Quick Look: EX: Sentris

Samanthaaaa!!!

Love to hear Samantha talk about her work, bit intimidated by this still but will probably give it a shot.

Might be cool if she did a course on Unity like the Gunpoint dev did on Gamemaker. Congrats on leaving early access regardless!

Love me some Samantha, but this looks too technical for me.

@amyggen: I think the irony is that it looks completely impenetrable, but from what I gather.. it's really very simple and you're like.. (hippie voice) like totally supposed to go with the flow and like it is what it is man like go wild and creat (/hippie voice) but also fill in those colored slots along the way.

I really need to get this some time, there's nothing about this I don't like.

This is interesting but I don't see this as a "game".

This is getting me dizzy.

I love it though.

@sil3n7 said:

It kind of isn't. If you're just trying to solve the puzzles you are probably goint to get bored pretty quickly. But like Samatha says, they are a good starting point for exploring what you can come up with on your own, so don't be afraid to ignore the dots completely.

I bought this a few days ago and think it's a lot of fun to play around with. The interface is a bit overwhelming at first but if you've watched this QL you are good to go. It's pretty easy to create some cool loops, especially if you take your time with it and don't just mash the pieces into place.

"Don't choose C Major"

Chooses A Minor... Whoops. :D

These scales are relative scales meaning they contain the exact same notes but start a different note. IE C Major is C D E F G A B C and A Minor is A B C D E F G A.

Hehe.

I really want this to descend into Whiplash-esque madness with Vinny in the Miles Teller role and Samantha in the JK Simmons role...

EDIT: Close enough to my wish comes true!

I spent a good few hours messing around with it yesterday and really started to get to grips with it. Initially the interface can take a little bit of getting used to (specifically I was slightly confused about how picking blocks back up functioned until I realised that each block was a one-use entity). But after learning the basics I really enjoyed going through each song and creating my own loops. Having played them all I definitely want to mess around with different instruments in remix mode.

It's a fun time, somewhere between a puzzle game and a musical tool. I'm very interested to see what sort of things people will create with it over time. It reminds me of my days playing around with FruityLoops but in a slightly more game-like structure.

EDIT: I think someone, maybe Alex, mentioned 1-1 so I had to do this. It's not quite there, but there's definitely some fun things to be done with the toolset!

I love games like these but for some reason all in this quick look sounds kind of bad (the acual "songs" created). This could be cool as a $2-$3 app on iPhone to mess with, the price on the PC is too high for me.

I just think it's a little odd because it seems like Samantha really wants it to be seen as one, when it's really more of a music creation tool.

I'm still very confused about what half of that interface is showing me, but it's nice that something like this exists. I get the feeling that anyone who really wants to make music might find the short loop far too restrictive, though.

Yeah, I definitely wouldn't call it a puzzle game. Musical creation/exploration tool is a better description.

Meh.

It's well worth it and way less complicated than it looks! And the great thing is, you find yourself making music without even trying - and you can use that music anywhere you want!

All the music in Ace Triker was made in Sentris, and I plan to do the same for the majority of my future games. It's supremely easy and the results are super sweet.

This is such a super rad game. I wish there was more like this.

This actually looks really good.

Looks cool!

So, I´ve been playing both music and videogames for more than twenty years. But I understood pretty much nothing about how this works or what it is.

Samantha is awesome, but I wish she would have spent a little more time actually explaining how this thing works.

Why does the honeycomb thingy only have seven pieces when the western tempered scale has twelve notes?

Why do the pieces of the outer rings differ in size?

Why call it songs when it´s actually just loops?

There are puzzles in the game?

Does it allow for actual melodies to be built, or is it always going to be as random and atonal as the stuff Vinny was making?

Can you choose what instruments and tempo you want, or are you given a sort of template?

EDIT: Really looking forward to "Twitch plays Sentris" though...

I'm still not sure what I actually do in this game. I like how it looks but other than that....I just don't get it.

I have no idea what is going on here or what the game is.

Glad they did a QL EX. Definitely helped me understand the game a bit better. Looking forward to picking this up!

Its actually really hard to hear whats actually happening in the game with the audio ducking

It constantly spinning makes me feel dizzy and sick.

@bob_omb said:

Maybe the honeycomb thing just draws from diatonic scales? I haven't watched the full video yet though.

I'll give this a purchase, but as the most tone-deaf person in the world, I doubt I'll be able to ever create anything of merit. Still, as developers keep narrowing genre focus to create clones of clones of clones of the most successful games, it's nice to see games like this succeed. I'm hoping that this does well enough to fund Samantha's next venture. I'd love to see her do more of a story-based game, because her writing and speaking has a unique voice that I think would translate well to storytelling.

Who knows, though? Maybe once I dive into this, I'll get the hang of it and start a career as the next Kanye.

@thisluckyguess: Yeah, I just realised that each mode of the scale only utilizes seven notes. So you choose a key and a mode, and those are the notes you have to work with in that particular loop :-)

I love it when people find ways to game-ify music creation. This looks really, really cool. As a complete non-composer who loves toying with music tools that I barely understand, I'm already wondering what nifty/awful things I could make by blending loops from Sentris with the "virtual band" thing in Rocksmith 2014.

Definitely going to pick this up. Great job on this, Samantha!

Just wanted to say this game looks really cool - Good work, Samantha!

I guess what people call "music" is subjective. I have yet to hear any music come from Sentris. And I even watched the trailer on Steam as well.

This looks real cool, reminds me of electroplankton

I'll be glad to give my money to this since it looks pretty neat, although I'm going to need an XBone release before I'm able to do that.

Uhhh...pass.

I really do want to play this - seems like something that will click with me a bit better when I get my hands on it. I'm in a similar position to Samantha in the sense that I love music and understand it on a theoretical level (to some degree), but when I actually sit down and try to create I'm never happy with the outcome. Perhaps this will help me let loose and have some fun with creation instead.

My experience playing it as well. I like the idea of it, but the results it produces never really sound like anything I want to hear on loop. Not even the pre-set levels.

This is the most Unprofessional Quick Look EX. I love it.

At some point I will buy this just because I want Samantha to make more games.

They were so close to the "atomic bondage" joke. For shame.

Someone loop that initial beat Vinny made and make a song out of it. Throw some sick guitars and vocals on it.

This looks really cool (Push Samantha Kalman) but ah the spinning is making me wig out like rockband/guitar hero did.

Meh

Samantha is the beeeest!

The only guest that can best even the Lang-zone best'ness.

I like Samantha a lot but man this game looks like unplayable garbage, at least as an actual game. And the music it produces isn't good enough to make it function as a sort of synthesizer either.

It's a pretty nice multimedia experience...

@humanity: good to see that we are still using the "hippie" voice to write off abstract concepts.

I love the design of this, it looks so goddamn good. Will for sure buy when I have the money.

Yeeeeah, MBV shoutout from Austin!