Spin Rhythm XD News

Hey Spinners, hope you're well,



We've been meaning to write, but Daverwob - who does these posts - was dragged away (kicking and screaming!) from XD level updates and onto mobile to help with UI, SFX and more. We're nearing the end of the road for iOS dev, but our publisher wants us to stay tight-lipped, which means we sadly don't have much to say even though we would like to.

They say game development usually takes twice as long as you estimate, and this is pretty much true no matter how you try to mitigate it. We have a habit of going "hey, let's just do this cool thing!" and our publisher is like "hey, let's hit this deadline, but also let's just do a bunch of other cool things and the deadline doesn't matter". A deadly combination for those who like to hit deadlines.

Largely we're just working on optimising iOS now and trying to hit 60fps on older devices. Next up they want to work on Android which should be simply a matter of optimisation as all of the design, UI and polish work has already been done on iOS.



We're all keen to get back to XD, although we won't likely have an update until some time in late January. We are going to have to split the team and have half on XD full-time and half on mobile at this stage, which means updates may be less frequent for XD, but at least they will start happening again. We've still got a bunch of things we want to deliver including:

• A main game mode (alternate to arcade)
  
• Better multiplayer
  
• Better background system (which has already been improved on mobile)
  
• More free tracks
  
• Better MIDI calibration
  
• Better tutorials
  
• Longer easy, normal levels
  
• Better XD level design
  
• Weekly challenge with mutators, endless challenge
  
• Some elements to improve score variation
  
• Improved editor (mouse control, vertical timescale, ability to shorten / cut tracks for other difficulties)
  
• More!
  

Once again, sorry to keep you in the dark, the game is still alive in our hearts, we just haven't had the resources to update XD. Hope everyone plays some awesome games over the break.

Merry Spinstmas! From all the SSD team.

Hey Spinners, hope you're well,

It was only a year ago that we released SRXD to the world. While it may be strange to celebrate our baby's birthday when we're working on a new, less attractive baby (mobile version), we wanted to let our XD fans know that we care.

So please enjoy 33% off for a week!

Let's take a look at what we've achieved in our first year.

• Support for new control control schemes (click to move on / off, gyro, rotating joystick controls, Wacom and more)
  
• Added 23 free tracks for a total of 38 (with more to come!)
  
• Implemented global leaderboards
  
• Added daily challenge
  
• Added online multiplayer radio SpinFM
  
• Added the brutal XD difficulty
  
• Added new game mechanics including beat holds, scratch zones and lift off notes
  
• Released out OST Vol.1
  
• Flew half way round the world to PAX East to showcase the game
  
• Implemented Razer Chroma RGB support
  
• Added juicy results screen stats and announcer vocals
  
• Added full custom charting support (more features still to come!)
  
• Implemented a ton of accessibility features
  
• Added track sorting features
  
• Hundreds of bug fixes and QoL updates
  
• Signed two DLCs (Monstercat and Chillhop music)
  
• Probably many more we missed from just skimming our update list!
  

Thanks to all of you for being part of our fantastic first year on Steam!

Stay safe and stay speen'd.

Hey Spinners, hope you're well,



Mobile development is rolling along. We've had to dramatically restructure our Unity project to include both the mobile and XD versions in one project. It's a bit of a nightmare, but it's preferable to working on separate projects and manually bringing shared assets across.

Level designer Dave has not been required as much on mobile, so he's been busy charting some new free tunes which you can find on our official Spotify playlist. Since mobile dev started, we've licensed and charted a few new tunes which we will release as free levels once we are able to ship XD updates again (after the mobile version is released).



We've licensed a Camellia track! Check out Body F10ating in the Zero Gravity Space. Many of you have been requesting Camellia for a while, and I'm sure it will provide a crazy challenge in SRXD.

We have also licensed another Haywyre track, Let Me Hear That. We're using the live version you can hear on YouTube. It's got a few small differences from the official release we think will make a more interesting level design (this chart is already completed).

We've also finished charting Heading East by Farfetch'd - one of our older licenses, and definitely one for our Glitch lovers.

So that's minimum 3 free tracks next update!



We'd also live to reveal our first DLC pack - a collaboration with Chillhop Music!



We met David from Chillhop at PAX East earlier this year. He turned up at our booth wanting to hang and jam with the game. We quickly forced him to take the idea of a Chillhop DLC back to his team, and we're glad he did.

The guys at Chillhop curated 10 incredibly cool, relaxing tunes to help you chill, study and relax to (and PFC). Check them out on the official SRXD x Chillhop Spotify list or by clicking the image below. We also have been loving their incredible merch - we have been living in our Chillhop hoodies all winter.



This pack will be $11.99USD for 10 tracks (with appropriate regional pricing).

Even though we're announcing this now, we want to wait until after 1.0 to release DLC. We don't believe it's a good look to release paid DLC in Early Access.

