Spending time with Mighty Yell at PAX is always a breath of fresh air, and this year, we spent our time with All Systems Dance, where dance is the key to disruption. All Systems Dance puts players into the shoes of a revolutionary looking to take down an Amazon-like corporation. It's funky, it's fun, and we have some tidbits to share with you straight from Mighty Yell CEO Dave Proctor himself!
Hands-on with All Systems Dance
Developer: Mighty Yell
Publisher: Mighty Yell, Strange Scaffold
Genre: Expressive 'revolution'ary action dance combat platformer
Platform(s): PC
When All Systems Dance was announced, the VGG stream crew went frame by frame to analyze what exactly Mighty Yell's latest was about, because it immediately had our interest.
There were robots, promises of dancing, trademark rhythm game arrows on the ground, and it was all dressed up with an anti-corporate vibe, all of which really worked for us — not to mention a brilliant catchphrase: The revolution will not be choreographed. But what it meant to play this game was still an enigma. So when we were offered the chance to go hands-on with the game at PAX, we were surprised and excited to see what Mighty Yell has been cooking here. Would it live up to the promise of its narrative setup? Spoiler: Yes.
All Systems Dance is described as an "arena combat game without the combat." Players are asked to deprogram evil corporate robots through the power of dance. You're trapped on a floating corporate island, in the remains of an Amazon-like shipping and storage smart city, and with the help of the revolutionary friends on the island, you're looking to make real change by starting a movement — beginning with moving your body.
In our demo, after a brief intro with one of our revolutionary pals, we're asked to go shake it for a little Roomba waiting to challenge us on a raised stage. In the waiting room area of the Woosh facility we find ourselves in, posters line the wall with toothy-smiled propaganda about the benefits Woosh brings to your everyday life. There's a sterility to the corporate white and blue hues of the building that clashes directly with the bright pinks and teals that make up our heroine's color scheme, and a feeling of overbearing surveillance as cameras watch your every move.
I immediately start experimenting when I gain control and find myself rolling across the floor and voguing as I spin my way to the stage, showcasing early on how much dance dictates your actions in the game. I mean, even your jump is a traditional ballet jeté! They want both the player and the character to be thinking about everything in terms of dance, and the game's reframing of traditional gaming verbs is brilliantly themed and executed.
Once I stop giggling at the way my character looked doing their roll move on the ground, I finally make my way over to "fight" the Roomba waiting for me. After a short back and forth, we enter a confined dance arena and are released into the dance-off. It's all about mixing dance moves into combos, making sure to introduce some variety into the moves you're unleashing, and trying to do it all on beat. Playing on beat isn't necessary to win, but it does help chew away at the bot's "hype meter," the All Systems Dance replacement for a health meter.
In its current state, there isn't much tutorialization, so it's all about experimenting with dance and figuring out the flow as we go. (It helped that CEO Dave Proctor was watching over our shoulder and helping, too.)
As you dance, you've got to constantly move across the arena, dodging the bots' moves as they try to ruin your flow and trying to take advantage of the boosts that pop up in the arena to help you. There are spotlights that pop up on the field that either get you bonus points to dance in or place you into a "freestyle dance" moment where you can mash your moves together and wiggle your body however you like for a huge hit to the bot's hype meter.
It took both Julie and I a minute to adjust to this unique system, but once we got rolling, we were able to endure the fight. Dabbing and jeté-ing over the bot's head netted me a fight grade of "sensual," and any game that tells me I'm sensual is worth paying extra attention to.
Something I wasn't aware of in the moment were bonuses you can unlock by using specific moves to counter/dodge a robot's moves, encouraging riskier dancing for bigger payoffs. For example, roll under a multi-armed robot's spinning punch move or jump over them as they dash toward you.
The best way I'd describe these combat scenarios is kind of like an MMO raid boss, with brightly telegraphed moves you need to stay away from in a closed arena, but with an almost fighting game-like engagement, requiring us to keep up with the rhythm while dodging and weaving across the field. That's how it feels after just 10 minutes of demo dancing and, at present, a few weeks separated from PAX West, but we'll see if that comparison sticks in the full game.
After combat, I spent some time achieving the demo's side objectives, tearing down Woosh's propaganda posters and finding employees' lost phones. These broken phones serve as All Systems Dance's audio log equivalent, telling small stories about the employees who used to work there and filling out the world's lore. The one I got to examine in my demo was a horrifying tale of someone forgetting to wash sticky jam off of their phone screen, and I'm excited to see more of Mighty Yell's cheeky writing on display.
