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For Grown-Ups

You know that sense of joy that takes over kids when they’re dancing? That silly fun they have — especially when they’re dancing with other people? We wanted to bottle that feeling, but since we can’t, we figured the next best thing would be to bring that spirit to our latest app: Toca Dance Free.

Kids express themselves in many ways through dance, and we wanted to support those different ways in our app. Just want to move and be silly? Then let loose! Feeling a bit more precise? Then time your moves perfectly to the beat. There’s no right and wrong when it comes to dancing: Dance how you like!

I hope you’ll enjoy Toca Dance Free. If you like it and want more things to do you can purchase Toca Dance which has more characters, songs, outfits, stage effects and much more. Please let us know what you think of it — we’re always interested in hearing ideas for improvements!

Let’s Dance!

Emil Ovemar, Producer & Co-Founder

How to play

1. Choose your dancers
First pick your characters. You can select one, two or three dancers. If you select the poster with an X on it, that means you’re leaving that spot empty.

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2. Dress them up!
After you’ve chosen your dancers, dress them up! Characters can wear a lot of costumes and hats. You can scroll the rack at the top to see all options.

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3. Choreograph your dance
Next, you’ll meet dance instructor Ebi; she’ll teach your moves to the dancers you’ve selected You control Ebi with your fingers, and you can record moves for the head, both arms and the body.

As you control Ebi, the moves are stored in the colored circles at the top; each circle hold moves for all body parts. You can record moves for one body part at a time or three at once by using three fingers. Try to jump, shaking the butt or putting the hands in the air like you just don’t care. Sometimes moving your finger just slightly instead of across the whole screen is more effective. Try different techniques and follow Toca Boca’s YouTube channel for inspiration.

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When you’re done with one move you can add moves to the next colored circle. Tapping an empty circle changes its color and the start pose for the move. You can also change the order of the moves by dragging them around. Why does the order matter? Because in the next room you’re performing all the moves on stage!

4. Start the show!
When you get to the stage everything is silent. Before you press the blinking play button, you might want to adjust the dancers’ sizes or try out effects to enhance the performance. Press play and let the show (and recording) begin! All the moves you taught your dancers will now be performed in the order of the colored circles.

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5. Save your dance & start again!
After the dance, check out the video of the performance. You can save the video to your camera roll (green button) or delete it (red button).

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When you’re done you can change moves with the instructor, change outfits in the wardrobe or go back and change dancers. Remember that you can get new characters, outfits, songs, effects and much more if you purchase the full version of Toca Dance.

A fun way to play with the app is to make a dance with your real body and see if you can recreate it in the app. Or the other way around: Make a dance in the app and try to recreate it in real life. Not all moves can be done with the app, but we’re gonna keep working on Toca Dance!

Settings:
In the settings panel of your Apple device, you’ll see an icon for Toca Dance Free. Here you have the option to turn off the icons on the start screen for Toca News and the For Grown-Ups section, which you are reading now. You also have the option to turn off the ability to save videos from Toca Dance Free to the camera roll.

Please note: Since you can control the dancers with many fingers at once, it’s easy to trigger multitasking gestures (switching or minimizing apps by using four or five fingers) on iPads. You can turn off multitasking gestures in Settings -> General -> Multitasking -> Gestures.

A SPECIAL THANKS TO

Håkan Lidbo – Music/Sound
DJ Luna – Scratching
Finsta – Posters/Backdrops/Logo
Viktor Kahn – Intro Animation
Roy Yasasindhu – Lead QA
Klara Miesenberger de Morais – QA
Matti Grip – iOS Developer
Andreas Bergman – Release Developer
Markus Gustavsson – Freelance Programmer

Acknowledgements:

Toca Dance is made possible through a dedicated game team but also by using various open source plugins, other open source software and sometimes we work with friends or others companies that we like to Acknowledge.