Federal Bureau of Dance

by drainkid

co-authored: @maeve-walls, @awr

Overall★★★★★★★★★★4.20

Fun★★★★★★★★★★4.20

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★4.30

Theme★★★★★★★★★★4.07

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★4.17

Audio★★★★★★★★★★4.61

Humor★★★★★★★★★★4.13

Mood★★★★★★★★★★4.26

*They come in Peace... and also Love, Unity, and Respect...*

Federal Bureau of Dance is a first-person action game where you mix beats on the fly to satisfy a horde of alien ravers. Use your FLX 9000 to load, sync, and signal process tracks together into a killer set!

Use WASD to move, and the LMB or RMB buttons + a number key to load a track into the Left or Right bays respectively. Use the scroll wheel to sync them up, and then point those good vibrations at some aliens!

This was a whirlwind! The entire game was predicated on whether or not we could make the music syncing system sound good, and while its definitely not perfect (some combos are a little rough to be honest), we're happy with where we got it given the amount of headache it took. We hope you enjoy!

CREDITS:

Max 'drainkid' Stucker - Design, Programming, Music

Ashley 'awr' Rohan - Design, Programming, Art, UI

Maeve 'maeve-walls' Walls - Design, Art, Music

Tags: #fps

Genres: shooter

Comments67

Sirplop20 Apr 2026, 23:02

Fantastic entry! I really enjoyed giving the silly little aliens the music they so desired, though it is a lot of keys to juggle.

Jack Maxwell20 Apr 2026, 23:06

This is really great. I love the idea and the music and mechanics come together in a really fun and good sounding experience. I like how you have to manage multiple aspects of the mix and dodging in the 3d space. It almost reminds me of sunset overdrive in the way how you are almost combo-ing the aliens with your mix. I would love if it was less focused on moving/aiming and instead almost snapped you to your targets when you hit a good combo. Great game!

FLOWERFIELD Games20 Apr 2026, 23:32

Hello! FIY, I can't execute the MACOS build. Here is the error message:
“Federal Bureau of Dance” can’t be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software"

mantaraii20 Apr 2026, 23:33

I really love how the sound design works together with the visuals—it’s super fun and full of style and creativity! That said, I couldn’t help but keep staring at the bald heads at the bottom… their facial expressions hit my sense of humor for some reason 😭

awr20 Apr 2026, 23:38

@flowerfield-games as with basically all Ludum Dare games on MacOS the executable is unsigned and you have to bypass Gatekeeper if you want to run it. right+click the app and click open instead of double-clicking it directly, it should give you a different dialog box that you can click "open" on. Hope this helps

awr20 Apr 2026, 23:41

FYI it may also take a couple of seconds before the window opens on MacOS due to shader compilation

DariZz20 Apr 2026, 23:45

I had an incredible time playing this game!
My dream of being a DJ has finally come true. The controls were a bit tricky at first, but the text-based tutorial completely solved that problem. 10 alien party animals out of 10

thedudeman4521 Apr 2026, 01:48

Excellent

4farandbeyond21 Apr 2026, 02:02

What an absolute fever dream of a game (in the best way possible), I love the concept of mixing music tracks, the aliens are very cute, the story is ridiculously funny, absolute 10/10 game jam game!

LDJam user 37223121 Apr 2026, 03:08

Great minds think alike:D

breadstick21 Apr 2026, 03:11

Love the art and music--how was I going to pass up on a title with a thumbnail featuring a government agent with cat-ear headphones?

This game appeals to Lucio mains who crave the added layer of simultaneously mixing their music mid battle

mattlevonian21 Apr 2026, 06:31

This was a very good entry! Fun gameplay, loads of polish. Full, effective tutorial. Innovative mechanic. My only complaints are that there isn't more! I want a full game! Different enemies, more mechanical complexity in the beatmatching, etc.