Soon after this is when the demo was normally supposed to end, but we were given behind-the-scenes press access for a look at a testing area. There, we got a glimpse at how Mighty Yell is using dance in more inventive ways outside of these dance-offs.
The same moves you use in "combat" have use in the game's traversal, like how that rolling dance move I was giggling at can help you roll under security barriers, as an example. Handstands can be used to press down on giant buttons on the ground. Death drop into the splits to trigger certain mechanisms. Pull off a beautiful pirouette to tear those posters down. The game never outright told us these things, asking us instead to think bigger picture about how each move can be used outside of battles.
As we made our way through the automated conveyor belts and robotic functions of these facilities, we found some fun level design concepts that are almost built to hide secrets and encourage that out-of-the-box thinking. I was delighted (and so was Proctor, funny enough) to find a covert little sequence break, skipping past part of a puzzle by hopping onto a robot carrying a platform that flew by to get to the next part of the area. The team plans to leave in little tricks like that in for people to find and exploit on their own, if they're able. Speedrunners are more than welcome here, both in the exploration and in those dance-offs (some moves are faster than others and spamming them works just as well as playing on beat sometimes), and that's always great to hear.
All Systems Dance is set up to be a game with a sneaky high skill ceiling, inventive dance-based ideas that reframe how you think about traditional game design, and a story that looks to inspire players' belief in their individual power.
To find out more about all of it, we were lucky enough to interview Mighty Yell's CEO, Dave Proctor, and, HOT TAKE? It's a good one.
Q&A with Mighty Yell CEO Dave Proctor
Nate - VGG: Hi Dave! Can you give us a quick pitch on what All Systems Dance is about?
Dave Proctor: Gosh, I hope so. All Systems Dance is a game about using the power of dance to defeat an evil corporation. You are stuck on a crumbling smart city island, in the middle of the ocean, run by a crappy tech conglomerate.
Your friends are part of a resistance, and the only way to strike back at the robot army that polices you is by using dance moves to hype them up and reprogram them. We like to call it an arena combat game without the combat.
Julie - VGG: Mighty Yell's always produced really distinctive games, with The Big Con’s '90s-cool aesthetic and the sort of miniature and stained glass style of A Knight in the Attic. How would you describe the visual style for All Systems Dance?
Proctor: We're very inspired by chunky 2000s tech design, and that design becoming architecture. We were like, "what if Apple in 2001 had all the power of Amazon in 2024?" That's the vision.
Everything is blobby, translucent, clear — and then the characters kind of follow from that. We wanted them to stand out in the world against these sort of slick iMac-looking machines, to be cartoony, bright, cel shaded. They are the source of humanity here, so we wanted them to have lots of color, lots of character, and to be a bit more edgy compared to the smooth robots.
Nate - VGG: One thing I've loved about the game since this announcement is the team's constant positivity, particularly around the act of dancing. The idea that anyone can do it, that the learning process is weird but worth it, that moving your body can be the kind of thing that saves the world. How did you arrive at dance being the core mechanic in this game, and why was it so important to subvert the usual gaming verbs with dance?
Proctor: I love giving people alternate ways to solve problems in a video game. There's lots of great games that use guns. That's great, you know, that people can do that. But I just think it's important that, especially if we're going to tackle the kinds of problems that are present in the game, we should maybe also think about new ways of solving those problems.
Can I, right now, go and do a Charleston and get Amazon to pay their workers better? Probably not. But I think it's just really important to give players an opportunity to think in that space and be a bit playful while also being revolutionary.
Julie - VGG: Being all about dance, music is, obviously a huge part of this game. We were just hearing a bit of that techno upbeat kind of feeling in the demo. Will a lot of the soundtrack follow a similar vibe, or is it going to go any other interesting places?
Proctor: Techno upbeat is a good way of looking at it, like a really future hip hop, with a bit of electronic energy. The song that you heard in the demo here is really French house funky. … I'm using those two descriptors to describe a very specific band… it’s 100% going for a Daft Punk energy.
And, I don't know, just things that stand out in terms of dance music that work for us, that make us feel uplifted and energized. I always like music with like a little bit of grit, a little bit of dirty to it. So synths are always really gnarly and gross, and, like, who doesn't want to dance to that?
