Stylizing the Dance Mechanic

“What makes your game different from Just Dance?” That question was asked before development began and has haunted us ever since. The main mechanic in Boogie Beyond is a dance battle where the player faces off against someone in the club. The player must outperform their opponent to progress in the game. Our goal with the dance mechanic was to get players to dance without leaning too heavily on existing dance games. In this blog, I will take you through each iteration of the dance battle and explain why each version did not work until the final version.

First Iteration Dance Battle

In the initial prototype a dance was prerecorded via motion capture, and the player could try to match it. The idea was that the player could see the opponent dancing and had to copy them. The error shown in Figure 1 is the total amount the player was off from the target dance. The problem with this is that it is like Just Dance and was not very interesting.

The second version was inspired by the VR game Beat Saber. The difference from Beat Saber was that instead of hitting blocks with a sword, the player had to touch them with their hand. The goal was to match the position and timing of the incoming targets to reflect the same hand positions, and general movement, of the dance itself. The problem with this approach was that players tried to hit the targets like they were playing volleyball, which did not feel like dancing.

Beat Saber-Inspired Dance Battle

Based on the feedback we received regarding the previous version, we took inspiration from Osu, a 2D rhythm game, and added a 2D component to the dance battle. In this version, the player must move their hands to match the targets displayed in an in-game window. Making the notes appear in the final position instead of flying in from a distance made players less compelled to swat at the targets. However, it was challenging to communicate depth and we still struggled to make it feel like dancing.

Osu-Inspired Dance Battle with HUD (outlined in violet)

To address the depth issues with the 2D HUD, we began testing other variations that communicate the spatial depth of the dance moves. One version was like the flying orb dance battle from before, except the targets appear in their final position instead of flying at the player. This removed the desire to hit them like volleyballs and makes the dancing more accurate. The challenge was that the targets were often not visible to the player, so the player must be very proactive.

The other version we tested was the same as the 2D version, where targets were displayed on a window, except that there were two windows. One window occupied space in the foreground (the original location) while an additional one would be floating just behind it. This provided a level of depth that encouraged the player to move their hands forward and backward. Additionally, the player could always see the targets.

However, in the end, what got players to dance was not what we expected and took the dance battle in a new direction one last time. We were doing a playtesting session for a dance battle variation that had orbs falling from the sky, and players had to touch them at the right moment. This worked OK, but the players still did not feel or look like they were dancing. The revelation came when a player couldn't see the orbs because they were falling directly onto where the top of their head would be in that virtual space. This meant all they could see was the model dancing in front of them. And much to our surprise, they started following what the model was doing and dancing! It turns out that everything we were adding to get the players to dance was getting in the way. We then removed the orbs and tried to replicate it with a few more people. They all started dancing as well!

Our final dance battle has the player match the “titular” Boogie Monster’s movements. If the player is doing badly, the void starts to consume them, and the audio distorts; this removes the need for displaying the score and lets the player focus on dancing.

Boogieman Dance Battle, Final Version

So, “How is your game different from Just Dance?” Our game has a narrative framework and an interactive nightclub filled with interesting characters, but when it comes to dancing, we found it’s best to let the player just dance.