While the era of Wii-style waggle controls and motion-controlled games using the Kinect have come and gone, there are probably still people nostalgic for the casual types of games they helped make a little more interesting and fun. In particular, dance games seemed to be an ideal match for those technologies, encouraging people to get up off the couch and get moving, but with some dance club flair listening to hot tracks and learning some dance trends as well typically. Musical Vibes is geared to provide that sort of experience on the Switch, as long as you’ve got a reasonably-modern phone with a decent camera, some patience, and some energy to spare.

While getting your phone set up is obviously less convenient than the out-of-the-box ability to play using the Kinect, overall once you learn some basics the setup isn’t too terribly challenging. I did find that you’re unable to connect with the Switch when it is hard-wired using an ethernet cable, it instead needs you to be on the same wi-fi network. It just takes a quick download of some simple software, working through some prompts both on your TV and your device, and then you’re mostly up and running. You’ll also need something to act as a stand for your phone, ensuring that it has a good view of your entire body, to get everything finalized and be able to start playing. 

As its very low-budget price would likely imply, there aren’t very many tracks and there really isn’t all that much variety to be found here. Realistically, this feels more like a proof of concept demo, where the developers are trying to get out there to gather feedback, and then perhaps be able to come back with something more full-featured. I suppose the camera works well enough, seemingly about as well as the Kinect, though that’s not necessarily a ringing endorsement. I’d say it appears your movements are mostly registered, but some nuance absolutely appears to be lost. Another issue I have, is that aside from being able to observe your points increasing or being stuck, there’s very little feedback about what you may be doing wrong, how your timing may be off, or whether your range of movement isn’t quite enough for it to register. While I felt like it was keeping track of me, I also didn’t have much confidence in the quality of what it’s collecting since so little is conveyed back to the person playing outside of various words as I danced... but that were vague enough not to be of much help.

In the end, I suppose for such a low price you can’t expect too much but the effort does feel thin and like it doesn’t quite work as well as it would like to imply. The lack of more clear and helpful direct feedback is what really drives that impression home. If it were better at either helping you understand when you were successful, or at least clearly helping you know when you weren’t or what you were doing wrong, the experience would be much more fulfilling. Instead, this feels like a tech demo that works just well enough to make a mildly positive impression but that lacks the features, licensing (at least of music I or even my daughter recognized), and depth to take it to the next level.