Crossing The Floor

Code and music by hyphz, pixel art by Gazzor75.

Cross the dancefloor and reach the X mark without going out of step or crashing into any other dancers.

Press space to start. Use the arrow keys to move. No, the crank doesn't do anything. Not a damn thing. At all. Nope.

The current step is shown scrolling right-to-left at the bottom of the screen. You must follow the arrows on beats when they appear. If there is no arrow on a beat, you can move any direction you want (or stay still). Use these opportunities to work your way to your target.

You do not have to enter your moves on the beat! You can "lock in" your move at any point before the beat and the game will move you on the beat. For this reason there is zero tolerance for late inputs, so get used to entering moves in advance.

You must not collide with other dancers, but you can safely move into a square they are leaving, or change places with them (very daring!)

If you reach all four targets, you'll be told how long you took.

By default, the appearances of you and the other dancers are selected randomly, but if you prefer you can choose by holding a direction at the time you press space to start (or restart) the game:

• Hold LEFT for male PC and female NPCs;
• Hold RIGHT for female PC and male NPCs;
• Hold UP for all female;
• Hold DOWN for all male.

Isn't this a bit rough? Yes. My main job gave me a severe timetabling job to complete halfway through the Jam week, by the end of that week; so it had to be rushed to the end.

Why do I turn into an arrow when I choose my move? I wanted to give the player immediate feedback that their move had been entered without needing to look at the ribbon.

Are there any development notes? Like quite a lot of people I was baffled by the "etiquette" theme, and that developed into the idea of dancing as an established game mechanic (which I think it did for several others too). Originally I wanted more interaction with the NPCs - something along the lines of Crypt of the Necrodancer but without combat (at one point I thought you might be pushing chairs into their path to clear space) but it made the player too distant from the actual motion sequence, which is where the idea of making the player follow the steps as well came in.

Why didn't you use the crank? There were a couple of ideas for the crank, but they didn't pan out. Using it to rewind or slow down the music made the game too easy. At one point it was going to be used to spin your partner around but I couldn't work that into design. So it doesn't do anything. Honest.