The Show Must Go Down by tykenn

[raw]
made by tykenn for Ludum Dare 49 (JAM)

A play happens on the left side. You mess around backstage on the right side. Your actions will affect the play and generally make a mess of things.

Arrow keys or WASD to move. SPACE to interact with objects.

screenshot3.png screenshot4.png

Changelog (after jam ended): - Fixed bug with game not resetting right on a second playthrough - Added Linux and Mac builds (I'm currently unable to test them though, so if someone tries them out, let me know how it goes)

Ratings

Overall 519th 3.686⭐ 45🧑‍⚖️
Fun 683th 3.477⭐ 45🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 82th 4.058⭐ 45🧑‍⚖️
Theme 566th 3.733⭐ 45🧑‍⚖️
Humor 39th 4.302⭐ 45🧑‍⚖️
Mood 690th 3.476⭐ 43🧑‍⚖️
Given 51🗳️ 63🗨️

Feedback

Yaroslav Kravtsov
04. Oct 2021 · 21:53 UTC
Oh, I see a high art masterpiece here! It is fun, innovative, narrative, and non-linear. Being on the backstage is never had so much entertainment.
beeguy
04. Oct 2021 · 21:58 UTC
This is a really cool idea for a game. It fits the theme really well and the humour was good. Although one thing I'd say is that there's not much to do for quite a lot of the game, most of it is standing about watching the play until you need to flip a switch or move a prop. Overall though I really enjoyed it!
Sploky
04. Oct 2021 · 22:00 UTC
Interesting concept I see potential, if you added more things to do it could be a pretty fun game.
PolymathLD
04. Oct 2021 · 22:01 UTC
Really funny, creative premise, and I liked the art and the general idea behind the game. It was a little unintuitive figuring out how to disrupt the play--I wasn't sure what to do with the objects on the table, although punching the curtain and dropping the piano were pretty obvious. I also feel like I would've picked up on things quicker if it didn't take me awhile to figure out that the narrative stability bar was going from bottom to top instead of vice versa. I'm probably just tired and braindead at this point, but I do feel like it might be more intuitive if you reversed the direction of the progress bar. In any case, wonderful work! Love the humor, the cool splitscreen layout, and the art is fun and appropriate to the concept. Also think you nailed the theme in a way I never would've considered.
Eva Knight
04. Oct 2021 · 22:03 UTC
Took me a sec to get what was going on, but once I did a very fun idea!
🎤 tykenn
04. Oct 2021 · 22:39 UTC
@beeguy Yeah, I had a whole bunch of other ideas of stuff to do (getting the floor wet, explosions, etc.) that would have kept you busy, but not enough time to get them working. Maybe I'll add to it later. Glad you enjoyed it though!
Alina Baybulatova
05. Oct 2021 · 05:10 UTC
So cute character, and cool graphic style) I really have fun to play this game. Thank you!)
TopperVideoGames
05. Oct 2021 · 05:46 UTC
I like the cleverness of being the person backstage messing things up! Being able to mess with the mountain backdrop and switch props around was good, and required timing to pull off the mess correctly.

The piano was the best thing, and being able to land on the guy right at the start was a neat surprise.
Some of the placement of the actors seemed to be weird at parts. The hero stabbed the piano at the end and the mustache man fell over when I could only see him on the right. Even the actors were becoming unstable!

A small technical thing is that trying to replay the game made it so none of the prompts came up, but restarting the game fixed that up. Overall really good job!
🎤 tykenn
05. Oct 2021 · 06:27 UTC
@toppervideogames That piano drop was my favorite thing to work on and took up a lot of my jam time; I'm glad you like it!

Thanks for pointing out that bug. That was one line of code I forgot to remove that was messing that whole thing up. I fixed that as I was adding builds for Linux and Mac, so the current build for all three should now reflect that.
ElectricStalin
05. Oct 2021 · 13:42 UTC
Very nice game, cool art and interesting idea. Great job!
tinykidtoo
05. Oct 2021 · 15:09 UTC
But the play bust go on. I liked swapping out the weapons to see what happened. Really neat concept.
njs
05. Oct 2021 · 15:14 UTC
Yeah, really liking this game, all the individual elements are great, and it's a creative take on the theme (creative full stop).

