Helen's Tapes
So I've been recording myself lately with this old tape recorder. Not because I need to or something, but because it's a way to pass the time and keep track of things. It’s kind of comforting, just hitting record and letting my thoughts spill out to it, even if no one ever hears them.
I don't know why I started doing this, maybe it's just nice to have something constant, a way to capture these quiet moments. It's like creating a little archive of my days, even if they're mostly the same. Who knows, maybe one day I'll look back and find something meaningful in all these tapes.
- Helen
About
If it's not obvious from the image above, "Helen's Tapes" isn't an actual game. It's an audio visualizer for an ambient album, telling the story of Helen through her audio cassette diary. The project plans to unfold over five volumes, each adding more depth to Helen's experiences.
This was also more of a "portfolio project". So if you liked this and want me to do music for your game, feel free to contact me xd
Controls
| Arrow keys | Menu navigation |
| Shift + Enter | Skip to the next song |
| Shift + Backspace | Skip to the previous song |
| Space | Pause playback |
| ~ | Developer console |
| Shift + Left/Right | Scrub through the song while paused |
Download
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Development log
- 1.0.175 days ago
Comments
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This was a cool way to show off your music, which was very enjoyable by the way. When I streamed this, it inspired us to talk about music and a whole lot of other things.
I played it starting at 01:43:16, itch doesn't like timestamped links
I do have to mention that it was a lot of work to get this running properly, due to the .pck files being separate from the game. I use the itch.io app to download games, and it won't properly download a .pck file by itself. I had to navigate through a bunch of weird windows directories. I think it would have been better to keep everything together in one file.
The controls being really unconventional things like Shfit+Enter would make this hard for people to play. I had to refer back to your itch page here to know how to jump around. Maybe just use arrow keys or WASD?
Other than those things, this was a great little experience!
Thanks for checking it out!
tldr: Stuff is the way it is because I prefer small downloads, tho I will package everything into a single file and add a browser export (soon hopefully xd).
I set it up this way to keep download sizes small. Future volumes might include animated backgrounds, which could increase the game's size if I'm not careful (the current backgrounds are just static renders made in Quake 1). I also considered a browser export since I expected people having trouble setting stuff up, but Godot 4.2's browser export was broken (4.3 came out like days ago and it fixes that problem)
As for the controls being that way, it's mostly so I don't accidentally skip a song while recording the screen xD. That's why this "game" even exists, I just find coding stuff out faster and simpler than video editing.
I noticed you guys mentioned adding more interactivity to the game during the stream. I actually feel that would take away from the atmosphere and story I want to tell. Standing still is one way to represent the themes I'm going for I guess