Stay alive by dancing
Chainsaw Dance is a free music video game that lets you play out the iconic arcade scene in the hit comedy-horror manga, Chainsaw Man. Developed by Benedique, this 2D pixelated indie game offer rhythm game mechanics in the style of Dance Dance Revolution. There’s not much else to the game other than one round and one song, though; it’s still in active development and there are currently no cutscenes or even any fail states.
Dance for the chainsaw
Chainsaw Man is a 2018 Japanese action-horror manga series written and illustrated by Tatsuki Fujimoto. It tells the story of a young man named Denji, who ends up becoming a devil hunter and inadvertently turning into a monstrous human-devil hybrid with chainsaws for arms. The manga gradually became popular, selling over 6 million copies and winning the 66th Shogakukan Manga Award in the shōnen category in 2021.
The story of Chainsaw Dance, however, is a bit more lighthearted compared to its source material. In it, you reenact Kobeni Higashiyama’s DDR scene, wherein she was forced to dance during a date with the dangerous main character. You’ll take control of Kobeni’s steps and try to accurately hit all incoming arrows on the screen with the corresponding keys. Unfortunately, the most you’ll get is just a high score and no special CG for your win.
This is because this game is just a demo and only contains one song. However, this also means that you can’t fail or die and can continue to try beating your high score. To dance, simply press D for left, F for down, J for up, and K for right. You can’t rebind these but they’re easy enough to master. You can score multipliers for as long as you keep up a streak of good hits.
Lots of potential
Overall, Chainsaw Dance is a nice little fangame for the Chainsaw Man. It doesn’t have a story or even a victory splash art but it has much potential and lets players get a good look at what to expect when it gets completed. It’s only too bad that you can’t rebind the controls to the keys you prefer. Nevertheless, it’s a free game you can enjoy and you can even buy the character’s dancing sprites.
