Skeletal Dance Party

This was a fun little game. I enjoyed controlling a clusterfk of dancing skeletons. This ran well on my Steam Deck, but you really need a mouse and keyboard to control the camera, your position, your aim, and special abilities. Unfortunately it didn't run well on my PC. With an RX 7900 XT I could only get decent frame rates with graphics on very low, no post processing, and a resolution of 1080p.

Skeletal Dance Party: Overlord's Quirky, Wholesome Cousin Throws a Fiesta

Skeletal Dance Party is like the Overlord series' quirky, wholesome cousin who decided to ditch the world domination and throw a rave instead. This charming action-adventure game, where you raise the dead to party, is a delightful experience, even if it's a bit rough around the edges.

Pros:
✅ Charming Aesthetic and Humor: Skeletal Dance Party's voxel art style is absolutely adorable, reminiscent of Minecraft but with a macabre twist. The game's humor is delightfully dark yet surprisingly wholesome, making it a unique blend of spooky and sweet.
✅ Unique Gameplay: The physics-based combat and puzzle-solving are a refreshing change of pace from the usual hack-and-slash action found in games like Overlord. The ability to raise fallen enemies as party guests adds a fun and strategic twist to the genre, as you build your own undead dance crew.
✅ Infectious Energy: The game's upbeat music, reminiscent of a Latin fiesta or a rave, is incredibly infectious. It's hard not to smile as you watch your skeletal minions dance their way to victory, their bony bodies shaking and grooving to the rhythm.
✅ Surprisingly Wholesome: Despite its macabre premise, Skeletal Dance Party is surprisingly wholesome. The focus is on fun, friendship, and throwing the best party ever, making it a surprisingly feel-good experience. The game's protagonist, Reva, is a delightfully cheerful necromancer who just wants everyone to have a good time, even if they're dead.
✅ Memorable Characters: While not as numerous or complex as the minions in Overlord, the characters in Skeletal Dance Party are still memorable. Reva is a delight, and the various skeletons you recruit each have their own unique personalities and dance moves.

Cons:
❌ Rough Around the Edges: The game can feel a bit unpolished at times, with some clunky controls and occasional camera issues. It lacks the polish and refinement of a AAA title like Overlord, but its charm more than makes up for it.
❌ Repetitive Gameplay: While the core gameplay loop is fun, it can become repetitive after a while. The lack of variety in enemy types and environments can make the game feel a bit stale in the later stages.
❌ Short Length: Skeletal Dance Party can be completed in a few hours, which may leave some players wanting more. While it's a fun and enjoyable experience, it lacks the depth and longevity of the Overlord series.

Conclusion:

Skeletal Dance Party is a game that doesn't take itself too seriously, and that's precisely why it's so much fun. It's a lighthearted and quirky adventure that celebrates the joy of friendship, even if your friends happen to be reanimated skeletons. It's a game that will put a smile on your face and a spring in your step, leaving you with a newfound appreciation for the undead and a craving for a good fiesta.

If you're looking for a quirky and lighthearted alternative to the Overlord series, grab your necromancer's staff and raise the roof with your skeletal partygoers. It's a fun, feel-good experience that will have you tapping your toes and grinning from ear to ear. Just remember to bring your own maracas and your dancing shoes!

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Title: Skeletal Dance Party of the Century


[SCENE START]
INT. SKELETOR'S EVIL LAIR - NIGHT

SKELETOR (seated on his throne, eyes glowing): FINALLY! A game that celebrates my skeletal magnificence!

Skeletor clicks "PLAY" on his skull-shaped computer, launching SKELETAL DANCE PARTY. Suddenly, his lair is transformed into a neon-lit dance floor pulsing with Jake Kaufman's energetic soundtrack.

PAPYRUS (appearing in a flash of blue light, striking a pose): NYEH HEH HEH! FEAR NOT, HUMANS! THE GREAT PAPYRUS SHALL GRACE THIS DANCE FLOOR WITH HIS COOL MOVES!

SANS (materializing beside Papyrus, hands in pockets): hey, chill out, bro. let's just have some fun.

