We had fairly high hopes for Dance Me after noticing that it comes from the same developers, CrazySoft, that had made two other games we had fun reviewing here, Trigna and Snake Deluxe 2. Each of those was well-crafted and entertaining.

Dance Me, alas, falls short.

Granted, we’re not as young as we once were and are our reflexes are not so snappy these days. And that may explain our lack of enthusiasm for playing Dance Me for any length of time. Quick response times is pretty much all this game asks of players – the ability to tap buttons really quickly and in the correct order while following a sequence of visual clues that pop on to the screen moment by moment. For instance, as soon as an up-arrow appears, you’ve got to tap your finger onto the up-arrowed button – one of four that are available – as quickly as possible. Too slow, or hit the wrong button – down, left, or right – and you lose a life. Lose too many lives, and it’s back to the beginning of that level.

That’s the game in a nutshell, an ever-escalating race to keep up with those arrows and hit the right buttons quickly quickly quickly. From what we could tell, there’s no strategizing to do, though there are some dance moves to learn as a way to collect trophies at certain times in the game. (More information on that here.)

To help eliminate the old-geezer factor from our ultra-scientific testing, we showed Dance Me to a younger member of the family and he found it “OK,” but nothing too special. He had an easier time of keeping up with the arrow-tapping, but honestly, this wasn’t a game that was going to keep his attention for too long.

Depending on what level you’ve made it to, you’ll be treated to the sight of a cute triangular being – familiar to anyone who has played Tringa, actually – performing a series of different dance steps: break dancing, Russian Cossack steps, Greek Sirtaki, and so forth. Frankly, we didn’t get too far into the game so we don’t know how well this fellow actually dances.

As you might guess, this game takes its inspiration from Dance Dance Revolution, a wildly popular game in arcades that involves actually dancing on a floor pad full of sensors in sync with long sequences of foot moves scrolling vertically across a video screen. It’s not uncommon to see large crowds of youngsters surrounding DDR installations, partly to watch the current contestant but also just to enjoy the dance music the machine plays at volume.

Unfortunately, Dance Me won’t encourage much actual dancing on the part of players. The app can’t detect any dance moves and its music is quite anemic.

Sorry to say, Dance Me is not really worth the $4.99 its priced at on Ovi Store. It just doesn’t deliver a sufficient gaming experience. Of course, your mileage may vary: Younger fingers may have more fun tapping on those buttons.

Those who so get “into” Dance Me should know that the game does offer the ability to post high scores for others to see. When you top one of the existing scores – a bunch come pre-loaded at installation – a passcode is revealed that enables to you to post your own score – or so the app’s help screen informed us. Finally, the game can be set up to play in English, Greek, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Portugese, and two forms of Chinese: Traditional and Simplified. Dance Me sells for $4.99 on Ovi Store.