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.
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. The character Cindy has a little worm that can wear one of the hats as well!
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.
In the bottom left you can choose from several songs; we’ll add new ones in updates so look out for that. Try to time moves to the beat. It doesn’t matter if you want to change song later — all songs have the same tempo!
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 change the backdrop, adjust the dancers’ sizes, choose different music 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.
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).
When you’re done you can change moves with the instructor, change outfits in the wardrobe or go back and change dancers. We will add new characters, outfits, songs, effects and much more in the coming months!
A fun way to play with the app is to make a dance with your real body and see if you can re-create 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. 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 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.
