I’m sure we’ve all had those visits to the services on the motorway. Usually, in between a coffee and a quick “comfort break” you’ll see one of those “Dancing Stage” machines. Perhaps, if you’re on a night out and had a few “shandies”, you’ll probably try and have a go. The results, at least in my case, were messy.
So a slightly less embarrassing option is to get the Dubstep Hero app. It’s free and follows a similar idea to the bigger machines, plus it’s as equally addictive.
Getting started is easy enough and you’re presented with five options. You can choose to either jump straight into the game and get going or select another track to play along to. There’s twenty to choose from along with links to the relevant streaming or download sites should you want to listen to the tracks on other devices. There’s also the option to tweak the music and sound settings or alter the visual effects, then you can get going with the game itself. There’s a coupld of modes – either “Normal” or “Custom” mode – with the latter giving you the chance to choose any sound at all from your phone to play along to. Choose this and you’ll need to pay $0.99 as an in-game purchase, so I went into the “Normal” mode and selected a song.
As you’ve probably seen on the original arcade machines, the idea here is to tap the relevant colour when the circle slides down over it. Initially these circles slide down at a very quick rate, and I honestly didn’t think I’d be able to play it for more than a minute.
However, after getting my fingers and thumbs in order on the screen I found that a two-handed operation seemed to work quite well and I was quickly progressing through the song like some sort of mad guitar player.
Every now and then you’ll get a slightly faster colour sliding down – this is identified by a couple of trails behind the circle and it’ll move down the screen much faster. You have to tap the coloured button at the base of the landscaped screen at just the right moment, so your timing is key. You can always pause the game if you need to scratch your nose or hop off a bus though, so it’s easy to pick up and go.
Hitting those circles, which I should actually call by their proper name – notes – is all important as it’ll add to your score. When you’ve completed one tune you’ll see your score and the percentage of notes you hit correctly.
Tunes from Skrillex, Kill The Noize and Crizzly are included and the game quickly becomes habit-forming, and I’ve found myself tapping away on this in any brief “downtime” I have. Overall, for free, this is a very cool little game which Brus, the developer, has worked pretty hard on. Great graphics, simple and addictive gameplay plus great music. All the ingredients of a slick, stylish and fun game. It’s available on Android from Google Play