Parents' Guide to Floor Kids

This rhythm-based game is a rare treat that's both vivid and different but, unfortunately, it's beset with a couple of small conceptual hiccups that step on its toes. Younger players will, no doubt, find a lot to love about Floor Kids, especially if it's their first exposure to music as something to wholly experience on their own. Everything about music is active, not passive, in this game, with players needing to earn high scores by tapping buttons on the beat and experimenting with transitioning from one move to another by deploying different combinations of other buttons on the same controller. As the game's marketing proudly says: "Unlock 8 unique characters each with 16 moves and over 100 transitions between them." The problem with this, though, is after a brief tutorial, it's apparently expected that you've committed the names of all these moves to memory and can do them instantly. That is, although the game's scoring system wants you to win over crowds with musicality, originality, and style, people who watch you dance will shout out the names of moves or freeze-frame stills from them, with the hope that you'll go from what you're doing to what they want. It's a lot to ask, especially in a game that seems intent on being aimed at younger players.

This is also compounded by the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller being slightly more imprecise than the Switch itself. The millisecond delay that goes unnoticed in other games proves critical here, as you'll find even if you hit the moves people want, if you don't do it at the exact right second, you'll be too late. This is also most evident in each song's chorus, where you're expected to mash buttons right on the beat in funky successions. The scoring system here is a little more forgiving -- yielding confusing scores like "100 percent with 3 misses" -- but on the whole, the repetitive nature of the game doesn't help nudge you in building your own style. You'll do just as well mashing buttons as you will trying to show off, as long as you're on the beat with what you're doing. So, as it stands overall, the game is a fantastic introduction for kids being introduced to music and playing around with what it inspires them to do, but they might be better off actually dancing and moving around.