as I have gotten several request for this. The game makes it own music and visualizes this in diffrent ways, so it would be trivial to make it react to a soundtrack if I could find some code for a beat-analyzer on iOS. I haven't looked yet, because I never thought it would be a sought after feature. I do however see the possibility of using Melodive in VJ'ing and backdrops for music-acts, so I will definitively look into this.

Regarding the glowing review, i was so happy when I got this, but then I saw it was from a first time poster, I was like oh now, now everybody will think that I wrote it myself! I don't know how to disprove this (maybe a toucharcade-moderator can help in some way with the ip-logging). I can only say that it is completely against my business ethics, but I understand your scepticism. I don't want to trick anybody into buying this game, because I want good reveiws on app store. I think my answer to the reviewer will also make it clear that I didn't write it myself, but any help in proving my innocence would be welcome. I am situated in Norway, maybe that helps? But thank you for taking this up, as I got the same reaction.

johan

 

Game Impressions

Really lovely game.

It's not often I'll see something in a video and be compelled to jump in and explore. Looks and sounds great, and makes me want to keep exploring.

I'm pretty bad with first-person tilt controls, so that's taking some getting used to.

As for whether it's a game or not - even if the only objective is to get as far down as you can (?), I don't see that as any different from an endless runner where the objective is get as far along as you can.

 

I made it to the top 20 on the leader boards and feel like I understand this game much better than I did in my first post. And I can assure you it's worth your dollar.

Basically think of the game like this: You are sinking into a cave system. You need to tilt your device to direct your ship. Tap the screen to boost in the direction that you're facing.

With these controls you try to navigate as deep as possible into the cave system while collecting Melodium (which recharges your boost). The game ends when you run out of energy. And you can spend the Melodium that you collected on upgrading Speed or Boost.

I recommend Melodive if you're looking for something totally different. It's a really cool environment in the cave system.

 

I decided to register and post my impressions based on both my enthusiasm for this game and out of concern that it might be misunderstood. I have been tempted to register in the past when various games have been similarly misunderstood. Usually someone comes along and says what I am thinking. This time I was pushed over the edge because I feel like this game is in a fragile state and is in danger of being dismissed and quickly forgotten. I believe this game deserves more than that.

This is not a mass appeal game, but I think it is a great game. There is a feeling of flight, movement and immersion here that is rare on any platform. This is a simple game that some may indeed grow bored of quickly...that is fair. But I don't really see that as a failing of the game. For $1 you can have what I find to be the most immersive pure and convincing movement through a 3D space on ios. I really do like the game that much.

I would advise anyone who is interested in the sound/music/visualization aspect of this game to alter their expectations. To me the sound/music is not really the main draw here. I consider the music only a nice relaxing atmosphere to fly through. It is not really a large part of the gameplay.

The real draw here is the 'flying'. This is a simple game about a controlled descent into the depths. Watching shapes and colors emerge from the darkness silhouetted by flashes of light. It is more about the visuals and controls.

Anyway just my opinion. I tend to write too much.

 

Thanks!

I should make clear that I am not interested in telling anyone that they should like or buy this game.

My aim is only to provide some tips to those who may have had a bad first impression based on the game's unfortunate lack of explanation or tutorial. If someone then still decides that they do not like the game then that is obviously fine.

 

I'm playing on iPad and find the controls to be just right with the handling option set to maximum. Too far down and it starts to feel floaty and I have to steer my iPad like the wheel of an ocean liner, but with it at the top I can relax and guide myself with slow and subtle movements.

Just to clarify though:

I'm not after a completely hands-free mode (though I'm not against it), I was talking about a mode I could still control but without the chance of failing, or a very simplified mode in which I could aim and direct the flight with one finger.

 

This is true, after a while you will learn to coordinate the pitching and rolling so it will feel much more fluid

This is spot on and very good advice. Let me just say that the spotlight will always light in the direction of the momentum, so if you see the light dissapearing from view, it's time to boost. You can of course tune the boost to be so that you can hold it for extended period of times, but it's more fun with a lot of boost, imho.

