Some of my fondest gaming moments include beating up crowds of enemies in Sleeping Dogs while blasting metal from my small MP3 player on early Sunday mornings as a teen. There was just something inherently satisfying to chaining up combos, utilising the environment, dodging attacks, and doing all of that while listening to Slayer, Danzig and Pierce the Veil. Yes, I was an angsty teen. But it was fun trying to sync attacks to the music. That is not to say that Sleeping Dogs didn’t have a banger soundtrack of its own right… No, quite on the contrary, actually, with its Chinese rap music and other parts of the soundtrack, I don’t quite remember, but I just had to mute the TV and play my own music to not wake up my siblings. Fond memories, overall. Good times.
I think that it worked so well precisely because I tried to add in an extra challenge that isn’t part of the game, and semi-succeeding at it, that I had such a blast with that. I mean, brawlers can probably work quite well as rhythm games, in theory, right? There’s just something inherently satisfying to seeing fighting play out with banger tracks like in all of those action movies I watched growing up, but with me doing the inputs.
Dead as Disco is a neon-drenched Beat ‘Em Up where every punch, kick, and combo syncs to the music in an unholy fusion of beat ’em up gameplay and rhythm game mechanics that I found pretty interesting in terms of its concept. It reminded me of those aforementioned memories in a good way. After I first saw it at the triple-i initiative indie showcase, I was already pretty hyped about it, but nothing could have quite prepared me for what the game was like.
Developer: Brain Jar Games, Inc.
Publisher: Brain Jar Games, Inc.
Genre: Early Access, 3D, Beat 'Em Up/Spectacle Fighter
Release Date: May 5th, 2026
Reviewed on: PC
Available on: PC
Copy was provided through PiratePR.
Dead as Disco has you step into the role of Charlie Disco, a fallen icon with one last chance to reclaim his fame from the Idols, Charlie’s ex-bandmates and musical legends. At some point after their last concert together, Charlie died at the hands of someone, and now, at the ten-year anniversary of said death, Charlie has struck a pact with the Devil to crash the party and find out who killed him while also reuniting the band for one last gig together.
As such, you’ll need to face off against each Idol in a mission dedicated to them to beat ’em up and bring them back to your base of operation, a lonely and dilapidated bar that could need some new furniture. After each mission, you spend the in-game currency, “fans”, to unlock new skills that help you beat up the different bosses/Idols better, or you fund the restoration of the bar to unlock more story content.
Now, the bread and butter of Dead as Disco is free-flow combat, much akin to the Arkham games, paired with rhythm game mechanics. By this, I mean that the game has you face off against groups of enemies that each come at you at their own speed, some going in for a punch while others try to, quite literally, get a jump on you or perhaps gun you down from afar. As such, you have to dodge or counter incoming attacks before unleashing your own flurries of attacks, kicks and abilities, to the beat of each given song. If you manage to build up a good combo, you proceed to also charge up your takedowns, allowing you to immediately kill normal enemies or deal massive damage to bosses. Beyond that, you also gain charges for your rage meter, allowing you to manifest cool special moves borrowed from previously beaten bosses.
Now, here’s my first point of criticism for the game: While I did mention that the game has rhythm-game mechanics, I have to admit that I wasn’t exactly truthful. The game isn’t actually a rhythm game; it’s just built like one. You challenge different levels or play infinite disco, you hunt for higher and higher scores, and you can load up your own custom music into the game to play them as levels. Sounds like a rhythm game, right? But your inputs will automatically sync up to the music. You practically can’t fail the combo build-up unless you get hit.
Since every punch, kick, and dodge syncs up automatically to the game’s music, you don’t have to master combat or anything of the sort and instead have to just memorise each level’s patterns. There is some skill expression in here, of course, but for the most part, it comes to memorisation rather than skilled brawling.
I, for one, expected more combos and choices to make in combat and not just spamming the X button a bunch of times while occasionally hitting A or Y to dodge or counter enemies. Quick-time events can be cool but the game practically only features those in combat with no other cool enemy mechanics, at least not in the current Early Access state. Perhaps, I was simply expecting too much of a spectacle fighter when the developers wrote “Martial arts meets music video in Dead as Disco” into the store description.
There are cool extra things you can do like running up to folks and dropkicking them or beating them up while they’re mid-fall. I felt reminded of Sifu amongst other titles, but for the most part, I was a bit disappointed with the actual combat of the game.
Dead as Disco has its highs, though. When you initially start playing the game for an hour or a few, the punches and kicks hit hard, and the music is absolutely immaculate to beat enemies down to. On top of that, the game looks and sounds stellar with a variety of stages providing a ton of fun. Between intergalactic K-Pop concerts and neon-heavy moshipits, there’s a lot of ground to cover.
