DanceDancePlayer is essentially a music player, but with a twist. Whichever song or genre of music is playing, a computer generated female dances to it. You have the choice of four ‘dolls’: Red, Sporty Girl, Otohime, or Sci-Fi Girl. As well as the look and style of each ‘doll’, you can decide the style of the stage they dance in front of: neon, tropical, graffiti, medieval, portrait, or comics. Once you’ve decided your ‘doll’ and the stage, you have a choice between playing your own music and listning to the radio. The latter offers you over 70 thousand stations to choose from, so you’ll never be in short supply of songs to listen to. Giving the app access to your own music will allow you to shuffle and repeat, as with most other music players.[sc name=”quote” text=”Whichever song or genre of music is playing, a computer generated female dances to it.”]
Visually the dolls – if not slightly creepy – are well designed. They look real – which perhaps doesn’t help the creepiness – and their movements are human-like. Their most impressive features occur when you’re not playing music, though: if you leave the app for too long they’ll stand bored, tapping their feet or checking their finger nails. Yet the app wasn’t designed for people who want to stare at artificial women – they have special names for those people – but to watch them dance along to music, and at that it works. It may take a few seconds for the ‘doll’ to get into the swing of things, but once they pick up the rhythm, they show all manner of dance moves. Whether it be slow Jazz or Drum and Bass, the character will begin recognising the shape of the music, and begin throwing shapes of their own. The number of moves they can perform is quite impressive as well, being anything from stretched-out ballet to drunken Dad-dancing.
How the developer created these characters, let alone make them dance to any form of music, is impressive. Watching them move to music won’t be for everybody; sometimes people just want to close their eyes and relax to a few songs. Yet for people looking for a bit more entertainment out of their soundtracks, or even just a plethora of radio stations to listen from, DanceDancePlayer provides that.