This is spot on, except the last sentance. Picking up melodium in either crystallic or metallic form will replenish your boost. The shiny blobs are metallic melodium and the flying bits are crystallic melodium. Both kinds are automatically picked up when flying near them. You will see a small puff of smoke when you pick something up. Metallic melodium will fully restore your boost while crystallic melodium will only recharge you a bit.

The big floating chunks are what i call metallic melodium. Every crystallic melodium will only give you +1 in melodium while metallic melodium will give you +(currentdepth/10), so the further down you get the more valuable the metallic melodium get. Both kinds are however the same, gameplay wise, and can be used for upgrades. Handling IS sensitivity, and is free of charge. Also: The score is calculated as this: depth reached x melodium collected x mean speed / 10000, so you will see that collecting metallic melodium at great depths is the key to get the highest scores (if that's your game).

Speed is more like the starting difficulty setting, or the speed of time. The way I implemented it is that time moves slower at lower speeds, so Zero speed will equel about 30 % of normal time, while full speed will equal about 70 % of nomal time. Every time you pick up some crystallic melodium (flying bits), the time will speed up with half a percent-point. At light gravity the speed of time will go up to 500 %, while on heavy gravity it will stop on 100 %. Hope this makes it a bit clearer. Your are 100 % correct regarding the boost and gravity.

Yes, this is a byproduct of my very strange GUI. I must confess that it wasn't on top of my priority list, but i kind of fell in love with the effects of using the crystallic melodium as pixels. The upside is that the game makes music at the start screen (because you will constantly be picking up melodium at the start screen, without it showing), the downside is the low-rez pixel font. I will surely re-thing my approach for my next game.

Oops, i totally forgot to mention that, big mistake! I will fix this very soon in the 1.0.1. update.

This is absolutely correct. This is a game that demands a bit of patience and has a long learning curve, and it might be a bit too steep in the start. But, i can promise you all that the rewards are great when you master this game. I

The whole game is about these controls and the feeling you get from zipping past stuff in high speeds. I would however seek out any possibily to draw more people in, but it must be in a way that makes it easy to switch to more advanced controls later on. The controls as they are now are absoloutely necessary when you reach higher speeds. I will post a gameplay-video this weekend to demonstrate (i am away on a job at this moment).

I think both of these suggestions are good, and I will try them out when I get the time this weekend.

I can promise you that, and I would like to thank you for your very valuable input. It makes me very happy that you "get" my game. I hope it's ok that I use some of your excellent wording/concepts in a updated tutorial? I must say that you write better about my game than I do myself!

thank you,
johan

 

Thank you, please feel free to mail me at [email protected] if you have any suggestions, feature requests or bug reports!

 

Ok this is how I feel about the game also. I have tried to make the procedural music as good as humanly possible, but I spend 3 1/2 years on making the flying and only 1/2 year on the music. However I do feel it has it's merits, especially after unlocking the sequencer. But you are right that this first and foremost a flight sim and not a music game.

 

I will surely consider both of your suggestions. You are supposed to unlock the sequencer at some point in time. A no-die mode is a good idea, i think. Autopilot I tried to make work, but i had to give up, as it wasn't important.

This was designed to be the best tilt-controlled game made for iPad, to show that tilt-controls could be tight. But of course a lot of people want virtual stick-controls, but I havent had the time to experiment with it yet. I will however make it a priority if Melodive gains a bit of traction.

 

Thanks for your detailed explanation of the game mechanics! Absolutely feel free to use anything I have said in a tutorial.

Some of my description is probably more dependent on a high boost setting than I initially realized though. I upgraded that pretty quick. I find that the game is easier when you have the power to quickly alter your direction.

 

You said in this reply that you will be creating games for this engine? What are your ideas for updates and games in the future. I love mellow diver and want more#