The Indie Informer

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Tears welled up in Greg Johnson’s eyes as he spoke. The song I was listening to, which he wrote for Dancing with Ghosts, recalled the loss of his daughter. The lyrics voiced a fervent wish that the deceased could return just long enough to apologize to them. The question that sat with me, along with the game, for the rest of my time at The MIX was, “Apologize for what?”

My conclusion: The interpretation will be mostly up to the player, as will be a lot of the experience. “You have to sit with it — take your time,” said Johnson, speaking about the hands-on demo. I’m glad I took his advice and resisted the urge to dart away to play the other shiny previews at the event. I played for so long, I was afraid I had irritated the dev by hogging the station.

However, he surprised me. Johnson seemed genuinely encouraged someone was willing to simply sit back and take it all in. The protagonist, Mai, makes that a pretty easy task. She’s both endearing and in need of real comfort in the wake of losing her parents.

The opening of the demo sees her attempting to perform a dance she learned to love through her mother. The minigame was easy enough, asking me to follow bars around the screen with my mouse. However, influenced by her mental state, these bars begin to wander wildly, becoming erratic and impossible to reach. The weight of her loss won’t allow her to carry on with this relatively easy task.

So I move on.

Everything that followed in my Dancing with Ghosts hands-on revolved around Mai’s ability to see what others can’t or won’t — including both emotional needs and ghosts. Helping others and gaining good karma unlocks important interactions, which allow her to grow as a person and begin to grapple with her loss. Likely, I’ll need a box of tissues to play the full game when it’s ready to release.