In Disco Danger your job is to help Disco Dave and a collection of other equally delirious and dexterous dancers find their way across the dancefloor to a partner. Better hurry, you’ve only got so long before the song ends. That’d be bad, wouldn’t it?
The dancers are particular about how to move. If you’re on the floor, you’ve got to move to the beat. The beat has a specific colour matched to it and the tiles of the dance floor will change in time with this beat. Disco Dave and co can only move onto a tile that has a colour that matches the beat. It’s the rules of the dance floor, you know.
Of course, not all tiles on the dance floor are going to be the same colour, that’d be boring. The colours will cycle. You could have been on a green tile a second ago and now it’s red. But that also means that red tile next to you is now green and you can move on to it. This is the core of the gameplay for Disco Danger!
Since the tiles will change colour according to the beat, you (The Player) will have to keep up with this change of beat to move across the dance floor faster and faster. If you can keep up with the beat, you’ll move a lot faster, but without it things might seem a bit slow and clunky. Even though the dance and the level is on a timer, take a moment to look at the game screen and find where everything is. Disco Danger is a puzzle game as well as a rhythm game, it isn’t going to be as easy as swiping the screen a few times.
There will be walls, classic walls, that get in your way at just the right opportunities. But these aren’t just walls, who would put walls in the middle of a dance floor? No, these walls are simply crowds of rude dancers who aren’t going to move out of Disco Dave’s way. Since Dave (and you I would assume) are far too polite to just barge through these dancers under normal circumstances, so they behave as walls.
Just people-walls won't stand in Disco Dave’s way, there will be various hazards that won't be out of place on the average dance floor.
Maybe.
Don’t look for them.
First of all, a spilled drink will cause Disco Dave to careen out of control and slide forwards until he hits the side of the dance floor. With some focus the slip can be avoided, but sometimes you might actually want to go for a skid. These spills can give you a pointed boost in speed or set you on the wrong path. Keep your eye out and be careful.
Watch out for broken glass as well. Stepping on broken glass will put Disco Dave’s dancy feet out of commission, giving you a game over. Watch your step, your next one might hurt.
Disco Dave’s pain might not end there, as you also have to watch out for breakdancers on the dance floor. These skilled dancers are in the zone and are being a tad disruptive to the floor. If you see one, they’ll be on their head, spinning the night away. Get too close and they’ll accidentally hit Disco Dave. You might not notice it at first, but getting a foot to the face will shock Dave and co enough that time has passed. 10 seconds might not seem like much, but with limited time that is going to hurt.
There’s more, but that is a surprise… There’s some danger in this disco.
OK, so with all that prose out of the way I'm going to talk a little bit more about the project itself.
Disco Danger was born from a student project, based around research into the mobile market and to add a game to the android store as a display of said research. Following the market report we all made many prototypes to try and find something that we felt would stick onto the market, something that got all the 'interesting bits' right.
It was originally named Disco Dave, an alliterative title that also personifies it in some form. Alas, the name was taken just before I could claim it. Disco Danger, while less personified, sounds more exciting in a way. Dangerous, exhilarating! Fun, right? In time with the original name, the game itself has changed quite a lot since it's original conception. This post is getting a little long, so I'll talk about it in another article.
This project is amazing for the experience of actually being in the market. As I have never put up a game on the store before, even if things don't go well, I will still at least have something out there. There is another step of quality that is required in a product like this that is, in a way, different than previous projects in the schooling setting. It's quite a rush! As a student game designer in Australia, this is an immense step.
Disco Danger's beta release on the Google Play Store will be on the 20th of July. So tomorrow. This is not a complete release of the game, there is still a lot of iteration and polish that needs to be done. On the 4th of August the full release of Disco Danger will launch and on the 18th an update with additional content and necessary changes will be put up.
Thank you for reading, I do really hope you all enjoy Disco Danger, no matter the state it is in.