Each boss has their own style of music that gets covered, featuring rock, rap and electronic music, as well as all new environments, like a subway station that has you dodge incoming trains, as well as busy streets that let you push enemies into incoming cars. There is a lot of fun in this game, specifically because of the mindblowing implementation of the different stages you encounter, and how well the tracks loop and blend into each other. Hat’s off to the devs for the execution there. It’s just that when the novelty wears off, and you’re forced to replay levels over and over again, especially in the current EA phase, the game inevitably just gets quite boring and repetitive. I hope they can work on that.
In between missions, you get to chat up the former bandmates you’ve brought back after beating their respective levels. By talking to them, you’ll unlock more bits and pieces of the story and dive into themes of betrayal and friendship, creativity versus broad market appeal, as well as the exploitation of talents in the music industry. The criticism is there and super interesting, in my opinion, because it doesn’t get thematised enough, but due to the game being in Early Access, much of the story (let alone said criticism) isn’t actually implemented into the game. Furthermore, Dead as Disco really loves talking about “selling out”, oftentimes moreso than about the actual power dynamics in the industry. I hope this gets tweaked and balanced a bit more over the course of EA.
Something that I absolutely cannot defend, though, is the fact that the game features no calibration whatsoever. When you play games, such as Crypt of the Necrodancer or even Clair Obscur, it’s absolutely important to get the timing right for your attacks and moves. Honestly, just add this. Guitar Hero did this ages ago. So why can’t Dead as Disco do it in 2026, right?
The other thing that really has to get fixed is the length and balance of the game. Many of the boss levels aren’t necessarily difficult due to the mechanics employed but rather because of how long they are and how your focus slips over time. Bosses are just way too tanky and as such you end up clobbering them for five, sometimes even more, minutes at a time, often having to dodge incoming attacks or wait until they’re done with whatever bs they do in the background where you can’t reach them, before you eventually get to get another hit in. It’s really stretched out and annoying, honestly.
Even “normal” difficulty does feel so difficult to go through, not because it’s hard but rather because it’s really boring, especially after you’ve done the level already a bunch of times. Hard mode could have added a nice level of difficulty through mechanical changes, but the bosses really just get so much tankier, which feels unnecessary in the grand scheme of things. And then there’s Rory’s stage, which features a locked camera with off-screen enemies shooting lasers at you that kind of blend in with the environment. On top of that, Rory’s QTEs don’t make any sense at all in terms of timing. Dodge when the QTE says so and you fail it. Instead, you have to, like, dodge a bit later than the QTE displays it on screen. It feels terrible.
Would I say that Dead as Disco is a good game in its current state? Honestly, I’m not so sure.
I played through all the levels multiple times and went through the catalogue of challenges, tutorials, and even some of my own music, which I, btw, had to manually add the BPM for, which feels like something I shouldn’t have to do. This game needs Steam Workshop support so badly, btw. The content in it feels quite lacking, especially with bosses not getting harder, just tankier, a lot of the time. On top of that, it eventually just lost its novelty and got pretty boring, especially after I realised that it’s automatically syncing all my hits to the music playing without me having to worry about anything.
As a beat ’em up fan, I would have liked for it to have better combat and more in-depth combos and opportunities for me to show off my skills, you know? And as someone who likes a fair few great rhythm games, including Crypt of the Necrodancer, UNBEATABLE, and Beat Slayer, I felt like I was lied to when I found out that I’ve been just mashing buttons and the game did all the work for me.
Honestly, I wouldn’t recommend picking up Dead as Disco in its current state. The game is currently in Early Access, though, and stuff may change. I will definitely revisit it in the future when the 1.0 drops. I hope the developers add a setting to calibrate my audio and whatnot for delays, while also giving me an option to remove the assistance the game inherently has. On top of that, I hope they rework some of the boss stages that are currently in the game to be less tanky and more satisfying, while also not messing up future bosses that have yet to be added.
It’s not a terrible game, though, by all means. It’s beautiful with a fantastic soundtrack and a lot of highs. Perhaps, the 1.0 release of Dead as Disco can aid in bringing forth the truly unique game that Dead as Disco could be. There’s a gem in hiding here, but it can’t shine in its current state. I’d imagine that this could be a great game to try out if you’re into hunting for higher and higher scores and don’t mind the more repetitive side of the levels. It’s just not my cup of tea in its current state, sadly.
Verdict: Dead as Disco left me with mixed feelings. I went into it expecting an interesting brawler with rhythm game mechanics and found myself losing interest after I realised that it's not a rhythm game after all. The combat is lacking, the boss stages can be rather frustrating, and more than anything, there's a lack of content in the game at the moment that I found a tad jarring. Still, I'll be cheering on for the game and revisit this title when it gets updated in the future, hoping that the issues get fixed, more content gets added, and that there's more of that cool underlying industry-critical story to explore.
This post was originally written by Dan Dicere from Indiecator.
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