Thank you hap Inc. for sending us a review code!

hap Inc. is known for some of their silly mobile games with their most popular being Mom Hid My Game. In 2019, hap Inc. released Behind You!! on mobile platforms and the game has been ported to the Switch with most of the same songs and a new title, Hide & Dance! The characters and art style are identical to their previous games.

When you first launch Hide & Dance!, you start off as a young girl and your goal is to dance without your parent catching you in the act. I’m not sure why dancing is bad, but if you get caught, you will instantly fail. You also have five viewers that you lose for each note you miss. There is no way to win them back either so try not to mess up!

The gameplay is pretty simple with red notes coming down and you have to push the correct button on your switch when the notes line up with the circles on the bottom of the screen. Some of the notes come in pairs and you’ll have to press two buttons simultaneously. Occasionally, gold coins will come down as well, which can be used to unlock in-game extras (this will be explained later in the review).

What you have to watch out for is the door behind you will slightly open and when that happens you’ll have to quickly disguise your dancing before the door is opened completely. I like how the Switch controllers will vibrate to let you know that the door has started to open. If you’re too slow and get caught in the act, you’ll fail the level.

If you perfectly clear a song, you’ll get three stars and a few extra coins for your superb performance. Money can be spent in a vending machine which will randomly dispense new tracks, dancers, and sound effects. In total, there are twenty available tracks and it only takes about an hour to unlock them all. Unlocking harder difficulties requires getting three stars on the previous one.

There are six different dancers and they all have funny ways of dancing and hiding their questionable actions. One of the dancers is a flea who bounces around and hops into the sleeping cat when the door opens. You can also play as the cat removing tissues from a box and acting innocent as the door opens up.

Though there are some instrumental tracks like Beethoven Sym9-4 remix, most of them have Japanese singing. Unfortunately, I have no idea what they’re saying. The mobile version has many of the same songs, but sadly their techno version of Canon in D did not make it to the Switch port.

The visuals are simplistic but fitting. The disguises used to hide the dancing are often over-the-top and silly. More often than not, I find these actions more suspicious than dancing. For example, why would someone be in the middle of the room dressed as the Statue of Liberty?

Local multiplayer is available. In this mode you dance together and try to see who can get a higher combo. The score and viewer/mistake count is shared. However instead of five viewers, there are now six.

If you’re looking for a silly rhythm game, Hide & Dance! is worth looking into. The asking price of $4.99 is reasonable for an ad-free experience. If you want to play the game for free, look for Behind You!! on your mobile’s app store. A word of caution, if you leave off the two exclamation points you’ll accidentally install a horror game instead.