The Choreographist is a free rhythm action video game wherein you have to fight hordes of monsters to the beat of hypnotizing music. Developed by Akupara Games, Steven Hancher, and Puuba, this indie combat-driven music game all about matching the beat and has puzzle-like elements, with strategic usage of skills in order to chain more damaging combos. However, this game is incomplete as its project didn’t reach the fund goal necessary to support it.

A nice spiritual successor

The Choreographist takes great inspiration from The Metronomicon: Slay the Dance Floor, a 2016 action role-playing game developed by indie studio Puuba. In it, a band of heroes travels around to dance parties that seem to attract dangerous monsters. Here, however, you play only two characters: Crim, a fiend slayer who finds dancing silly; and Gleam, a goblin who eagerly joins Crim’s musical quest to vanquish the undead and hunt down the witch who cursed them.

This title is a mash-up of rhythm and fighting games, wherein you have to press the corresponding buttons in time with the music to successfully attack and defend in battles. The game supports controllers and you can configure your preferred buttons for easier gameplay. Aside from offense and defense, you can also unleash special moves and upgrade your characters in order to deal more damage and stay alive longer on the dance floor.

Unfortunately, while the concept of this game is great, it’s severely lacking in several areas due to its incomplete status. For one, it has only about 10% of its art so Story Mode has character sprites and the entire world map missing; only the battles look finished in this department. In the base game, there are also only 3 songs available. However, you can import songs of other rhythm games into the CustomSongs folder.

Didn’t make it

All in all, The Choreographist is a project worth reviving due to its solid gameplay. There are multiple game modes—like Story Mode, Freeplay, and Pure Mode—that can keep you busy but it’s a real shame that the beautiful art rendered for it and more songs for the levels couldn’t be fully expanded into the rest of the game. At the moment, the developers aren’t actively working on giving any major updates other than bug fixes.