Skeletor, Papyrus, and Sans start grooving to the beat, using telekinesis to throw each other around like ragdolls, giggling as they bounce off the walls. The portal opens again, revealing BROOK from ONE PIECE.

BROOK (bowing): YOHOHOHO! Pardon my intrusion, but a party is not a party without music!

Brook pulls out his violin and starts playing a lively tune. JACK SKELLINGTON pops into the room, his grin widening.

JACK SKELLINGTON: This is Halloween! This is Halloween! Let's raise some spirits!

SKULLDUGGERY PLEASANT (appearing in a swirl of shadows): Indeed, Mr. Skellington. Let us revel in this macabre merriment.

The party intensifies as more skeletons join: the KONOSUBA crew, HE-MAN, Gaige and Tina from Borderlands, and even a few dancing skeletons from the game. Reva, the fox-eared necromancer protagonist, appears with a grin.

REVA: Welcome to my party, everyone! Let's get this dance floor shaking!

KAZUMA (KONOSUBA): Ugh, I got dragged into another weird situation. Why is there a skeleton in a loincloth breakdancing?

AQUA (KONOSUBA): This music is so upbeat! It's like the heavens are singing to us! Let's dance, Kazuma! Oh, and by the way, do you think skeletons need holy water? I've got plenty to spare!

He-Man flexes his muscles and starts breakdancing. The skeletons cheer wildly. Reva casts a spell, summoning a horde of skeletal minions who equip themselves with hats, weapons, and instruments, joining the chaotic dance-off.

MEGUMIN (KONOSUBA): EXPLOSION!

DARKNESS (KONOSUBA) sighs, shaking her head as Megumin attempts to cast her daily explosion spell on the dance floor. Luckily, Reva's quick thinking telekinetic intervention averts disaster.

DARKNESS: Megumin, please try to control your destructive urges for one night. We are here to have fun, not cause an apocalypse. Although, I wouldn't mind a little... *ahem*... roughhousing later.

AQUA: Darkness, you and your kinks! Just let loose and enjoy the party! Look, they even have a bone-shaped piñata! Let's see who can break it open first!

Aqua grabs a microphone and starts belting out a surprisingly decent rendition of "Skulls" by the Misfits. Gaige and Tina, armed with various explosive devices and a stuffed rabbit named Mr. Toots, excitedly join the mayhem.

GAIGE: This party is totally wicked! Check out my new robot friend, Deathtrap! He's got some killer dance moves!

TINA: Explosions AND skeletons? This is the BEST PARTY EVER! Who wants to play a game of 'Pin the Arm on the Skeleton'?

The dance floor becomes a whirlwind of spinning bones, explosions, and laughter. Skullduggery, intrigued by Tina's explosive antics, offers her a toast with a flaming skull cocktail.

SKULLDUGGERY PLEASANT: My dear, your enthusiasm for pyrotechnics is quite refreshing. A little chaos is the spice of life, wouldn't you agree?

Meanwhile, Sans and Papyrus engage in a dance-off, their moves defying gravity.

SANS: hey, paps, check out my new move – the boneless boogie!

PAPYRUS: NYEH HEH HEH! IMPRESSIVE, BROTHER! BUT CAN YOU MATCH MY RADICAL REVOLVING SKELETON?

The dance-off intensifies as Sans and Papyrus break out increasingly ridiculous moves, their bodies twisting and turning in impossible ways. Skeletor, feeling inspired, joins the fray, his staff glowing with magical energy.

SKELETOR: YES! THIS IS WHAT I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR! A DANCE PARTY WORTHY OF SKELETOR!

The dance floor erupts in a frenzy of skeletal moves, tables are flipped, magic spells fly, and everyone laughs as they throw each other around. Skeletor throws his head back and laughs maniacally, finally feeling truly understood.

JACK SKELLINGTON: What a night! This is the most fun I've had since last Halloween!

REVA: And the party's just getting started! Who's ready for a limbo contest?