It's ripe for some post-jam development. If you flesh it out a bit to include a tutorial and a few more levels it could be a real winner.
PSV Games Studio
05. Oct 2021 · 16:51 UTC
I found the idea of ​​ruining the show very interesting!
MEGA Marlon
05. Oct 2021 · 23:24 UTC
Never seen a game like this before, really unique and something you may want to pursue further. I had a fun time messing everything up. Great job!
Proxy-Games
06. Oct 2021 · 01:39 UTC
The idea of ruining and destabilizing a play is a very unique to interpret the theme, but it looks wonderfully here. The dialogue and the different branching paths are fun to find, and the characters trying desperately to keep the play on track regardless of whatever you do is hilarious to watch. I also love how non-linear this game is-there are a lot of ways to mess up the play at different points, and certain actions will mess up the play more than others (The piano is the best one to play with). Overall, this is probably the funniest game I've played during this game jam.
Zachary Granger
06. Oct 2021 · 02:39 UTC
"And so the Hero and the Princes 'Won', learning absolutely nothing."
Really original idea, and it was fun to mess around to try and get a few different endings to happen.
I had some good laughs at the dialogue, great submission!
LarrySeinfeld
06. Oct 2021 · 02:44 UTC
Really cool and unique game! I think all the music, sounds, art, writing, concept, and use of theme came together really nicely! I don't think anything I did backstage promoted narrative stability, and I'm okay with that. Nothing quite like punching curtains, dropping pianos, and creating art by sabotaging art. Really cool entry!
Sceef
06. Oct 2021 · 08:13 UTC
I like this
der Mondhase
06. Oct 2021 · 19:31 UTC
HOLY MOTHER OF SHOWS! The creativity of the dialogue! All the branches! I have thrown the piano on BOTH the princess and the baddie at different times! it made me laugh a lot, comedy at its finest! Seeing Baddie McMoustache waving the leek wand or berating the guards was just awesome! I don't know how you had this idea, but be it known that I wished this game could be a full feature game with more levels!
Pixel_Error
06. Oct 2021 · 20:14 UTC
Why there is no points for narrative. This will get at least 6!
JuniorA_
06. Oct 2021 · 22:01 UTC
This was really fun, there's a lot of potential in this idea, expand on what we can do and you'll have a really solid game!
nardandas
07. Oct 2021 · 06:17 UTC
Really interesting concept! I also found it kinda unintuitive interacting with the objects, but I figured it out. I think I did produce a bug where I kept picking up the package everywhere!
ScalphaMission
07. Oct 2021 · 16:06 UTC
Lots of nice cinematic features
timon
07. Oct 2021 · 23:32 UTC
The music is KILLER! Figuring out all the ways you can affect the play was lots of fun, I could definitely see myself playing an extended version of this game with more scenarios and more ways to mess with the play. Very cute graphics too.

Great job!!
🎤 tykenn
07. Oct 2021 · 23:47 UTC
@timon I wish I could claim credit for the music and art, but most of it was free assets (except the characters, which only ended up that way because I couldn't model a face). I'm glad you enjoyed it though!
V174M1N
08. Oct 2021 · 10:02 UTC
its a nice game and i love the various options i had.
Trexxak
09. Oct 2021 · 01:49 UTC
Love the falling piano :'D

Other than that a very interesting game concept I'd love to see explored even further! Nice work!
GreatCadet
09. Oct 2021 · 23:50 UTC
Playing this game was an absolute delight! I loved timing the piano drop and watching the actors improvise! This game’s humor was outstanding and like someone else said, the models and assets used really fit the mood of the game. I'd love to see different levels/shows should you continue this game. I seriously had a blast playing. If this game were to become a fully fledged thing, I would play the heck out of it. There's a lot of replayability seeing how the narrative changes as you switch out the props. Overall outstanding submission :)
alanxoc3
09. Oct 2021 · 23:52 UTC
@tykenn Thanks for adding a linux build. It worked perfectly fine for me. This game was really creative and very funny, so great job. I liked all the small details like how there was a teleprompter in the background. This game would be really cool if it was extended (more plays and scenarios). I could see it being really popular on mobile devices and consoles also.

Overall, great submission!
macaroni.dev
13. Oct 2021 · 02:45 UTC
Pretty funny game and a very unique idea!
cdunham
18. Oct 2021 · 03:35 UTC
Cool idea for a game, wish I had more options to mess around with stuff. Unless I'm missing what I use the money, sword, and leek on then all I can do is the piano and hack the teleprompter. Still though, seems like there's a lot of dialogue in this and possibly some replay value.
🎤 tykenn
18. Oct 2021 · 12:53 UTC
@cdunham You can take props off the table to make actors have to pick up the wrong props, although I only had time to make the dialogue change for different props in the first act. Thanks for playing!