- Parse-O-Rhythm 1.3: Achieving Control Update - 26 December 2025
Hey everyone! It is my pleasure to announce that at long last, update 1.3 is now out and available for everyone to enjoy! This update has been in the making for pretty much the entire year, and was held up by lots of required engine tuning and fixes. But at long last, the last update predating the level editor is out - so let's talk about it!! Included in this update is:FULL Controller & Steam Deck Support!Do you own a Steam Deck? Or maybe you just really like playing on controller? We have news for you: The game is now fully compatible with controllers! The entire game can easily be navigated and interfaced with, with zero intervention from the keyboard nor mouse.If you also prefer to use a touchpad rather than the joysticks during gameplay, there's an option in the settings to disable joystick influence!Steam Achievements!Something we've wanted to add for a very long time - the game n…
- 1.3 Beta 3 now available for testing! - 17 December 2025
Hey everyone!1.3 Open Beta 3 is now available for testing! After a long period of work on the editor, patiently waiting for engine improvements and other things, all known bugs are squashed and we can put out hopefully the final public beta for 1.3!In addition to 1.3's changes, this beta also comes with massive engine-side performance improvements that should have the game running even smoother than it already did on any device!To try out this build, right-click the game on the library, head to this menu and click the open testing branch! When you launch the game, ensure that you see "Full Version 1.3.0 Beta 3". If you don't, you'll have to restart Steam so it updates! Be sure you see this!As for the level editor, we'll have more news to share about it later this week, but it's being steadily worked on! Admittedly I am extremely busy with a bunch of different things so development of th…
- 📈 Monday Devlog 53: Marketinging - 30 September 2025
Hey again! It's been a bit! A lot has been going on this September, and I apologize for the delay. However, I have some interesting news: Weekly devlogs are being switched, for now, to short videos!The ShiftAfter running a poll on our Discord, it was clear people liked the idea, so now the weekly devlogs for the foreseeable future will be posted on Youtube, Instagram and Tiktok! If you'd like to continue following the logs, as they will no longer be posted to Steam, be sure to go follow us (and see this week's video!) on:Youtube: Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@encabulatedgames/video/7555729893804297486 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/DPNevNHiVqw/To recap the devlog video real fast, the level editor's background now responds just like it does in-game, and there are new settings for BPM, background speed and more! We're getting closer and closer!!That'll be all for the written dev…
- 🔩 Sunday Devlog 52: Heavy Framework - 8 September 2025
Good evening.. morning.. what is time anymore??ConstructionThis week, there's nothing brand new that's complete.. but a bunch of stuff is partially mostly there! The editor, yet again, continues to take shape, and it's been looking pretty good, I think!The editor is going to have the background that you upload yourself (or pick from presets) here. This performs a couple of functions; for one, it makes the editor much more visually interesting and immersive, but more importantly it also gives you a reference for how the background will look in-game. A lot of these assets look kind of dull in Aseprite, but that actually is necessary in order to create the low-contrast colors you see in the background. Or you could try more vibrant colors! Whatever you choose to do, this system will give you an instant preview of what your background will look like.In addition, a menu for the editor is in…
- ▶ Sunday Devlog 51: FastPlay - 1 September 2025
Welcome back!I had a heck of a move-in back to college, but now we're back with a new devlog, and I've got some exciting tech to show today:Live Playback!Playing a level in the editor now causes music to play where appropriate, and as a bonus, the parser moves around and is accompanies by some simplified effects + sounds to simulate playing the level!! Be sure to play this one with audio on!There were some issues with the old playback system where it would go out of sync, but this one (still using ease) relies on a timer to keep the player in check, even if there are lagspikes. The whole thing is also compatible with any BPM which is a huge relief to be done with as well!At this point, thanks to this feature, the editor is pretty much capable of being used to map songs if you're a dev with access. A lot still needs to be manually changed, but now for the first time, as long as you plug…