Overall, loads of fun to play, great job!

takanoro21 Apr 2026, 07:02

Even if they were trying to kill me HARD they are absolutely adorable :alien:

Sariiger21 Apr 2026, 07:33

Great job on this incredible entry! The art style and the music were both top-notch, like genuinely, and the gameplay itself was super unique and creative too, loved everything about this game!

So far easily the highest quality game on this jam I've played so far.

LDJam user 342640author21 Apr 2026, 07:54

Thanks everyone for the kind words so far!!! With how much of a blitz this ended up being towards the end, I'm glad things apparently seem to have worked out!

wexelsdev21 Apr 2026, 07:55

Great job! You guys did awesome, I really enjoyed playing it. It was a bit tough at first, but once I got the hang of it, it became much more fun. It did freeze on me once, which was a bit of a bummer, but that's probably on my end. It would be really cool to have a Linux build too!

LDJam user 342640author21 Apr 2026, 07:57

@mattlevonian To be honest with you - I was tempted to add a few more enemy waves before the boss, but I was too worried about overstaying our welcome and decided to keep it short & sweet :sweat_smile:

LDJam user 342640author21 Apr 2026, 08:03

@wexelsdev ah - sorry about that! glad you still enjoyed the game though. were you running it through a compatibility layer? sadly none of us have linux machines atm so we werent able to make a native build

wexelsdev21 Apr 2026, 08:08

@drainkid Yeah, I was running it through Proton on Arch, so that might have caused the freeze. Totally understand about the native build though-testing without the hardware is tricky! Still, the game is solid, great job again.

MuzzLove21 Apr 2026, 08:50

great game!

LDJam user 42432621 Apr 2026, 08:55

I was really glad to see a pause menu and a tutorial
The sound design and artwork are incredible

Jo Bettaque21 Apr 2026, 10:52

Really unique and creative entry, Also works well, although in the beginning i got mobbed by aliens :D

Crusader21 Apr 2026, 11:10

Great game. Liked the innovative gameplay, fun music and pleasant graphics. All 5's

Archaeognathus21 Apr 2026, 13:58

The thumbnail alone is gold. And it's a super fun and unique concept... but I fear I know too much now.

alexey_bobrovskiy21 Apr 2026, 13:59

Unfortunately, it freezes when I combine two tracks, but from the first impressions it’s something grandiose

50021 Apr 2026, 14:06

A classic FPS, the artistic tricks are so fun

metalgear21 Apr 2026, 14:15

Wow, FBD was a good game.

Raivk21 Apr 2026, 14:52

Absolutely freaking cool! That's a really nice entry!

Tanjou21 Apr 2026, 14:54

Really cool entry! But just like in real life, I think this game requires a lot of motor coordination, which I unfortunately do not have lol

Pentagrammal21 Apr 2026, 16:21

Is that you, Game Jam winner?)

Dywanix21 Apr 2026, 16:41

I love the artstyle!

LDJam user 342640author21 Apr 2026, 17:18

@alexey-bobrovskiy Hmm, strange - was this a one time thing or repeated? Also, what OS are you on? Somebody else reported issues running this on Linux through a compatibility layer, so if you're also on Linux I may look into trying to bake a native build.

HDVR0221 Apr 2026, 17:20

A very solid visual style - great work!

LDJam user 28018921 Apr 2026, 18:23

The DJ mechanic was really awesome! Solid work, good job!

FYI I was playing it on Fedora Linux and it was running fine for me.

HadMatter0021 Apr 2026, 22:25

This was awesome! The music and art were great, and the gameplay was super satisfying once I got used to it.

Oraclefish21 Apr 2026, 22:30

Really well done! The DJ mechanic was so well done. I loved the graphics, and the game was pretty challenging. Loved it!

