On Circus Games

While reading through articles and reviews about CarneyVale: Showtime, I was reminiscing about some earlier thoughts I had regarding circus games. One of my favourite games to play on the NES, back when I was still a boy, was Circus Charlie. I used to spend hours in front of the TV screen at my cousin’s place during Chinese New Year, trying to get through all the levels (I usually died around level 4 or 5).

Because of that early experience, and because I think my parents took me to see a circus performance when I was very young, I’ve always had good impressions about circuses as exciting and fun-filled places. This view, I came to realise, was not commonly shared among adults that I knew. Which strikes me as weird, really. Most people seem to think of circuses as some sort of creepy freak show… a cross between Ripley’s Believe It or Not and the old mechanical arcade machines featuring circus themes. So maybe that explains the dearth of good circus games for the last two decades or so. All people could think of were bearded ladies and clowns.

I did research on this once, and it seems like circus game produced over the last two decades have generally been divided into two categories… either they put the player in the role of a non-performer, or they were kids games. There were literally no games targeted at adults, that allowed them to play as what I had always thought was the coolest part of the circus – being a performer. Heck, even Robin was a circus acrobat before he became Batman’s sidekick. But no… either they were kiddy games, or games which placed the player as part of the audience (Wii Carnival Games) or as the manager of a circus (Circus Empire, Shrine’s Circus Tycoon). Who on earth wants to manage a circus for entertainment? Or to watch circus sideshows as a video game?

My personal take on it is that somehow, the important elements of a circus got lost among videogame developers. The true essence of circus performances is fantasy wish-fulfillment. Don’t we all wish we could be as cool or as daring as the people who are performing live on stage? As daring as the blindfolded knife-thrower? As brave as the lion tamer? As skilled as the tightrope walker? As charming as the bareback rider? That’s what good circus games should be about. Put the player in the role of the performer.

More thoughts and a game idea after the break.

I think the time is really ripe for this. The rhythm games genre sort of proved the concept of people liking to perform in front of their friends (Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero being notable examples of this). Performance is central to the fantasy wish-fulfillment sort of game, and that’s precisely the aesthetic that circus games should try to exploit. If you want to talk about core mechanics and performances, the circus offers the largest variety of acts in the world. You can take almost any one of the circus acts and make a core mechanic for a game out of it. And then push it to the max, beyond the realms of human possibility and into true wish-fulfillment.

I’ll give an example. Say I wanted to make another circus game. Okay, so the first thing I’m going to need is a core mechanic. What will my “circus act” be about? Say I want a female protagonist this time around. Female circus performers, to my knowledge, have participated in a variety of acts such as: Magic, Acrobatics, Knife-Throwing Targets/Assistants, Tightrope Walkers, and Bareback Riders. Okay, so I want to select a genre that I’m reasonably comfortable with, and represents a lower publishing risk. So Bareback Riding. It’s similar to a lot of riding and horse games, so I can make a case to publishers that girls would love it. Right?

Except that Bareback Riding on horses doesn’t really sound that unique or interesting. There’s probably games that have done it before, or are about to do it. And to the layman player, who is indifferent to the finer points of equestrianism, what’s the diff? So, time to jazz it up. It’s a circus, after all. Normal things that everyone else can do isn’t worth paying the entrance fee to watch. Here, we can do two things: Make the character do cooler stuff bareback than normal riders do, or make the mount cooler than what other people ride.

Let’s do both.

First, change the mounts. Horses are passe for a circus. Let’s have her ride a big cat instead. (Inspiration: He-Man and BattleCat). So she’s not a bareback horse rider, she’s a Bareback Lion Rider. Here, if you’re working on console, you can immediately start thinking about things like rumble feedback, and interesting ways to make the lion-riding experience cool. But even then, lion-riding has been seen and done before in games. A few MMORPGs nowadays are making more and more exotic mounts for people to ride. So, as a mount, lions or tigers are cool, but not unique.