- 🤍 Sunday Devlog 50: I 🤍 Ease Behaviors - 18 August 2025
Hi again, it's Sunday devlog time! The new editor feature this week, as promised, is:Playback and BPM! It works! Yippie!!You can now hit a pause and play button in the editor to have a song play - the feature still needs sound effects and a few visuals (which might take time, given there are some issues detecting errors during playback that need care to solve) but the feature fully works and you can throw any BPM into it, and no matter what BPM it works flawlessly.This is thanks to a special little behavior in Flowlab called "Ease", which we'll be talking about today.Easing!Ease is one of, in my opinion, Flowlab's greatest strengths as an engine. All you do is open it up, plug the values you want to start and end at in, then tell a time and dictate the type of curve you want as well as if it affects the start or end. After these couples of steps, all you have to do is send a signal once…
- 🔢 Sunday Devlog 49: Encoding - 11 August 2025
We're back! Over the jam, Encabulated Games produced Tidal Reign, and it was a crazy ton of fun to work on, but that's besides the point - it's time to talk about the progress on the editor!Error Placement!The newest (and coolest) thing about the editor is that you can now place errors in it properly! Take a look:Isn't it beautiful!?This system was actually programmed by Rezarg, the one responsible for the achievement, discord rich presence and other features. I, in turn, did my best to give the placement system some visual flare (still working on it). How the note placement currently works is that you can place errors anywhere on a line with left click - and then delete them by clicking on the error with left click again. To be honest, this felt a little counter-intuitive when I first used it, and I'm rather used to deleting with right click.Obviously there is a balance between making…
- 🧱 Sunday Devlog 48: Building Blocks - 21 July 2025
Hi again! It's been a bit!A summer trip combined with difficult online classes has made the past couple weeks hard to handle - but we're back now, and with some cool new changes to the editor. Let's take a look! :)Editor ProgressHere's a screenshot of the interface now:There are a couple new things here - first, the "temperature changes" that take place in a level are now visible! But the two more interesting things are the selection menu and scrollbar, so let's talk about them.A lot of the icons on the selection menu has to be redone over and over again. Since errors in Parse are squares layered over each other, I figured that doing something similar with the icons would be cool. But it turns out, when you have solid shapes and lines instead of randomized squishing and stretching like the errors, it's a lot harder to make it look decent. So in the end I had to go with the most boring b…
- 🌐 Monday Devlog 47: Rendering - 1 July 2025
Welcome back!This week.. well, summer online classes AND a very, very long two week road trip started for me. So, it's been difficult to find free time that also has stable internet!! These things compound each other, since classes are online, but enough of that, let's go over some of the new level editor changes.And just to clarify! We're still waiting on the engine's dev to tackle the crashing and lag-spiking issues that Parse is facing. At this rate 1.3 is going to be merged with 2.0! (please god no)Smooth Movement!Using the tech that enabled smoother parser movement back in devlog 31, level editor scrolling was modified to be smoother rather than rigidly teleporting, which it used to do - you notice this same phenomenon when you scroll pretty much any site on your phone or computer - there are subtle things that smooth the vertical scrolling out, to prevent you from feeling like you…
- Monday Devlog 46: Deigsn - 17 June 2025
Good evening!This week, the war on the bugs actually got worse instead of better. Following the release of the second 1.3 open beta, more bug reports rolled in, and rampant testing ensued. Bleh. Ahh, the classic Unity NullReferencException. Flowlab Edition™.However, there have already been a couple devlogs about debugging (our game attracts bugs like a rotting pot of soup in the Amazon Rainforest) So I'd like to do a deep dive into some cool new tech:Level Editor Progress!So, figuring out how the level editor is going to be laid out has been the topic of discussion for quite a while. Where are things going to be oriented? Will the editor be vertical or horizontal? How much versatility should there be?After a lengthy discussion in the developer channel, I decided to test a vertical track for level editing. This offers less space than making the track horizontal would, but it would also b…
