Hide & Dance! [Switch] Review – Fast On Your Feet

Hide & Dance! Is a slight but hugely endearing rhythm action title. It sees you play as a girl that loves to dance, but it seems her family – specifically her mother – does not approve.

So you dance away in your room to a range of short but sweet J-pop songs, using both two buttons from each joy-con to tap along to the beat.

This set up is actually highly intuitive and at times feels as if you’re tap dancing away to the tunes.

What adds a significant layer of challenge is the aforementioned disapproving parent though. At the back of the screen is a door, and whenever this threatens to open – which is often – you have to press both shoulder buttons together to avoid being seen dancing.

Time it wrong and your mother sees you, much shame ensues, and you have to restart the level.

This element is a little confusing at first, but soon it becomes second nature and means you have to pay attention to the screen as well as the rhythm of the music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Nm_lmAspn4

And that’s all there is to Hide & Dance!, but it admirably fleshes out its kooky concept far more than you’d expect. Each level has three difficulty settings for instance, and completing them across each one gifts you coins.

You then use these coins in a virtual gacha machine. This helps you unlock different dancers to play as, various other cosmetic flimflam, and – most importantly – new tunes to play.

This makes what could have seemed a very barebones rhythm action title feel something a little more involved. It’s has a similar feel to the freewheeling style of the Warioware series at times.

There’s no getting away from the fact that Hide & Dance!, is a simple game deep down, but what it does it does well. For the price this is certainly well worth investigating for casual and hardcore rhythm action game fans.