Illustration by Michael DeForge
Circus Mania
Neil Wu, Youngjun Lee, Yuxuan Wang, Zoe Chow, Lexi He, Xinyue Ren, Justin Yoon, Leo Feng
Neil Wu, Youngjun Lee, Yuxuan Wang, Zoe Chow, Lexi He, Xinyue Ren, Justin Yoon, Leo Feng
Circus Mania - Trailer
+In one or two sentences, describe the main themes present in your game.
Place cute animals to pass the ball and build the longest combo. Design your circus, create the perfect show, and complete a world tour to become a circus master!
+What was the inspiration of the game?
What made your team decide to make this game specifically?
The inspiration came from our Major Studio Fall game. We found the core mechanic interesting and wanted to expand on it. Additionally, Neil, the producer, had been playing some Tarkov-like games and was intrigued by their pricing systems. As a result, we added price fluctuations to guide players’ animal choices.
+Were there difficult moments when developing the game? What led to those difficult moments? What did you learn from it? +Were there features you had to remove, and if so, what were they and why were they removed?
The most difficult moment was dealing with progress issues during the middle of the semester. At the beginning, we were full of excitement and eager to do something ambitious this term. But in reality, even though we had six sprints, there were many breaks, and tasks turned out to be harder than expected. In the future, we might plan with a deadline set at half the available time, since things often take twice as long as we imagine.
+Were there features you had to remove, and if so, what were they and why were they removed?
At first, we had a complicated scoring function like “total score = (red + yellow × last round) × blue”. While it did add depth to animal building, it was too complex for most players to understand—so we removed it.
+Talk about your teammates! What was everyone's role?
Neil is the producer and game designer. Youngjun and Yuxuan are programmers. Zoe is both a programmer and the project manager. Lexi is the art director, Xinyue is the UI artist, Justin creates the landmark illustrations, and Leo designs the tutorial art.
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