Having said that, the charts are done, and will be super easy to ship after 1.0 once we get some sweet backgrounds in there.

We want this pack to be on the easy - medium side of the difficulty curve, and a great place to go if you're looking to move up a difficulty and want a more chill experience.



We are also busy polishing every single level in the game. As the game has been released and we've seen a ton of custom charts produced by our incredible community (check out the #customs-showcase channel in our Discord channel). The ideas - of what works, what's fun, what's clean, what's difficult - have evolved over the year the game has been released, so we're taking the time to polish the official charts. This includes:

• Polishing out of time notes (are still quite a few!)
  
• Removing center taps before spins for extra readability
  
• Adding slightly more variety with scratch zones (especially in easier difficulties)
  
• Removing excessive lift off notes, and placing some where they fit more nicely (we went a bit wild when we first added them, especially in Hard where the element is meant to be only introduced).
  
• Remove excessive wheel "drift" (when note patterns force the wheel to move repeatedly in one direction, causing problems for players who don't use click to move, or those with smaller mouse pads)
  
• Ironing out difficulty spikes
  

We are also going to extend all of the easy and some of the normal difficulty levels in length. One of the main complaints with SRXD (and reasons for negative reviews / refunds) is that it is too difficult for new players. We hope that by extending the easier difficulties, we can provide casual players and those new to rhythm games with a more comprehensive experience, without feeling like they're being pushed to the harder difficulties.

This will mean that on average Easy levels will be the same length as Normal levels (2-3 minutes). We've already done this with the Chillhop levels, so we know it works well.

As always, take care and keep spinnin'.

Hey Spinners,

A very nasty bug was discovered by some of the members of Spinsha.re! We decided to push out a hotfix for you all.

Oh, and if you're wondering why the hotfix numbers seem wack, we don't release patch notes for each one, but we do keep track of the patch numbers internally.



FIXES

• Fixed a nasty bug where creating a scratch zone at the start of a level would force on the level editor overlay, allowing editing of official charts and breaking leaderboards.
  - Thanks to the Spinsha.re Speenrunners for finding this epic bug.
  
• Deleted some broken leaderboard entries exploiting the above bug.
  
• Creating a custom level when “show only favourites” is selected will no longer soft lock the game.
  

We're still pumping out mobile dev, but we have another small announcement to make shortly (which we will do in a separate news post).

Stay tuned!

Hey Spinners,

So we're about 3/4 of the way through our current patch which involved David's loading code refactor and a bunch of other fixes. The build is running okay, although there's probably a million things the loading changes will have broken that will need thorough testing. We have a new track to release (Heading East by Farfetch'd) and more.

We have however had to take on some other commitments.

Our mobile publishers Habby have been back in touch with us, they've asked to join forces to finalise development of the mobile version before the end of the year. We are committing 3 months of development time to doing some serious optimisation of the game for mobile platforms (both iOS and Android) for a planned launch in November.

This unfortunately means we have to put our current patch on hold.




It's a huge honour for us to have been approached by Habby, they're a mobile publishing startup with incredible talent (their founder was responsible for some of the biggest mobile games of recent years such as Piano Tiles and Dancing Line) and their attitude towards games (Habby is an amalgamation of Happy and Hobby) align with ours.

In many ways the game works best on mobile where you are directly touching the wheel - similarly to how DJ controllers work, except without the need to adapt to a circular input method.

We're really excited to be able to finally release this version to the world. It's been on our plates for years but it just needs this final push.

For those who don't know Spin Rhythm was originally a mobile game prototype, it started life as a simple puzzle game where you had to match colours on a disc, but our love of rhythm games inevitably made us sync the gameplay to music. It was only when our artist Shath heard Nitro Fun's 'New Game' that the whole aesthetic musically and visually started to come together.

Check out some old design material below.



Don't worry, we will not abandon the PC version, it is to us the official, most hardcore version and the one closest to our hearts. We are a small, genuinely independent team with limited resources, in full COVID lockdown in Melbourne, which means our dev resources are even thinner than usual.

Our original plan was always to release mobile first and use the proceeds to fund the PC version, to ultimately create our vision of a new kind of hardcore rhythm action game in the style of Guitar Hero. It was only after hitting a few development snags and leaving some gameplay experimentation to Habby around halfway through 2019 that we decided to push ahead with PC instead of Mobile.

Once the SRXD ball was rolling it was difficult to stop it, but we have a responsibility to our publisher and ourselves that we have to see to fruition.

We will try to keep you guys updated as development progresses. If you're curious to hear more about the mobile version as it progresses (or just want to vent about a delayed 1.0) hit us up in the chat.

Since mobile doesn't need level design work, Dave will still be working on DLC charts, and new free charts which we can hopefully drop in a lump when we get time to finish up this current patch in a few months time.



All the best and keep spinnin.