Demo steps out ahead of Dance Dance Detective

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Side-scrolling pixel art deduction mystery with rhythm-based minigames unveiled by the creators of Sips & Sonnets

As every armchair detective knows, the most important tools for investigating a crime are a magnifying glass, a camera, and ideally a very cool trench coat. In Blue Tango Street's upcoming Dance Dance Detective, you'll have precisely none of those things. You will, however, have some comfortable dancing shoes to boogie the night away. 

It's the summer of 1986, and two weeks ago the millionaire head science officer of the Bolero Chocolate Company, Stephanie Delafontaine, was murdered in the family mansion. There were eight others in the house that night, each with some connection to the company, so one of them must be the killer. As luck would have it, the company's annual executive team-building exercise has brought all of them together aboard a cruise ship for five days, giving Detective Gene Burning the ideal chance to join them undercover. Just two problems: First, Burning hates the ocean, and secondly, with the entire deck rented out by the company, he will need to pose as a ship staff member – specifically, as the recreational ballroom dance teacher, an activity Burning knows well but has shunned ever since it ruined his life. Still, it's the job and the chief is depending on him, so the detective will have to investigate the "wacky cast of ghastly characters" in order to "uncover their dark secrets, follow leads, and connect clues." 

Surprisingly, Dance Dance Detective is nothing like the developer's previous game, Sips & Sonnets. Where that game was a first-person visual novel with hand-painted artwork and point-and-click mechanics, this one is a side-scrolling, third-person deduction mystery with pixel art and keyboard controls, as well as a delightfully varied musical score and amusing sound effects. As you navigate several decks of the ship and interact with any hotspots that pop up as you draw near, you'll have the chance to observe the environment for important details, engage your suspects in interactive choice-driven conversation, or simply eavesdrop on them in secret. As you learn more about each individual, the information will be recorded in handy character profiles in your journal, and you'll gradually accumulate a pool of clues. From this you must find matching pairs when the time is right, whether about who is related to whom and how, who might be having an affair, or other hidden interpersonal secrets. 

If that's all there were to the gameplay, it would probably be pretty straightforward, but you're a DANCING detective so you'll have to get suspects to "waltz, tango, and cha-cha-cha their way into exposing their darkest secrets." You'll do this by creating increasingly complex "custom choreographies" designed by "a certified ballroom dance teacher," via a kind of jigsaw puzzle to assign the right moves in the correct order. Then, to really get suspects to drop their guards, you must successfully guide them through the dance you've constructed through a simple rhythm minigame. After all, "sometimes the truth only comes out on the dance floor." The more you succeed, the more your services will be in demand, and before long you'll be called upon to offer private lessons as well. 

No target release date for Dance Dance Detective has yet been announced, but you can start warming up right away through the playable demo available on Steam for Windows PC, though the developers caution it's still in a "pre-pre-pre alpha" stage.