Giveaway of the Day - Dancing Craze

In Brief:

Dancing Craze is the fourth in a series of craze games (e.g. Beach Party Craze, Fashion Craze and Pet Show craze). Basically Dance Craze is a Time Management game interdispersed with a smattering of mini games sprinkled amongst the main games 40 levels. You’ll find four different locations each of 10 levels.

Installation:

downloads to a 86.4 MB zip file (took over 20 minutes to download on a 60MB broadband connection) and unpacks to a read me doc with the terms and conditions and instructions

The game installs to C:\Games\DancingCrazeGame by default and is 167MB in size once unpacked. There are shortcut installed to bother the desktop and the start menu/programs list; their is also an uninstaller unless you’re using programs like Revo. You can select your own installation path if you wish.

I’ve not tested it on all my computers. Most are offline at the moment awaiting various repairs. It works on a Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit and a Win 7 Pro 64 bit and a Vista 32 bit laptop.

Introduction:

You’re going to Hollywood, baby! Open a dance studio and teach your clients a range of slick moves as you prepare for the biggest variety show Tinseltown has ever seen. Serve cool drinks and hot towels as your customers work up a sweat C-Walking; purchase a variety of upgrades to keep everyone happy as they wait their turn to Breakdance; and hire a fitness trainer and a masseur so you can focus on each client’s Hip Hop moves.
Each level is a celebration of good times as you beat mini-games, win trophies and use each client’s unique traits to earn the money you need. Can you train enough dancers before the day of the big premiere? Available as a free download, Dancing Craze truly is a time management game with a twist!

Reference accessed HERE 12th Oct 2012

The Game:

Time Managment games are one of my least liked arcade genres. There are only a few that i enjoy playing such as the Farm Frenzy games. Consequently I didn’t think I’d give this a fair review so have posted a copy of Gamezebo’s review below:

In Dancing Craze the player leads Maria through 40 levels spread over four different dance studios. For each service Maria performs you earn money, which you need to reach the goal of any level. Those services include delivering smoothies, soda drinks, towels, or helping customers individually to learn dancing. Smoothies can be prepared by clicking the correct type of glass, a fruit, and then the smoothie machine. Other machines have to be refilled after a certain time. Some customers might also wish to get a massage, or to work out on a fitness pad, but only if you already offer these stations in the current studio.

How much you earn depends on a lot of factors, which makes gameplay deeper than that of your average time management title and allows comparisons to Playfirst’s dash series. The patience of your customers indicates how much they will pay, which is shown by the number of hearts attached to each customer. Furthermore, you can chain as many actions as you want to in advance, and chaining the same actions – for example, delivering beverages or collecting cash – will increase the amount of money you earn from that action regularly.

The most welcome introduction is without a doubt the ability of color-matching. For each customer whose clothes’ colors match the color of the dance pad you put him or her on, you will earn money according to the multiplier attached to that pad. This can earn you huge amounts of money, but also complicates gameplay, since it is always a fine line between color-matching and customers losing patience while waiting for the appropriate pad.

The charm of Dancing Craze lies mainly with the various dancers, who each perform one particular dance style with smooth animations and realistically drawn figures. Each type of dancer has his or her own personality, too. Not only do they differ in patience, but they partly affect customers dancing next to them. The wave-dancer for example is so impatient that he even decreases patience of nearby dancers. C-walk dancers on the other hand don’t mind noise, so they are the perfect fit for wave dancers. Of course those types are basically similar to those in dash games, but the inclusion of certain characters really suits Dancing Craze absolutely well, so we were pretty happy with this feature.

The upgrade system of the game is also varied and motivating, although variety is lacking from studio to studio. Upgrades include decorations and improvements for machines and staff. You can upgrade towel and beverage machines so that they offer more units at once, increase Maria’s speed, add more dancing pads, or purchase a radio that will increase the patience of customers waiting in line. All these upgrades are neither spectacular nor overly innovative, but they work in the sphere of this genre. Nevertheless it would have been nice to have some diversity in the different studios, because as it is, you are creating the same studio again and again.

Expect the game to last 3 or 4 hours. It’s pretty easy to reach the master goal (the game’s highest possible achievement) too, and there are no secondary modes to be explored. The awards you can earn are a nice additional motivation, but are becoming a standard feature in games these days.

Reference accessed HERE 12th Oct 2012

Features:

• Beat 40 levels across four locations
• Teach clients nine awesome dances
• Earn Chain and Color Matching bonuses
• Purchase and use over a dozen upgrades
• Decorate your studios to your taste

System Requirements:

Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, 7; Processor speed: 600 MHz; RAM: 64 MB; Graphics card: 32 MB; DirectX: 8.0

Video & Images:

You can see videos for Dance Craze HERE and HERE

I’ve uploaded images of Dance Craze to photobucket HERE as a slideshow.

Conclusion:

Dancing Craze is a very solid and entertaining time management title, above average in its genre. The graphics and animations are wonderful, the huge number of upgrades and awards motivating, and the pace of the game is absolutely perfect. That said I think there should have been more levels. 40 levels is more like an extended demo IMO. Also the variety between the four studios was lacking and overall the game was a little too easy to complete especially for Time Management aficionado’s

Score:

Overall I’d give this game the following score:
Game play – 7
Graphics – 7
Music – 6
Replayability – 6
Originality – 6
Total = 32 out of 50 which equates to 6.4 out of 10

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Alternative Games almost for Free:
You will find loads more free games posted in the Game Discussion forums, plus there’s loads of very cheap bundle deals available at this time. You can check out the bundle deals that are available at the moment over in the forums as well. You can get most the bundles for as little as $1 up to several dollars. there’s also a great strategy pack with over $400 worth of games (29 games) for $9.99. Overall there’s some excellent games to chose from.