That’s where the second portion comes in. We’ve already changed the aesthetic slightly… now, the ostensible player should feel a little bit like She-Ra, Princess of Power (He-Man’s twin sister). But in terms of game mechanics, how can we make the player feel cooler than the average lionback rider? A few things. First, let her perform acrobatics on the mount. Most mounts in those MMORPGs don’t really do anything besides carry you from place to place. And horse-riding games focus on making you do performances with the horse, as one entity. In this game, you and the lion are separate entities… linked, but ultimately able to do different actions at the same time. So, handstands on a rampaging lion are cool. Better yet, imagine a flaming hoop coming towards you, hovering about 1 meter off the ground. You could literally somersault through the ring of fire while the lion ducks underneath. (And that’s precisely what happens in Circus Charlie, btw.)

But that’s still not different enough. So how about this… instead of one lion, make it two. You’re vaulting and somersaulting from one lion’s back to the other while they’re both running in tandem, avoiding obstacles like some sort of insane death-ride towards a goal. The core mechanic is then not so much riding a lion as vaulting from lion-to-lion, and performing tricks and stunts along the way. I was looking it up a bit, and the best trick that a human has ever been able to perform while riding bareback was somersaulting from one horse to another with both running in tandem. So let’s take that as the starting point. And go from there. Imagine riding one lion up a rising platform while the other scampers along at ground level. Then, you find an obstacle at the top, and you vault off one lion and fall 5 meters to land barefoot on the lion at the bottom, which then charges ahead. The key is to keep going at an insanely fast pace while jumping from lion-to-lion. You could call it Circus: Wild Ride.

And, of course, there could be lots of costumes, powerups, and stunts along the way. So far, not even stunt games or extreme sports games have thought of being able to switch between vehicles in the middle of the track. But I think that could be a really cool factor. Sort of like jumping from train to train in some action movies. Except that you’re doing it as part of a circus performance, so there’s going to be a lot of audience clapping and cheering. I think girls might still enjoy it, even though it now seems to be catered more towards the action-y male-centric crowd. Remember, it’s still non-violent and non-competitive. You’re not fighting anyone… it’s simply an obstacle race while riding a pair of lions bareback. And with a female protagonist in a circus. Talk about girl power.

Speaking of girl power, I was also trying to envision the game’s protagonist. And here, what came to mind were gypsies and flamenco music. Not so much the traditional gypsies as sort of like Esmeralda, from Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I want her to feel sexy, exotic and mysterious, but still in a clean, Disneyfied way. A marvelous dancer and performer, with just the hint of spice and rebelliousness. For maximum audience appeal, her name should be easy to pronounce, yet clearly identifiable as Gypsy-like and spanish. Here, I’m drawing on my Enid Blyton memories (particularly the St. Clare’s series and Mr. Galliano’s circus). Call her Carlotta, the Lion-Riding Gypsy Girl, with her twin lions Leo and Rex. (Although there’s a temptation to change one of the lion’s names to Singa… but maybe that’s too obvious a plug for the Lion City.)

So, there we have it. A full-fledged concept for a performance-centered circus-themed game.

Circus: Wild Ride is a game which puts the player in the shoes of Carlotta, the Lion-Riding Gypsy Girl, as she races through increasingly-difficult obstacle courses on the backs of her twin lions Leo and Rex, performing daredevil stunts and tricks as she vaults from one lion to another.

And that’s just one act out of many in the circus… there’s a world of possibilities to explore.

(Of course, chances are I’m never going to do anything with this game idea, simply because I don’t have the time and resources to do so. And because my focus is elsewhere. But some ideas are just too exciting to stay quiet about.)

EDIT: Huh. What do you know? Just after I posted this, I went searching for Knife-Throwing Wii Games, and I find out that Majesco has just released Go Play Circus Star for the Wii last month. It’s still a bunch of mini-games, instead of one core mechanic expanded into a full-fledged game, but I’ll be interested to see how its’ sales turn out.