Science is a tricky field in that its eventual task is to reveal only things that exist. It’s easy to get lost chasing after phlogiston or N rays but the march of science simply doesn’t care about how convenient it would be if something existed in order to make other seemingly unrelated facts fit together. Even so, it’s a straight-up scientific fact that everything is better with giant robots. Military operations, teenage drama, spiral power, whatever; giant robots are an easy fix for anything that needs a little extra and an amplifier for those that are already great, despite that they simply can’t exist. Steel Century Groove, like all good fiction, ignores this fact and sure enough, even dance battles are better when performed by giant robots.
Let’s Dance! Put On Your Mech Suit And Dance The Blues
Steel Century Groove is a dance-battle music/rhythm game coming out sometime this year, but Steel Century Groove: Midnight is a free standalone mini-adventure that acts as a prologue for the bigger game to come. It’s released today and fully playable from start to finish, although the finish can be as little as thirty minutes if you blow on through and don’t try to find everything. Walking though New District City, a new arrival makes a friend and promptly gets pulled into exploring a mystery that leads to the origin of the giant robots everyone loves, all while using them for dance battles to take on any challenger that’s willing to throw down.
The rhythm gameplay basically comes down to “tap to the beat”, with a note line curling across the screen while the indicator travels along it. Hit to the beat to perform an attack that fills up the green bar at the top of the screen, but each hit drains the robot’s energy. Tapping with the B button performs a charge move rather than attack, refilling the energy gauge, and the remaining two face buttons have special moves mapped to them that can give you a boost or get in your opponent’s way. Each model of robot comes with different special moves, and opponents can use them against you in battle as well. Even with their moves, though, the Medium difficulty is actually pretty easy, but it’s a fun battle system that’s only made better when the robots have backup dancers that can add their own special skills to the show. The Midnight prologue tops off at four dancing robots on screen at once, but with any luck the full game can go all-out Bollywood at some point.
The Steel Century Groove: Midnight prologue is a fully standalone adventure separate from the main game with its own story and setting, acting as a self-contained introduction to the world and gameplay. It’s free on Steam andavailable now, so customize a character, maybe import your own songs, and get those robots dancing.
