⋆.˚ ☾ Welcome to Midnight Circus ⭒.˚

✰ “Enter the Gungeon meets the circus in a top-down bullet hell danmaku spectacle with rogue-lite elements! Play as Thespo the fighting cat clown and fight for fame and fortune as every encore brings you closer to freedom—or another night in the ring.”

✰ The protagonist, Thespo, is a stray cat who was saved from the cold of the streets by the illusive ringmaster of a traveling circus. Thespo’s rescue, however, came at a cruel cost: he must perform as the fighting clown during the midnight act of the ringmaster's circus until a debt of 40,000,000 triple dollars is paid. Step under the stage lights of the big top and into an aroma of laughter and violence; experience a blend of hand drawn characters with realistic 3D rendered backgrounds that create a whimsical and surrealist environment to perfectly complement the dazzling spectacle of its gameplay; dance through waves of projectiles and keep the crowd entertained by battling increasingly challenging antagonists. 

*ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆ CONTROLS ☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

˗ˏˋ ★ Move Thespo with WASD and navigate through barrages of enemy attacks while simultaneously aiming and retaliating at your opponents with a mouse and using left click to shoot. The E key will be used to interact with various things such as shop items. The Tab button handles swapping between weapons, and the shift button allows Thespo to walk rather than run for ease of navigation around the many bullets being shot at them. ESC pauses the game. ★ˎˊ˗

⋆⭒˚.⋆ TEAM STAGELIGHT ⋆.˚⭒⋆

This project really wouldn't have been possible without this amazing team! 

°⭒˚｡⋆ Support our Team Members! ⋆｡˚⭒°⋆

• Lauren: https://maofii.itch.io/
• Miller: https://eno180.itch.io/
• Tejas: https://tejas-velagapudi.itch.io/
• Nova: https://star-crasher.itch.io/ | https://soundcloud.com/star_crasher/tracks
• Erica: https://earthto-erica.itch.io/
• David: https://koye-x64.itch.io/

Listen to the OST here!

⊹˚☆ Post Mortem ☆˚⊹

⋆What Went Right⋆

☆ The project overall was really organized!

☆ The conceptual phase had lots of cool ideas and created a unique game!

☆ Most of the team had a really strong level of communication.

☆ The OST, art, and gameplay all turned out really clean and polished.

⋆What Could Have Gone Better⋆

☆ The work being done for the project should have been more spaced out, we all fell a bit behind schedule and didn’t realize until the deadline was close.

☆ The conceptual phase went on for a little too long and a lot of ideas had to get cut because of this.

⋆ What We Learned ⋆

☆ This was a lot of our first times making a collaborative game! We learned a lot about how to communicate with each other, how much work is appropriate for each individual, and how each phase of game making is supposed to go.

☆ How to organize a consistent art style for a game, we learned a lot about communicating how a style might clash with a different one.

☆ When planning for a team of students specifically, it can be hard to consider that we all have lots of other classes to study for. It’s important to account for when planning out how much work we need done for a game as well so we don’t have to cut as many features and we aren't overworking one another!