The time has come: you can finally get rid of those scene-stealing hacks in your theater group. You’ve been setting this up for months. Talking to the folks backstage. Making sure they are willing to drop the counter-balances at your signal. Flattering the other actors, to make sure they take part in the production. Pretending to listen to their flattery, so they aren’t surprised that you are willing to work with them.
In the last few weeks, you’ve been working out the timing. Where you’ll have to be on the stage. How to signal where the sandbags should be dropped. And, of course, how to look good doing it. We wouldn’t want the audience to get a bad show, now, would we? Even if a few of the actors… break a leg.
Instructions
First you must choose a starting position: where you will be at the beginning of the play. Such fine actors as yourselves will of course want to start with your own spotlights, so no one will start in the same portion of the stage.
The play itself will be broken up into a series of acts, each consisting of four scenes. In each scene, you will either saunter across the stage to a new position, or stand in place and soliloquize. You’ve found that soliloquies are a great opportunity to signal your accomplice in the rafters. Unfortunately, you will have to plan out each act before the curtain rises, in order to make things look professional.
For each scene, click on either a portion of the stage to move to, or a sandbag in the rafters to drop on the stage. A tile showing your action for the scene will appear, so you don’t lose track of where you are. If you decide you need to change your action, clicking on the tile will reset it. When you have blocked out actions for each scene (or decide to just wing it, if you want an acting challenge), then start the act with the old standard: “Break a leg!”
Any actors who are hit by a sandbag will, “sadly”, break a leg. They will be taken backstage for the rest of the act, so their remaining actions won’t happen. In the next act, they will come back in the same location where they were injured (“The show must go on!”), but a second broken leg will send them home.
Credits
Brian Williams Brian Trotter Thomas Gruenewald Chandler Norris Adam Williams
Interesting concept, but I couldn't really find a way to strategize. Maybe I'm missing something (quite likely, even), but it just felt like a guessing game.
It didn't help that I had trouble telling whether the sandbag were upstage or downstage.
The gameplay is a neat concept and overall interesting, but it is not very intuitive. However, the graphics were nice. Having the curtain rise and fall was a nice detail.
Great concept! But a bit confusing to play >.< It took me a while to understand how to do things, and still some random sandbags dropped where I was xp Still good job!
I like the premise, but the interface could use some work, and the connection between my commands and the actual action seemed tenuous at best (why are sandbags raining all over the stage when only set one to drop?)
The lack of sound was a real killer, too, given the whole premise is about dropping things on people. ^_^;
I kinda felt like controlling some of it but most of it seemed rather random... a beautiful chaotic random. Loved the concept. Could use a better work on the graphics and It was kinda confusing about which bag would fall where.
It's a good idea for a game, but the directions on how the strategy works seem a bit unclear. Wasn't really sure how to actually play, though I knew what I could click on. Fits the theme really well.
Awesome idea, but the gameplay is so convoluted it is hard to tell what's going on and what you're supposed to do. I'd definitely love to see this expanded on though!
It didn't help that I had trouble telling whether the sandbag were upstage or downstage.