Disaster Band Review

I have always wanted to be a musician. I always imagined myself playing in an orchestra, or a rock band, wowing people with my riffs and musical genius. But sadly when it came to understanding music and how you blow. strum or do what you do with an instrument. I am severely lacking. I can play chopsticks on a piano and am just about capable of plucking Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on guitar, but away from that, it’s a wilderness. 

Luckily, mediocre music skills are encouraged in Disaster Band, no matter what musical instrument you play. Let’s jam. 

You can play Disaster Band either across online multiplayer (but not locally) or as a single player. For the most part, I’ve found myself focusing on the single player side of things, because the multiplayer aspects of Disaster Band are a bit dead. Of course, if you have a friend with the game, you’ll be good to go, but without that, you’ll mostly be left plying your musical talent alone. 

Take to that single player and you’ll discover a menu screen with several choices. You can choose what level you want to play at, from easy to hard; easy does the hard work for you, leaving you to just hit a required button at the right time. In hard mode, you have to not only direct when the timing of the instrument will be but also the auto-tune of your instrument. But stop, I’m getting ahead of myself. 

In Disaster Band you’ll get to choose from a whole range of instruments to play, from electric guitar to the Chinese Erhu. There are multiple instruments in place, with a good deal of choice available; including playing the cat which is a bold choice to be had. You then select from a track list of classic tunes mainly from ones like ‘The Hall of Mountain King’ to ‘Amazing Grace’. There is also the opportunity to download the latest creations from the modding community at mod.io, providing some more longevity to the game, mostly as you will soon get to the end of the original tracks.

It all works via a rolling screen, as notes appear across the screen from right to left, requesting you to hit the right area and the timing of the note. Some require short beats to be pulled off, others long notes as you hold down the button and try to keep with the alteration in the pitch. At the end of the song you get graded in how well you did, and that’s about it to what plays out in Disaster Band. It’s fun while it last and at times very amusing. But how long you will want to keep playing for is the key and whilst I found it fine in short sharp bursts, the interest levels do start to wane once you’ve worked your way through all the permutations. 

Disaster Band looks nice though. There’s some great visual designs, especially in terms of its fonts, menus, and overall UI. It has a schoolbook feel to it which is perfect for the look of the game. I also like the hand-drawn pencil drawing and animation of the musicians that you choose to play with. In the background, there are various videos of people, landscapes and – in one – what seemed to be pigs. It adds to the humorous feeling of the game. 

The sound is essential to Disaster Band – as you would expect. And I’m pleased to say that the audio has been utterly nailed, delivered with joy across all the different instruments (including the cat). It always feels slightly off-tune, but that is obviously the purpose of things, as a school band kind of feel comes to the fore.  

The big question is whether Disaster Band is capable of delivering the fun it promises. And the answer is a resounding, yes – it does that and more. Its menus are clear, the gameplay is fun in short bursts and it has a great range of instruments to experiment with. The problem comes in the longevity, and you’ll find yourself powering through the tracks quite quickly. It’s here though where the mod tracks and multiplayer comes to mind, but unless you’ve a friend who also has the game, you may find the latter a bit empty.

But hats must be tipped to Disaster Band for being able to capture the pain, celebrating the non-gifted musicians out there.