Dancing Dreamer

Genre: Music-Rhythm / Arcade

Players: 1

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Review:

Dancing Dreamer, released on iOS in 2020 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2021, is an Arcade-style Music-Rhythm game where players direct a character on a hoverboard through an obstacle course that has players moving left and right in time with the music.

Before getting to the rest of this article, I feel like I need to put it in a bit of context – this is an extremely, extremely difficult game, and it is very, very unforgiving of mistakes – making one wrong turn is enough to end your entire run unless you’ve managed to save up enough credits to buy a one time-use continue. While Dancing Dreamer is divided into stages, I could not manage to complete even the first stage. As such, I am limited in how much of this game I can comment on. However, I would wager that the content I can describe is going to be all that the majority of players will ever see, and only the most masochistic players will stick with this game long enough to see more.

The presentation here is actually pretty good, with some diverse 3D environments with a lot of animation and activity. Arguably too much, in fact – it distracts from the difficult gameplay the game really demands that you focus on. The soundtrack here is also decent, with instrumental themes that feature a strong beat, something that’s good to have in a Music-Rhythm game.

Players must use either the control stick or the touchscreen to move their boarder left or right and keep him on the narrow track as it twists and shifts around. Unfortunately, the analog nature of movement in this game and the thin and zig-zagging pathway makes it very difficult to navigate. And as I mentioned, all it takes is one slip-up and you’re done. I must have played the first 30 seconds or so of this game a few dozen times before I had to throw my hands up and give up.

Sadly, that’s where I have to end this review. If you’re the sort of player who likes your games to be soul-crushingly difficult, and you enjoy Music-Rhythm games, you may find something to like in Dancing Dreamer. It’s a game with good visuals and decent music, and clearly some care and attention has been put into its design. But if you’re not okay with an absurd and unforgiving level of difficulty, you’ll want to steer clear of this game.

tl;dr – Dancing Dreamer is an Arcade-style music-Rhythm game that has players using a hoverboard to navigate a narrow path in time with music. The presentation here is quite good, but the gameplay is so horribly difficult and unforgiving that most players will not be able to enjoy it.

Grade: D+

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