- 🧪 Sunday Devlog 45: More Testing! More Testing! - 9 June 2025
Hello! It's been a bit!Let's cut right to the point with the most important news:1.3 Open Beta 2 & Discord Rich PresenceA new version of the 1.3 open beta is out! This version contains:Rich Presence: Parse-O-Rhythm now has full Discord Rich Presence support! The panel actually shows things when you're playing now.UI Juice: Some small updates to the guide and progress bar UI to make them more informative & feel better.Launcher: New changes to how the launcher & achievement system works, which should make Windows Defender less angry & the achievement system efficienter.Bugfix: Music not resuming after unpausing.Bugfix: Crashes relating to opening random levels.It's so beautiful!There are still some bugs that are afoot, and it's unclear if they've all been solved yet, which is why 1.3 is still not out yet (getting there lol). Thank you so much for the bug reporting y'all have been doing! K…
- 🎵 Monday Devlog 44: Music Notes - 20 May 2025
Welcome back! So.. about there not being a devlog last week. Long story short, life has been getting in the way lately. It’s nothing dire, and progress on the game is moving, BUT a lot of things that I was supposed to get done during my semester got pushed into now by the semester itself, since it was so busy. The result is that the start of summer has been messy!! However, things have been stabilizing again, and productivity will ramp back up this week! Where Are We? At the moment, I’m currently working on adding discord rich presence to the game and updating the achievement system so Windows Defender doesn’t get mad at it anymore (+ other nice benefits). This is all thanks to the advanced technologies Rezarg has been cooking up (he should honestly just be added to the dev team at this point lol). However, for this devlog, I’ll be handing off the mic to the three music artists who work…
- 🏁 Monday Devlog 43: Finish Line - 6 May 2025
That's it. After 9 months of toil (well I mean some of it was pretty fun but still), my academic year is over for now. I'll talk about it more in the conclusion but essentially, last week was the culmination of my semester so Parse had to go on the backburner for a bit. 1.3 Release Date Even though I don't have too much to share, I can talk about when 1.3 will go live, which is: Friday, May 9. Now that I'm back home and currently without too much to do for the next couple days, I can focus on squaring away the remaining bugs and doing some last minute balancing work to get 1.3 ready. The remaining things left are: - Fixing an audio bug - Fixing a bug with slashing - Balance changes to the last track - Short 1.3 trailer ..And that's it! All of this is very much doable in a day, let alone a whole row of them which I have lined up. In fact, we'll probably be done with all of this before th…
- 📍 Sunday Devlog 42: The Level Editor & 2.0 Roadmap - 28 April 2025
Hey hey! It's been a busy week for me, and college finals are bearing down on me in a last stand. Because of this, I didn't have too much time to work on the game this week aside from tracking some bugs to be fixed. At this time 1.3 is still in open testing! There'll be an update to it later this week with some changes and fixes. Until then, I'd like to talk about.. The Roadmap I've posted a couple roadmaps before, so here's a concise one with all the relevant info. ..wait, that's a little zoomed out. Give me a moment. Here's the map with the relevant info! So, let's talk about some of the stuff shown here in a little more detail. The level editor will be worked on first. As soon as the 1.3 update is out, work will begin on the level editor. Well, it kind of already has, but not in a way that is visible in-game quite yet. Once the level editor is ready, we will release it as an open bet…
- 🔄 Sunday Devlog 41: Re-Working - 21 April 2025
Welcome back yet again! This devlog is going to cover the past two weeks, since the announcement about the 1.3 public beta was last week (roughly). In order to get 1.3 out the door, a lot of stuff, unexpectedly, had to be completely re-done before the update could be released, causing it to be delayed by a couple days. Let's talk about these features in this devlog! Controller Navigation System It all started a couple days before the release, when pausing was going through a final round of testing. You see, the way controller navigation works in the game is with an invisible "cursor controller" object that seeks out button "hitboxes" (which are also invisible). When I have them enabled, the hitboxes look like this: When the player hits the D-pad, the following things happen in order: The cursor controller fires a ray (imagine a laser pointer) in the D-pad direction. If the ray hits any…