It seems that there’s always at least one or two bundles on the go all the time now; what, with the Humble bundles, Indie Royale Bundles, Indie Gala bundles, Groupee Be Mine and Build a bundle bundles, Indie Face Kick be in your Face bundles , Indivania bundles plus others i.e. Elf Squad, Frozenbytes, AGS Bake, Indie Underdog Bundle in a Box, Operation Gratitude, Quadtastic, Indie Fort and Strategy first bundles, not to mention the bundles available over on Steam occasionally.
At the moment Steam have a developers sale with all Focus Home Interactive game that include A Game of Thrones, Blood Bowl, Cities XL, Wargame: European Escalation, Pro cycling Manager 2012, Confrontation, Pendulo Adventure Pack, at between 50% to 755 off (most are 75%). Today’s 24hr deal is Steel Storm: Burning Retribution for only £1.99, with 50% off the DLC weapons pack. you can even buy a four pack so that you can play with your friends as there’s a co-op mode included. (The four pack is only £5.98).

Alawar has a new monthly game called The Curse of Montezuma an excellent match three game. The Montezuma series is one of the best match three games available (IMO). Of the series I do think this one is the weakest, but it’s still an excellent game.

If you’ve heard of Half Life 2, you’ll have heard of Black Mesa. Well a group of modders have been working on a free standing mod for several years that’s finally been released. It uses a free version of the Half Life 2 source engine. You’ll find details HERE .
Finally, there’s a new indie site called IndieGameStand, where every four days a new indie game will be put up. You can purchase it with the ‘pay what you want’ model (minimum $1). After the four days it goes into the shop where you’ll pay the usual price. Today’s four day deal is called Really Big Sky. (Really Big Sky is a twin-analogue space shooter for the modern age. Full of bad guys, weird events, co-op multiplay and tributes to the stuff we grew up on. It’s an explosive adventure of a shooter so sit back, connect a controller and play it fullscreen with the best speakers lying around your cottage).

The site I posted a link to in the forums, the Didimatic site is going offline at the end of the month, however there are alternative sites where you can find information about the latest and best deals on all types of downloadable and hard copy games. (Gamersgate, Steam, GreenmanGaming, Gamestop, Gamefly as well as others).

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Problems:

If you have any problems with the game, either installation issues or getting the game to work check out the FAQ’s section over in the Game discussion forums. you can find it HERE

Request for Help:

Developers rely on good feedback to improve their games. If you download this game please take some time once you’ve played it a while to leave some constructive feedback either positive or negative. The more constructive feedback we get, the more likely developers are going to give more games away. The giveaway site already has a very good standing with the search engines. Developers want their products out there on the WWW, this site has the potential to do that. The game giveaway project gives away on average between 9 to 17 thousand downloads for each game depending upon what genre and how obscure the game is. That’s a lot of homes these games are being downloaded into and a lot of ‘potential’ cash that’s being lost by the developers. If we get better games because of better feedback, the community are likely to continue to benefit from the generosity of the developers. Satisfied community members are then more likely to visit the home sites of those developers and purchase games that they may not have bothered with before they discovered the developer via the game giveaway site, thus giving the developers more incentives to give away even more decent games.

Please leave some feedback once you’ve checked the game out. It can be positive or negative, but please explain what your reasons were for the feedback you post. You could also leave suggestions for improving the game, for example, this game could do with more block types for the levels editor, add more power-ups, describing the ones you think would be suitable, add some mini games (which seem all the rage in some arcade games now) or enable the user to be able to change the in game music easily.

Thank you in advance to all those who take the time to post a constructive comment.

Regards

Whiterabbit aka Stephen

I dont really think this is a game ill like, usually i like the games given for free on here, but idk about this one. Also, what happened with yesterdays game?? Why cant we get a game everyday like the normal giveaway of the day, we always have to wait till the weekend for the games

…………………….Moderator comment……………………

Basically the problem getting games regularly is supply. We used to get games every day until the end of March 2008; about the time the recession hit. Some of the developers who used to contribute no longer exist; whereas others, like Realore have their own giveaway schemes now. Prior to 2008 arcade games retailed at almost $20 each; since then games (both arcade and their larger cousins AAA games) have come down in price big time, You can get arcade games for a quarter of the price they cost four years ago from places like Big Fish Games. There seems to be permanent sales on these days so profit margins have probably been reduced. the average number of community members downloading games from this site can range from 6000 to 24000 downloads depending on the game. That’s a lot of potential revenue lost. That said I’m sure some of those that download games from here then return to the developers site and purchase games from them.

Go over to Gamersgate and you’ll find over a hundred games reduced significantly. You can pick up one of the developer packs for less than £50 that contains 80 AAA games that previously would have cost you several hundred pounds (around a thousand dollars) or visit Steam for the 24 hour sale, and the midweek and weekend madness sales as well as other sites such as GreenMan gaming. (You can find links to all of these distributors via the Game discussion forums). Games that were released at $50 – $70 can often be seen selling for as little as $10 only months later.

I also think some developers were scared off previously because it was quite easy to crack the wrapped setup file and many games appeared on peer to peer sites within hours of giveaways starting. Since the new security measures have been implemented its become harder to rip these games. Personally I’m surprised the game side of the project survived. Glad it did though.