Most games in the rhythm and music genre force the player to follow along to certain notes within a song, ignoring the freedom and improv that can be at the core of a dance or solo. Floor Kids by MERJ Media is one of the few titles that emphasises the unlimited amount of choices in break culture. You don't just follow along with the music – you create your own performance.
Floor Kids puts you in the middle of the dance floor with a big list of breaking moves to choose from. You use different button configurations on the joy-cons to choose your dance moves and break to the music as you see fit.
It was originally headed to mobile, but the team shifted focus to the Switch after Nintendo tracked them down at the Montreal International Games Summit. "It's really incredible when you have a personal connection in the industry," says Jonathan 'JonJon' Ng, the animator and creator behind Floor Kids. "That's the energy we got from Nintendo. We met and we just vibed."
Moving the game over to the Switch also solved a lot of the technical problems that the team was facing during development. "It ran no problem when we ported it over the Switch," JonJon says. "The problem of optimising for hundreds of different types of cell phones just went away and the actual device was just perfect."
The unique freestyle battle game was released on Switch in December, after a long development journey. JonJon was enamoured with the style of the breaking community and for the longest time, he didn’t even know he was going to make a game.
"The first time I made one of these videos it was just something I could do," he explains. "I didn't know it was going to end up becoming a game, we just wanted to do a thing with no real end goal. We just want to do something fun." Floor Kids started out as a passion project for JonJon, who works as an animator full time, but it grew into something more when he showed the short videos he'd been making to his longtime DJ friend and producer, Kid Koala.
"We started using the short videos as promotion for Kid Koala's new album. We even used them as little bumpers for each live show. It was something to hype up and get the crowd involved, it worked well since his music is very visual so we just clicked."
The animations gained some popularity after being shown online and during various shows, so much so that people were telling JonJon to make a game out of the idea. "A lot of people were pitching to make it into a game and I felt that I might be the wrong person," JonJon says. "It's not the same thing if you're in animation so we needed to find our counterparts in game development."
JonJon and Kid Koala felt the game wouldn't be done right unless they could stay true to their hip-hop and break culture inspirations. Luckily, the team of coders they found helped them do just that.
"Our approach to this game wasn't to be the representatives of hip-hop, but this is the way we see it and we love that," JonJon says. "When we were breaking it down, so much of this game is coming out of the root of hip-hop, things like funk and block parties." JonJon and the team behind Floor Kids understood that they couldn't represent the break scene all on their own, they wanted to represent their view of it, and Floor Kids' distinct visual style was a huge part of that. "The sketch style is a viewpoint," JonJon says. "It's what I see when I look around the world."
The sketch-like, unfinished look that Floor Kids boasts is JonJon's personal style. "Animation has its own thoughts and views about how things should be, and a lot of people don't appreciate the sketch look since they think it isn't finished," JonJon says. "It's something that's always been viewed as a stepping stone."
But JonJon doesn't look at his style as not being finished, he looks at it being efficient. "I handle at least 90% of the animation and drawing for the game," JonJon adds. "So why would I go back and nitpick each drawing? I think it's fresh to see the personal expression and I don't want to take that away."
Every aspect of Floor Kids, from the animation to the music, embodies the personal expression of the hip-hop and breaking scenes. That freedom of personal expression is extended to the player as well – there's no notes to follow or moves that you need to do, the challenge is in creating your own routine of dance moves. "It's like Journey but for bboys," JonJon explains. "There are no rules, just like what the art is inspired by."
JonJon and Kid Koala hadn't been gamers for quite some time and once they decided that Floor Kids would come to the Switch, they had to try and remember what their favorite games were from childhood. And even though they weren't big gamers during development, they still took inspiration from other games in the genre, like Beat Sneak Bandit and PaRappa the Rapper. "You can't represent bboy culture without rhythm, JonJon says. "We pulled out the aspects of other games and still did our own thing."
Floor Kids has eight characters that each represents a different sub-philosophy from within breaking culture. It also lets you switch to different types of breaking with the press of a button. You can go from toprock, performing primarily from the standing position, to downrock, which focuses on your feet and hand movement when touching the floor.
Being so different from other games in the music genre wasn't easy at first. "People who tested the game were afraid of 'doing it wrong'," JonJon adds. "This game is about expression and rhythm. Breaking culture has unlimited movements so we want people to try to imagine that when playing."
The Switch isn't the end for Floor Kids and the team are exploring other consoles and future expansions as well. "We’re super happy with Nintendo, but we're still looking at other platforms," JonJon says. "We want DLC and updates, but we all have to decide together. Right now, we don't have anything specifically lined up schedule-wise, but we have the power to since it's our own game."