Draft:Dancing Line

Dancing Line

Dancing Line is a single-player mobile game collaboratively developed by Cheetah Mobile and BoomBit, with the level designer of the first three levels being DaXingXing, a Cheetah Mobile designer. Similar to other games by the developers, Rolling Sky and Through The Fog!, the goal in the game is to finish a level by following the rhythm of the music being played in the background through tapping the screen.

After a few alpha and beta builds, the game was published to both the App Store and Google Play Store on December 13th 2016. Dancing Line along with its preceder Rolling Sky, has been awarded one of the top free games of 2017 on the App Store, and the best game of 2016 on Google Play, reaching its Peak.

Dancing Line
Dancing Line's default game icon.
Developer(s)	DaXingXing, Cheetah Mobile, BoomBit Games
Publisher(s)	DaXingXing (Pre-Alpha), Cheetah Mobile (Full Release)
Designer(s)	DaxingxingCMPLAY
Engine	Unity
Platform(s)	iOS (App Store), Android (TapTap.io)
Release	December 13th, 2016
Genre(s)	Rhythm

Background

Dancing Line was developed and published by DaXingXing as a pre-alpha build on Google Play. The game consisted of 3 levels, of which 10 cubes (the game's stamina system) were available to collect throughout each level. Level themes consisted of Winter (level_0), Storm (level_1), and Desert (level_2). The game was later released by Cheetah Mobile right after the fourth level was released. DaXingXing remained a level designer up until The Plains level update, released in March 2017. Levels designed by DaXingXing consist of: The Winter, The Storm, The Desert, The Chaos, The Piano, The Beginning, The Autumn, The Plains.

Cheetah Mobile continued to develop continuous new levels. The game development team later abandoned new level updates for the game around May 2020, right after releasing Level 40 "The Samurai" due to the company's indefinite suspension from the Google Play Store for ad fraud and deceptive conduct. The game was left on hiatus until November 16th, 2023.

November 16th, 2023 marked the most important date for the Dancing Line community, as it marked the return of level updates. A sub-company of Cheetah Mobile named MINIMAX took ownership of the game on that date, and is currently releasing content updates for Dancing Line as of May 2024. However, due to low development income and low support, the game is currently relying on a short hiatus, slowing down level updates and new content.

Gameplay

Dancing Line is a rhythm game where the player's objective is to follow the rhythm of the level's background music by tapping a cubic line. Failure to tap correctly would result in losing and the destruction of the line. The player needs to complete the game 100% by playing through over 50 levels, and aims to collect 3 crowns and 10 gems each level.

Fanmade Sequel Incident

Dancing Line 2 being a fanmade sequel to Dancing Line, received mass support back when it was made and released in 2018, when the community was most active, by Mazab IZW and more people in the development team. However, its advertising was misinformative. The creators were advertising it as "the official sequel of Dancing Line" leading to Cheetah Mobile discovering it, suing the creators and discontinuing the beloved fan-made sequel.