The skeletons roar in approval, eager for the next challenge. The neon lights flash, the music intensifies, and the skeletal revelry continues into the night, fueled by magic, explosions, and the sheer joy of unlife.

[SCENE END]

A game with a bunch of charm that I want to play but controls make it unplayable, no explanation of what does what, aiming is important however there there is no indication to where your cursor is so you move it around and stuff just kinda happen making any menu unusable, necromancy seems to be key but I still cant figure out what button does it since it seems defendant on your invisible cursor and no menu or UI seems to indicate what it is. this a game I want to play but it seems had no testing done to see if it was playable to someone that didn't code it

Them boner boys be doing them funny dances.

I played a lot of Boneraiser Minions, so I know how to get boners. No wait, thats wrong, I mean, raising others boners. Huh... no, thats not it either... lets leave this bone business aside.

Havent played much yet, because I got distracted by the games OST DLC, and damn, those are some bangers. Funnybones Theme is probably the best piece of game music I heard the whole year, so addicting. I usually dont leave reviews so early into a game, but this deserves praise.

Playing around with telekineses is a joy, got myself stuck under a bookshelf, pro gamer right here. Everyone is doing them funny dances, even your own character, and the enemies are all vibing. Why the need for violence? Lets vibe together! If anything unites people, its the power of music, and this game has plenty, so, make love, not war, raise some big boners! Uh... I mean, bonies!

Glad I found and picked this up during the halloween sale.

You just can't help but feel delighted as your skeleton crew picks up their first weapons, hats and musical instruments and begin partying hard!

It's a great and fairly relaxing, minion controlling RPG. It's the kind of game you should take your time with, playing about 1 to 2 levels a day instead of blitzing your way to the end.
Excellent voice acting and a nicely written story. It really helped when I was feeling down.
Absolutely worth the full price.

The only thing that I had trouble with was that the screen that tells you all the controls disappears too quickly when you’re waiting for levels to load. This may be the reason that so many reviews for this game talk about how players got their skeletons stuck dancing in doorways, not knowing you could individually command each of them around and bring them back to your group.

The game is pretty janky and chaotic, but in the FUN janky way! It's absurd, it's kinda broken and I love it?

It's a charming game, but flawed by terrible AI, and gameplay issues.

+ Cute story
+ Awesome cast of characters
+ Great voice acting
+ Fantastic music
- Terrible camera control
- Confusing / claustrophobic level design
- Frustrating AI minions (they often got stuck in corridors that I couldn't get through the door)

Skeletons aren't so spooky if they just want to party.

---

A cute silly little game where a cute loli necromancer just wants to party with her friends. Pretty fun for the price and doesn't require a demanding PC. The telekinesis is a bit finicky though.

I really wanted to like this game. With a name like "Skeletal Dance Party" I was immediately drawn to this, but actually coming to play it has been an absolute letdown.
The clashing artstyles of 3D pixel stuff and high-def artistic UI stuff feels awfully strange, and the voice acting doesn't really improve with that. I'm getting quite lost in levels and just seeing the same environment over and over gets quite monotonous.

Some good things to come out of this is that there's definitely a lot of charm and love put into this game and it's characters (even if some of them often come off as cheesy), and the mechanic of recruiting your killed foes as skeletons to kill more foes and turn them into more skeletons was really cool, and i especially liked that i could have more of them later down the line.

The artstyles and overall gameplay really aren't outweighed enough by what good this game does unfortunately, and I'd be hard-pressed to find anyone else who'd be into this game. It really is such a shame.

A fun lighthearted dark comedy., Telekinesis is a struggle but so is leading a horde of 20 undead playing musical instruments. Reva's upbeat attitude made raising the dead really seem like the right thing to do.

A game that is very underrated, but everything of ever since a certain Youtuber plays it. It has changed so much since it was played almost years and years ago

Tl;dr Very fun, nice story, nice but repetitive music, good game play, sometimes too many collisions

I got Skeletal Dance Party after Steam resurfaced it for me via Studio. SDP is a level select dungeon crawl where you go around raising party goers. Each level is procedurally generated, keeping things a bit interesting each undeath. Most of the items dropped will go to your friendly skelingtons where-as Reva's items will rarely spawn around the maps. I recommend doing the side missions to gather them as some combinations are op.

