Rhythm and Comedy. Not two genres you often see paired together but when they are, it often makes for a magical pairing. Hide & Dance is the latest iteration from the Hide series. They all have a Japanese family doing something crazy on a blue background and minimalistic art. They often have hiding something at the core of the game.
Hide & Dance see’s you take control of one of six family members and let loose dancing in their room. There are 20 songs to pick from, although only a few are unlocked to start with. Once in the game you’ll have four rhythm lane chutes coming down to hit the buttons with correct timing. I bought the PS4 version so for me I used left, down, cross and circle. As you dance, you’ll see the door to your room jink open and then at certain points during the game, it’ll fly open and either your mum or grandpa will be there waiting to tell you off! When this happens, you need to press the two shoulder buttons together to hide. Hiding see’s you strike a variety of poses or quickly doing other tasks until the family member goes and the rhythm section begins. Get caught or miss five button prompts and its game over.
For a simple premise, Hide & Dance executes it well. You collect coins as you play which you place into a gatcha to unlock tracks, button noises and 4 locked characters. The songs all have normal, hard and extreme modes although veteran rhythm players will not feel pressure at all aside from a couple of the extreme charts. There is even a two player mode and surprisingly a music/video calibration mode – something serious rhythm games often lack. The door opens at the same times every chart so you may fail once whilst getting used to the track and then you’ll be fine. Non rhythm games will still find Normal a breeze but may come unstuck half way through Hard mode when double presses become a regular activity.
The only negatives I have are that the tracks are all short and over within 90 seconds at the longest and some family members haven’t got as many hiding poses to see compared to others. The cat only has about six and the fly one. I wished there was a little more given to them – and the mum appears a little underdone too compared to the kids and grandpa. Overall though, this is a 2 hour game that is very playable, silly fun and made me laugh out loud more than once. It’ll be one you’ll pull out for friends to laugh at for a few minutes before you move onto something else but it will definitely be staying in my rotation as a palette cleanser. Good fun.
Higher Plain Games is part of the Higher Plain Network. If you like what I do, please consider supporting me via Patreon for as little as $1/£1 a month. There are additional perks for supporting me, such as behind-the-scenes content and downloads. You can also share the website or use the affiliate buy now links on reviews. Buying credit from CD Keys using my affiliate link means I get a couple of pence per sale. All your support will enable me to produce better content, more often. Thank you.
