👇 Scroll for How to Play🕹️

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🎮 Welcome to DotPop, a minimalist, high-intensity rhythmic arcade game built in less than 4 days for the GameDev.tv Game Jam 2026! 

🟢 As a team of 5-9 year Roblox studio veterans exploring Godot 4.6 for the very first time, we wanted to build a tight, responsive, and addictive arcade experience as our gateway into standalone game development. 

👋 We left Roblox due to unpopular updates and we are going to work in Unity in the future. We tried Godot for the first time because our friends from Roblox recommended this engine, and we made this game in just 4 days while dealing with school and exams!

💡 Inspired by the quick-reflex mechanics of Osu!, DotPop challenges your hand-eye coordination. Crucial note: You don't click with your mouse! Your trailing 3D arrow fluidly chases your cursor with elastic momentum, while your keyboard hand triggers the pops.

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 ⚠️ Jam Crunch and Future Plans (Dev Post-Mortem)

With only 4 days to pivot from Roblox to Godot 4.6 while balancing school and exams, time caught up with us. Here is what we had to compromise on for the jam version:

•  The "How to Play" Screen: You might notice the "How to Play" button in the menu doesn't open a new scene yet - we didn't make it in time. That's why we put the complete rules right here in the itch.io description.
•  Local Leaderboards Only (if it works lol): We originally planned a global online leaderboard via SilentWolf. However, dealing with third-party plugin integration on our very first Godot project while fighting the jam deadline proved too risky. We pivoted to a robust Local Top 50 Leaderboard that saves directly to your browser's cache instead! Pass the keyboard around and challenge your friends locally! 
•  Cut Content & Future Updates: We have big plans for DotPop! We wanted to include dynamic power-ups like Speed Boosts, Shields, and more gameplay modifiers. Even though they didn't make it into the jam cutoff, we are thinking about to polish the game and add them in future post-jam updates!

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 🕹️ How to Play

1. Guide the Arrow: 

• Move your mouse across the screen. The 3D arrow will chase your cursor with springy speed (safeguarded with a maximum speed cap against high-DPI mouse exploits).

2. Match the Colors: 

• When a dot spawns, it starts as a neutral gray and quickly shifts into its true vibrant color. 
  • Hover your arrow over the dot and press the corresponding key on your keyboard before it shrinks to 0% and disappears!

Keyboard keys:

•     [A] = Red

•     [S] = Orange

•     [D] = Yellow

•     [F] = Green

•     [G] = Blue

3. Watch the Clock and Speed: 

• The longer you survive, the crazier it gets. 
  • The music accelerates, dots spawn faster, and new keyboard colors unlock sequentially!

4. Beware of Traps:

•     Black Dots: 
  • Do NOT touch or pop them! 
    • Hitting a black dot or matching the wrong color instantly costs you a life.

•     Missing a Dot: Letting a dot collapse to 0% resets your score combo multiplier.
  •     ❗ You don't have to pop them all, it is okay to miss

5. Collect Hearts: 

• Falling bonus hearts will occasionally spawn. 
  • Hover over them to recover health (Maximum capacity: 5 lives, highlighted in red when maxed out).

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 🚀 Key Features

•  Roblox-to-Godot Jam Experiment: Our first-ever standalone engine project, written in pure GDScript.
•  Dynamic Difficulty Scaling: Music pitch, spawn intervals, and target shrinkage all ramp up over time, leading into an absolute chaos mode.
•  Anti-Camping System: The game detects if you are staying on one key for too long and actively forces color changes to keep you moving.
•  Audio-Reactive Visuals: The 3D background pulses and breathes dynamically synced to the sub-bass frequencies of the music stream.

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 👥 Czech Team of Moltavica

Our team (13 - 23 year) is fully Czech

👉 Our Community Discord Server 

•  Superistroyer (also known as supertom145) 
•  Idea, Project Lead, UI (Game), Core Gameplay Programmer

👉 Discord: superistroyer | Instagram | TikTok | Twitter (X) | Youtube 

•  Street - UI (Main Menu), Programmer

👉 Discord: znovastreet

•  Simon Remsik - 13 Year Music Composer, Playtesting

👉 Discord: simonremsik | Instagram | Soundtrack - Come With Me

❗ His music is Licensed Courtesy of housemagazine.cz records - Simon Remsik agreed to put into this video game

•  ☀Polite Cat☀ (Pepa) - 3D Modeling (Arrow & Dots), SFX Design, Helper

👉 Discord: politecat6966

•  f34rl3ssh4wk (also known as Narex) - Background Arts, Icons

👉 Discord: f34rl3ssh4wk | Instagram | Web - Portfolio

•  ~°/K⟒rry_pog/°~ - Playtesting, Little Helper

👉 Discord: __kerry_pog__ | Instagram

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 🤖 Generative AI Disclosure

•  Code and Development: 
  • Large Language Models (ChatGPT / Gemini) were used strictly as a learning and syntax-bridging assistant. 
  • As 5-9 year Roblox Studio veterans transitioning to different engines, AI helped us quickly translate our existing object-oriented programming logic into Godot 4.6's GDScript under strict human supervision.

•  Audio and Sound Effects: 
  • Short sound effect samples (UI clicks, color pops, hits, and misses) were generated using ElevenLabs and subsequently edited, pitched, and integrated into the game engine.

•  Visuals and Music: 
  • All visual assets (3D models, UI layouts, backgrounds, icons) and the main Trance soundtrack "Come With Me" were created entirely from scratch by human members of our team. 
  • No generative tools were used for art or music.

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• External Assets: 
  • Font: Chelsea Market by Crystal Kluge (Tart Workshop), licensed under SIL Open Font License

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👇 Feel free to share your criticism (constructive is most welcome), ideas, or questions! :)