Tightrope Theatre

Check out the Ludum page:
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=11391

Welcome to the Tightrope Theatre! It's showtime and you are the main star, so hop on a unicycle and start performing! Watch out though: The unicycle is hard to control, and the stage keeps getting more and more various traps, err, props, the further in act you get! Tightrope Theatre is not responsible for death or dismemberment.

CONTROLS:
Arrow keys or WASD to move and jump
M mute music
Esc return to stage select.

You can use enter and esc to move in the menus without clicking buttons.

MISC:
For Ludum's theme, I wanted to create the game in circus and theatre like setting, so the game looks like the whole thing takes place on a single stage. Only props and actor positioning changes during curtain calls, but the game's location is the same place during every act.

I thought the game was too easy at first but the difficulty ramped up nicely in the later levels.  I like the different obstacles you added in the game, and art is great as usual.

This is great; I love it. I have no idea how anyone can possibly create such a polished game in such a short amount of time!

Clearly there's a lot of talent and dedication involved.

As the source is available, I like to have a poke around, to see if I can pick up any useful coding and game organisation tips. I noticed that the event in your scene-selection level is huge, and as I am an optimisation freak, I had a go at compacting it to around half a dozen blocks, down from around 50. I appreciate that optimisation is not at the forefront of one's mind whilst developing to an extraordinarily tight deadline, but I hope this will be useful to someone.

I have attached a screenshot of the original event, and also one showing my replacement code.

I have given it a quick test, and it seems to work fine. I would add that my code achieves nothing new, and optimization isn't particularly important here (it's not going to affect game-play), but I was thinking that it saves having to add or remove a set of blocks each time a level is added or removed from the game. This is the part of coding that I find tedious and error-prone, so I try to make life easy for my future self!

Hehe nice job! Really good fun, I think the unicycle was a great choice!

I think the unicycle was a great choice!

The unicycle physics is brilliant.

I think the unicycle was a great choice!

The unicycle physics is brilliant.

Glad you liked it!

The game was originally going to be pretty basic platformer with normal run and jump controls and I wasn't very inspired to work on it, but then I figured I could try making the game take place on a unstable unicycle on tightropes to make things more interesting and fit the circus/theatre feel better.I got the spark to finish the game and it turned out pretty well.

Awesome graphics and original take on the theme. Impressive game for a 48 hours competition!

I found the use of the theater aesthetics/curtain to simulate all levels being on the same screen to be quite clever. That IS what you were going for, right?

I don't think I enjoyed it as much as some of your older entries, but as usual its incredibly solid and was fun to play. Kudos!

Woowww! Congratulations !  Great Game !!

Now also playable on GameJolt and Newgrounds:
http://gamejolt.com/games/platformer/tightrope-theatre/41226/
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/649909

I also had the foresight for once to make my entry straight for universal mobile resolution, so I can make a mobile build right away with minimal adjustments, all I had to do was to add on screen buttons. Works like charm on all of my devices

I liked the level design for the most part. It's satisfying how the player character's horizontal movement has no slowdown.

Some criticism:

- The stage edges look solid and my mind interprets them as being so every time.
- I found the cannons that fire diagonally and their projectiles to be incredibly hard to read and predict the paths of.
- I'd like for the player character to respawn more quickly after death.
- As the character actually has slowdown on the moving platforms, I would have design the platform graphics in a way that would explain this, like putting sticky goop on top or something.

I liked the level design for the most part. It's satisfying how the player character's horizontal movement has no slowdown.

Some criticism:

- The stage edges look solid and my mind interprets them as being so every time.
- I found the cannons that fire diagonally and their projectiles to be incredibly hard to read and predict the paths of.
- I'd like for the player character to respawn more quickly after death.
- As the character actually has slowdown on the moving platforms, I would have design the platform graphics in a way that would explain this, like putting sticky goop on top or something.

Thanks for the feedback! I'm definitely decreasing the respawn time for the mobile version. Need to see if I can do something about the other issues.

Also, Tightrope Theatre has been featured on Newgrounds' front page!

I also had the foresight for once to make my entry straight for universal mobile resolution, so I can make a mobile build right away with minimal adjustments, all I had to do was to add on screen buttons. Works like charm on all of my devices

That looks like it begs for some tilt controls. They'd have to be fine-tuned pretty hard I'd think, but still I wonder if it could work.

That looks like it begs for some tilt controls.

That would be amazing, but AI has said to me before (in response to Ikan the Fisherman) that he doesn't like people waving around their devices with tilt controls. If there was any time to have people waving around phones, it would be for this game

That looks like it begs for some tilt controls.

That would be amazing, but AI has said to me before (in response to Ikan the Fisherman) that he doesn't like people waving around their devices with tilt controls. If there was any time to have people waving around phones, it would be for this game

I just really dislike tilt controls in games in general, and wouldn't want to include them in any of my own games.