Russian Dancing Men Review

Now you’d think as I am both a musician and a drummer that I should be pretty adept at rhythm games. Well, at least that what my very egotistical mind thinks as it struggles to come to grips with my ever increasingly rebellious aged body. But the truth is that although I AM a decent muso, I am really quite useless at rhythm and music games.  To put not too fine a point on it, I stink at them. For example, when I play songs in Guitar Hero that I can actually play on real guitar, I fail. When I play drums in Rock Band, I fail miserably  – and I used to be a double kick drum metal-head back ‘in the day’. Good times.

So with all that in mind, when I received a copy of Russian Dancing Men in a Twitter promotion from its designer Jonti Picking of Weebl fame, I was both very thrilled – because Weebl and Bob are pretty much the funniest thing on the planet – and depressed because already I knew that I would suck at it. And I do. But that doesn’t stop me playing it as I find it one of those horribly addictive games that gets put into the “Why is Dad spending a hour and a half in the toilet?” category.

If you are familiar with Weebl’s Stuff then you should know what to expect from this game. Russian Dancing Men incorporates great ‘get stuck in your head for days’ tunes and sublime cartoon graphics into side scrolling rhythm mayhem. Gameplay consists of starting with a group of Russian Cossack dancers moving from left to right, negotiating their way past different obstacles with different acrobatic moves. Timing is critical as perfectly timed manoeuvres build up points that add extra men to your dancing line – whereas if you mistime your moves and end up hitting an obstacle, you lose men. Which, given a sufficient amount of ineptitude, can result in a rather embarrassing ‘game over’ situation once you run out of Russian men.

As you progress through the game, each level gets more intense through adding more complexity in the levels, additional move combinations to master and music that varies in tempo. The dancers have to do more then just your basic jump and find themselves having to bust moves such as straddling over holes, looping da loop and jump-spinning over spikes.  Each of these moves has its own onscreen button, meaning that Russian Dancing Men can turn into quite a feat of thumb acrobatics for the player.

To cater for varying levels of skill (or lack thereof), Russian Dancing Men allows you to choose what difficulty level you start off with and also has something called Tap Mode.  Tap Mode simplifies things – and ends up being a great deal of fun – as you just have to tap the screen anywhere to get the dancers to do the appropriate moves instead of using the designated move buttons. Another welcome addition is a internet scoreboard that, in theory, is designed to show off how good you are to your friends/enemies or, if none of those are to hand, the rest of the world. Not that my skills are worth showing off, mind.

Russian Dancing Men is available on iTunes and, in my opinion, is well worth the paltry asking price of £0.69 / $0.99.