Dance Collider Review: A Dance workout

Dance Collider is a virtual reality (VR) fitness game that offers a dancing workout experience. Developed by emergeWorlds and released in 2019, Dance Collider combines rhythm-based gameplay with body movements to challenge and engage players. With its vibrant graphics and intuitive controls, Dance Collider seems to offer an entertaining and effective workout for both experienced and beginner players alike. But let’s review how it actually plays out or if you would be better off picking up something else.

About Dance Collider

Dance Collider Gameplay

Players can choose from nine characters, each with five different songs, and are tasked with using two VR paddles to hit and dodge obstacles that come their way in time with the beat. The characters have a loose theme. Lui-Wen’s playlist is 5 Asian-themed songs with her special attack being the way of the dragon while Sonya has more house/gym music.

As the song begins the dancer that you’ve selected will challenge you with some pretty bland one liners like “get ready to dance”. A bit of a wasted opportunity, they should have really developed these characters with new scenery and really play into their special moves far more.

Basically, you need to hit you paddle with the corresponding ball color, the two paddles can be combined to hit yellow balls. There are sections that form trail lines of colored balls and connected combo sections that reward players with bonus scores.

There’s no multiplayer but there is an online leaderboard.

Fitness Intensity

Dance Collider offers an moderate workout experience. The game offers a variety of customizable difficulty levels, from easy to expert, which allows players to tailor the intensity of their workout to their individual fitness goals. The game also tracks the player’s performance and progress throughout the game, allowing them to measure and compare their performance with other players.

In my own test I played 30 minutes of songs on “pro” difficulty. I burnt approximately 218 calories with an average heart rate of 114 BPM. This was recorded using a Garmin forerunner.

How Many Calories can you burn playing Dance Collider?

The VR institute of Health and Exercise conducted a study to measure the energy expenditure of participants playing Synth riders by measuring their heart rate and oxygen consumption. They found the following

• Average MET (Metabolic equivalent of 4.55 METs)
• A 60kg person would burn approximately 4.78 to 6.25 calories per minute
• This puts it at moderate intensity, the equivalent of being on a elliptical trainer
• This makes it more intense that Synth Riders but less intense than Audio Trip

Immersion

Dance Collider offers an immersive experience for players thanks to its vibrant graphics and intuitive controls. But I feel it’s lacking in the music department. All of the 45 songs are from Artist F-777 which as some form of dance, electronic or dubstep track with no vocals. When playing Dance Collider nothing really kept me wanting to play more.

While there is the ability to get custom songs the modding community is so small there’s only about 35 or songs to chose from. This made it hard to really immerse myself compared to other similar titles.

Replayability/Is it Worth it?

The game’s range of difficulty levels and customization options allows players to tailor the game to their individual fitness goals. The game also offers a variety of playlists and a tracking system that allows players to measure and compare their performance with other players. However, Dance Collider feels somewhat outdated compared to newer VR fitness games, and its graphics and gameplay are not as polished as more recent releases. If you’re looking for an immersive and effective VR workout experience, there are better alternatives available. We would recommend picking up something like Audio Trip or Synth Riders for a better experience.

How to get custom songs on Dance Collider?

1. Navigate to their Discord channel
2. Open up their Custom Song list
3. Download the JSON file and MP3 files
4. Put the JSON file go into “Dance” in Custom folder: ..\DanceCollider_Data\StreamingAssets\Custom\Dance
   Put the MP3/other music file into “Music” in Custom folder: ..\DanceCollider_Data\StreamingAssets\Custom\Music