The story is short and sweet. Reva the necromancer wants to throw a party with skelingtons. After you hear her cheer for the first time, you will do anything and everything to get this fox-eared necromancer the party she deserves. The catchy beats and cute voice acting will drown out the screams of mercy from your excited to be ravers.

A few things of note are the lively music that follow you around the game, making your little groove delightful. While character specific side quests have different themes, they sound reminiscent to the main theme. While more of a peeve, it starts to wear on you once you near the end of the game.

The collisions on everything are nice and there; sometimes they're too there. More than a few times, my skeletons or heads will get stuck or struggle to pathfind. This leaves you out in the open where trumpet players will doot you into submission; usually magicians will headpat poor Reva until she stops moving. Other times bodies or wall pieces will blockade in such a way that your telekinesis doesn't do much. Your skeleton guide also doesn't call them reliably from afar. This bothers me as they will do Olympic-grade gymnastics to get a better nearby weapon but won't mosh pit into a populated room to protect me from the American sniper wizards. On a lesser note, they sometimes have trouble moshing to a large room that runs up the side of a hallway; you may need to go in far enough to encourage them to be the bulls in the china shop you know they are. I would personally recommend a sort of nearby teleport when one of your skeleton crew get far away from you. Alternatively, some sort of slider for the game to despawn jibs that send my calcium crew to the Shadow Realm would be nice. Large amounts of objects in one place and the mosh pit not wanting to follow is the biggest source of turn away from wanting to 100% the game.

All in all, I am glad to find this gem.

An appealingly cute, charming budget Overlord. Guide a ever growing mob of partying skeletons to kick the Templars out of your catacomb home. Solids tunes and a good sense of humor. Could use little more variety in tile-set and mid-mission checkpoints, but the developer appears very dedicated to supporting and improving the game, so those may only be a matter of time.

Necromancy at its cutest!
The game thus far is not overly complex, but is adorable in every right. I've only played about a half hour to an hour so far but it brought a smile to my face the whole time. Raising the dead, partying it up. It's a fun game and adorable to boot.

Great game. Love the Style, the comedy and the story. Id say its a buy at full price however there are some point where your Skelepals decide to mosh pit you and drive you into fire... or jump off and see what the green mist smells like (death pits have green mist). These moments will lead to some frustration, mainly when you have basically cleared the dungeon and you die meaning you have to restart the level. These points besides it is a fun game :D

In SDP you play as Reva, a young fox-eared witch with necromantic powers, able to pop the dead back to "life" to serve as her minions. The mechanics are very similar to those in Overlord: skeletons follow Reva on auto-pilot for the most part, turning enemies into more corpses while collecting the weapons and armour found throughout the randomly generated dungeons.

Reva's demented skeletal friends are so happy to be undead that they call for a party. Their mistress, eager to oblige, sets off on a rampage of death and exploding corpses (and dance music) in search of a variety of "guests" to attend. For the most part, these consist of other undead denizens found within the tombs (each with a short side quest to fulfil), but she has trouble convincing the local paladin - Bethany von Cumberwimple. "Betty" most certainly isn't interested, but she can't quite seem to get her point across - and so an unholy army closes in upon the Temple of Righteous Light...

The gameplay is fast-paced and simple, with battles generally playing out as "rush in the skeletons while Reva sits back and revives defeated enemies". She can alternatively pop corpses into other resources, such as milk (healing calcium!) or combat items, depending on her equipment, and has limited offensive abilities of her own. A telekinesis spell is always available to help manipulate enemies, gather items, or retrieve stuck skeletons. Hovering the mouse over any item reveals a tooltip with a description and the relevant control binds for interacting with it.

Your overall power mostly hinges on the accessories found for Reva herself, as these also determine how many and exactly which types of skeletal minions she can raise - for example, one sort of ribbon might allow ally-healing pumpkin heads, while another calls forth flying skulls which assault enemies with trumpet music. All items collected by Reva and her army are hoarded for display back at their home base, where preparations for the party are reflected as the story moves ahead.