- 1.3 Open Beta NOW AVAILABLE for testing!!! - 15 April 2025
Hey hey! Despite taking a little longer than expected (this will be talked about in a later devlog), the 1.3 update is now ready for open beta testing. This update's primary features are achievement and controller support, but there are a bunch of smaller features as well. Let's talk about it! What's included in the update Major features: - Achievements: There are 31 achievements to unlock in the game ranging from simply beating certain levels to other milestones and some funny ones! - Full controller & Steam Deck support: The game can be entirely played with a controller or Steam Deck! The joystick(s) is used to move the parser for controllers, and you have the option to still use the touchpad on the deck. - Pausing during gameplay: You can modify pretty much all game settings without having to go back to the main menu! Minor features: - Level score list: There's a new folder in the ga…
- 🚫 Sunday Devlog 40: Impossible! - 7 April 2025
Yo! Today's devlog is about the impossible, such as.. Achieving The Impossible At long last, controllers now ACTUALLY work on the exported game! This is a feature that was "completed" back in November on Sunday Devlog 25. It is hard to overstate the amount of work the engine developer and I have put in to figure out what got controllers so discombobulated on export, but the game can now leverage the Steam API to "translate" more jumbled controllers like my PS5 Dualsense to work with the game. Getting this working made me feel like a child on Christmas morning. With this hurdle hopped, there are only a couple smaller things left on the road to 1.3's public beta and release. Along with the weight of my week ahead outside of this project (light), I can confidently say that you can expect a 1.3 open beta by the end of the week. Taming The Impossible One of the most prevalent pieces of feedb…
- 🧪Sunday Devlog 39: For Science! - 31 March 2025
Welcome back! Everyone Is Too Busy I have been absolutely saddled this week by work external to the project, and so has the engine developer. So, we didn't end up accomplishing too much to solve the major controller roadblock aside from some light bug fixes. Because of that, this week I went and did some implementation for the achievements system, as well as some testing. This means that achievements now show up for the game, although they are currently unobtainable (for now!). It turns out that a lot of things needed to be ironed out for it to work properly.. Achievement Testing It's a bit odd seeing all of these achievements here with 0% completion ratings.. Nearly all of the achievements were ready at this point code-wise, so I figured now would be a great time to quickly test if anything is faulty. And lo and behold, the game crashed immediately after loading a level! This caused so…
- 🔃 Sunday Devlog 38: Doodad Emporium - 24 March 2025
Hey, sorry to keep you waiting an extra week! Truthfully, taking 19 college credits and three major projects (including this one) was a grave mistake, but I think that's obvious enough from the previous logs. At the moment, the heavily lifted features for 1.3 are waiting on controller support on the engine side (this has been going on for a while...) as well as some engine-side bug fixes as well. I've been doing my best to help get those resolved by working with the engine dev, but oh boy is development messy. So, for this log, allow me to showcase some funny circuits 1.3 utilizes and how they'll be running the upcoming major update! 1.3's Circuits Starting off, we have the: Achievement Registrar This group's job is to send a signal into the "SAI" bundle at the end, the achievement bundle that was successfully tested last devlog. So, why's there all this random stuff around it? Well, th…
- 💡 Sunday Devlog 37: Eureka! - 10 March 2025
Welcome back! This week was a bit of tying up loose ends, but there's also some neat new community-made tech to talk about as well. Let's dive right in! Functional Achievements! Roughly a week and a half ago, one of Flowlab's community members who goes by "Rezarg" came out with a tool that he's been cooking up for the past couple of weeks. Basically, any Flowlab game can be activated through this launcher, and with the right configs, it will allow a game to just trigger achievement unlocks. The really incredible thing about this tool is that it's not built into the engine, and rather uses external tools to relay a message to Steam to unlock achievements for the player. It is one of the first times that third party tools are being integrated into a game outside of the engine supporting it! It's not really expressed in this screenshot well, but Rezarg got some much-deserved love from the…