Nate - VGG: On the pure gameplay side, when people hear dance in gaming, they immediately think rhythm game. I know that dance is used for both exploration and combat. But are there any full-on dance numbers with traditional rhythm game mechanics? Are we gonna put up some competition against Alan Wake over there with their dance sequences?
Proctor: I would love to be said in the same breath as Alan Wake, so include that in the description for the SEO, please. [Laughs]
I mean, we originally started making a rhythm game… it was like a rhythm game where you could just do any kind of dance move. But it felt very constrained and not expressive. We want this to be about how you choose to express yourself.
So traditional rhythm game mechanics are not present. What we are doing instead is we are giving you a score bonus if you are playing on the beat, for example. I want to start getting people to think in terms of rhythm as something they can operate around, but not something they have to be stuck with.
Nate - VGG: I appreciate that. You know, I think some people can be intimidated by that. By chasing that perfection.
Proctor: Oh yeah. Like when I start to lose at Guitar Hero, it is game over. I miss one note and I'm like "well, everything's ruined." But you know, we also want to keep accessibility features in mind, too. Maybe you don't want to think about rhythm at all, but you still want that bonus. It's not gonna bug us if you want to turn that off, get that bonus, feel the joy of it either way. I think that's important.
Nate - VGG: Can you explain the ebb and flow between the “action combat” sequences and the platforming exploration? How they work in conjunction?
Proctor: The loop in my mind is: we want players to learn dance moves, perform dance battles, and then use those dance moves to traverse the world. That gives them access to more dance battles, to give them access to what is ultimately going to be a skill system that they can use to unlock the specific dance moves they want to unlock.
We want players to think in terms of dance. Everything is going back to that verb.
I got this move, how can I use it in the next area to access stuff? Constantly reframing everything. That's how we're envisioning everything we design: what's the dance move that activates it? All to keep the player in that space.
Julie - VGG: Kind of a long-winded question, so sorry in advance, haha. When we were watching the debut trailer during the Future of Play show, we were seeing a lot of the marketing for All Systems Dance has this kind of breathless, really urgent feel. And there's this note of revolution behind that.
We were just wondering about how purposeful that is/was and how that feeling radiates out into the game’s narrative — of the revolution, of making every moment count, of the feeling of being watched at any moment by “THE MAN.” Can you talk to us about those feelings and how they fuel your game?
Proctor: Yeah. I feel that, uh, we're in a weird time. Hot take! Really unique concept: the world is strange and difficult.
Nate - VGG: I'm tweeting that out immediately.
Proctor: Careful! It’s really tough stuff here. I don't know. It's… it's dark out there. I'm gonna tip my whole hand, because I think that's important.
To me, the point of this being a game about dance, where everybody can dance — and our world being really rife with inequality and challenges and the game saying, hey, you can solve that by using this verb that everyone can do! — I hope that people will start to think, maybe I can do some things out here as well.
So that sort of exasperated panic is, I think, a real necessity. Especially while we're still making fun entertainment products. I think it's really hard to make anything right now without thinking about that. So we're trying to make it as fun as hell to think in revolutionary terms like that, and to smack people across the face with it when we do. Just being like, hey, you've got to do this right now.
That was not a long question. I could talk about that for a long time. Equality: good. Inequality: bad. That's about it.
Nate - VGG: Now that’s a campaign platform. [Laughs] And lastly, we’ve got kind of a silly question here to start to wrap up. How do you land on that absolute banger of a line of The revolution will not be choreographed... and how many immediate wishlists did that line lead to?
Proctor: You know how you do this? Years ago, you get the best marketing director ever to believe in you. And then she starts working with your company for years. And then we create this game. And she's like: this is the thing I want to help sell. And she came up with that line — and it's so good.
You're like the 10th person to compliment it today. I just need it to be said: if you enjoyed a Mighty Yell product today, it's because of the work of the team. They have done such amazing work on this thing. Karina and Shannon's contributions are… they're the reason that people are here, the reason people are playing stuff. I'm so lucky to work with them.
Nate - VGG: Anything else you wanna toss in here at the end?
Proctor: The obvious one is please wishlist our game. Go on Steam, give it a wishlist, share it, tell your friends, tell everyone to wishlist it. That's super important.
And the other thing is: just try to dance.
Feel weird in your body, because I've been doing that as I've been trying to dance more. They say dance like no one's watching, but, like, actually do that. That's a good thing. It's not just a hot take. It's actually a good thing to just move your body and have fun with it, without worrying about judgment.
Want to see more like this? Check out all of our PAX West 2024 coverage.
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