SDP is a fairly short title, possible to complete within a half dozen hours or so. By that stage the dungeons may start to feel a bit repetitive (as there aren't any variations in the block designs, nor even the colourations), although the music and voice-acted storyline easily keeps things interesting for that long.

Fun and whimsical for half an hour, then not so much fun. At time of writing, there are 10 reviews, all positive. Only 5 of them have total played times more than one hour, and only 3 have played more than 2 hours. The idea is appealing, but it's not 'holding' people.

Yes, the partying skellies are fun. But your opponents are also janking about as well. Yes, it's a whimsical game, but it feels wrong for your opponents to also be 'partying'. Controls are a bit janky, too.

Ultimately it's a 'no' from me. Cute idea, but the execution isn't there.

This masterpiece has the single-most terrifying spell in any game I have ever played.

You and your friends take up arms against the sudden, new menace that has already exterminated half of your village. A necromancer - a single necromancer - has seized the ample supply of your ancestors in the catacombs and raised an army of abominations. Your squad takes patrol in the hall of chieftans, where your chief, and his chief before him, and his chief before him, they all rest, having lived valiant lives. The rhythmic rattling of the wretched rawboned ruffians relates your irresistable restless repose. The undead army clatters around the corner and without hesitation or coordination, impales your only companion upon dozens of spears and swords, each stolen from what were once your countrymen.

Before your friend's remains can even hit the ground, the flesh explodes off of him, coating the floor and ceiling in an irreverent splat of gore. The skeleton beneath his skin spares no time in seizing the sword it had held in flesh just moments ago, and turning it on you. To your credit, your quick reflexes enable you to take your pitchfork and impale the unholy wretch joyriding with your friend's remains, and each sharpened point of your tool would have left a mortal wound had this beast blood. That said, the move is infinitely more effective when used on you instead.

You stare down at the sword reamed through your gut. It still has the notches from when you used to play as a child, pretending to be a fully fledged Knight of the Righteous Order. You can't think of a better sword to perish on. In your final moments, you know these vile constructs have no mercy, no compassion, but you still pray for some miracle of kindness. You gurgle out, "Tell my family..." through a mouth filling with blood. The viscous vitals seeping through your teeth are, to your surprise, not the sanguine scarlet of sacrifice, but instead a pure, cool, crisp, refreshing, calcium-enriched white.

You stare in horror as you slump over, hitting the ground as your legs grow weak and soft. A little girl, caught in the midst of this madness, playfully strolls over to you, seemingly unphased by the senseless and systematic slaughter surrounding you both. Your sad gaze tries desperately to usher her out of here, far from this place, to where she might be safe from this unceasing horror, but no. The little fuzzy girl kneels down and whispers a simple incantation: "Calcify!" She cups her hands in your gaping mortal wound and eagerly laps at your refreshing milk blood. Neither the absurd horror of the act, nor the realization that beneath the facade of cute innocence lies the mad mind of the mastermind of mayhem and carnage, can keep you from witnessing her impossible rise to evil, but still you find it hard to watch. Your shoulders literally cannot hold you up to see. Your bones, you realize too late, are deliquescing into the very milk this daughter of Satan slurps.

As the life fades from your dissolving eyes, a skeleton leans down and plays you a single note on his trumpet.

Spoopy doot doot the game.

It's super fun and the main character is a complete ditz which is adorable.

It can be a little clunky to start with but once you get used to it it's part of the charm and definitely worth the price.

Would be awesome to play during a halloween party ahahaha

within seconds of raising my first skeletons, They quickly found themselves maracas, trumpets and a lute. My undead mariachi band does not know fear.

Charming.

I like it, but it's very rough around the edges. Looking forward to future production.

Cute character-art doesn't really fit with the simple spastics of the character models, perhaps a more idle-bouncy state should be added? The levels are quite rough, and some art elements, mainly effects, break from the pixely aesthetic.