Avatar Boogie is a part music player, part screensaver application in which avatars dance to the music. Should you get down(loading) or leave the dance floor? Read on to find out.
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I made a few comments on my trial impression about how the trial version of Avatar Boogie was done. In my opinion it showed little of the application and left me disappointed as the trailer looked fairly cool for what it does. The developer contacted me about reviewing Avatar Boogie so here are my thoughts.
Avatar Boogie comes with five built in songs; Space Precinct is a techno themed tune, Jolly Beggar is Irish river dance, Das Boinkt Up is a Hip Hop song with some funny vocals, Rockabilly Man is a country themed song and finally Disco Times is as the name suggests a disco song. The five built in songs are not too bad to listen to once or twice but you would not want to listen several times in a row. Thankfully you can also play your own music from either the 360 hard drive or if you have a PC connected, you can stream them.
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Avatars have five styles of dance routines to match the five built in songs. They are quite well done and instantly recognisable, for example with Jolly Beggar there are Michael ‘Crazy Legs’ Flatley style footwork moves and Rockabilly Man with line dancing routines, and breakdance routines in Space Precinct. The animations are performed well and although they do repeat after a while there is just enough variety to keep it interesting.
Up to fifty avatars can be added on screen at once, these can either be individually picked from a random generator or you can simply add up to 50 at once and let the software generate them for you. Unfortunately you are unable to use your own avatar as this is against the Indie Games terms and conditions set by Microsoft.
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Only three locations are available for your avatars to have a boogie, a hip hop dance themed floor looks the best with spray painted designs on the floor, the street location gives a sense of space and also works well. The weakest out of the three is the park area which did not do much for me. I would have liked to have seen one or two more locations to give a bit of variety, a disco with lights would have been cool for example.
Several options are available from the menu which include changing the number of avatars, the location, the dance routine and the music. There is also a sub menu which allows you to set up the automatic camera which can rotate around the dance floor. You can also speed up or slow down the dance routines if for example you want you avatars to dance at a drum and bass 180BPM pace. You can also randomise the dance routines for the avatars which sets off a pretty cool show with the avatars doing their own moves.
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I spent a bit of time with Avatar Boogie, it being a music player with visuals something different to fireplaces or fireworks, it works well. If you play music on your 360 regularly it is something to consider, it only costs 80 :MSPoints: after all, otherwise you may feel a bit short changed as after watching the dance routines there is nothing much else to do.
You can find more information as well as the trial and full version of the game on the Marketplace.
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