LDJam user 42463221 Apr 2026, 22:35

The game is really cool! The visual design is simply incredible!

steinhks21 Apr 2026, 23:15

Cool idea, not bad sound design, and the “YAPPIE” sound is really funny when the alien dies

kanhao21 Apr 2026, 23:33

This idea is so much fun! I only struggled a bit with the scroll wheel at the very beginning, but once I got used to it, it was really enjoyable.Using a filter gives such strong positive feedback the moment you adjust to the correct speed.It might be even more interesting if the scroll wheel were linearly linked to the filter cutoff, BPM, and loudness all at once!

svalski22 Apr 2026, 01:28

cool gui

kayrum22 Apr 2026, 03:04

When I saw the portrait I instandly thought doom, but the challenge of managing samples is a fun twist for an fps.

Blue Pin Studio22 Apr 2026, 04:04

Really cool entry! you managed to make a pretty complicated gameplay interaction managable by the thoughtful tutorial and hud elements. Really cool!

MaruMari22 Apr 2026, 04:15

Unique game idea liked it alot

Gecko6422 Apr 2026, 04:39

Super fun game to play. I loved almost everything about it with the combination of the music and highpass lowpasses along with the artstyle alone of the cute aliens and ever cooler FBD agent. Very good job a great game! :)

babyfoodstudios22 Apr 2026, 06:41

Fulfilled my DJ dreams

Mekuire22 Apr 2026, 06:42

A well-made game! Though you have to go through too many steps to satisfy the alien's musical preferences.

poboy22 Apr 2026, 07:23

This game has such pizazz and style I love it so much. The high/low pass filter idea is brilliant. Did y'all make the music too? That's some serious talent

Jastrzebska22 Apr 2026, 08:19

I enjoyed playing this game! It's really fun!

Tetracold22 Apr 2026, 08:58

Loved it!

The concept is both very funny and well executed. I really like the music centric mechanics, they are the highlight for me, I think it came together really good!

It took me a bit to get used to the flow of the gameplay, some of the combos are quite difficult but I get the general idea of what it's going for

Brainoid22 Apr 2026, 12:20

Cool idea!
A little bit overlayered for my taste.
I felt like I could enjoy the game without the "BPM changing" and a bit balance of the enemies.
Music and visuals got me going though. So, thanks for the entry!

Allax22 Apr 2026, 15:45

Good game, I liked it

LDJam user 42387222 Apr 2026, 16:29

I think this is the most unusual thing I've seen here! It's funny. 🎵

FireFish22 Apr 2026, 19:21

An absolutely brilliant game! The concept of combining music with gunplay is always a great idea, and using a gun to mix tracks is just ridiculously cool! It was a bit on the difficult side for me, but I still had an absolute blast playing it, and it fits the 'signal' theme perfectly.

I also really love the game's sense of humor—the federal agents wearing earmuffs cracked me up! It's a game packed with so much flavor and charm. Great job, you guys are awesome!

LDJam user 30422623 Apr 2026, 00:37

Woooooo!! Really really really kewl, jammy and fun to play! Loved it all, the alien designs, the music, the gameplay, it's all really cool and fun, thanks for the very cool game ^^

YurisCat23 Apr 2026, 06:14

I've seen you in so many comment sections! The alien designs are really adorable, and I love the filter rhythm and visual effects!!

eklender23 Apr 2026, 18:20

How do you even come up with such ideas? Very creative and fun! I’m really impressed with how well these tracks work together

oeueGHa23 Apr 2026, 20:20

Very decent work, maybe I'd like to see more challenge

Alex de la Cour23 Apr 2026, 20:47

This was so much fun! Super unique and interesting, charming as hell and funny. My brain hurts thinking about how you managed to get all those combinations of tunes working together but the audio was just mind-blowing. Great job!

LDJam user 42814025 Apr 2026, 13:20

This is one of the most original entries I've played! The idea of mixing tracks mid-combat is such a clever twist on the FPS formula, and the fact that all the combinations actually sound good is seriously impressive. Juggling the filters, BPM, and aiming was a lot at first, but the tutorial eased me in nicely. The aliens are adorable and hilarious. Fantastic job!

HerzogVonWiesel25 Apr 2026, 16:00

Really fun and unique game idea, loved to be a little DJ for the aliens!

christina-antoinette-neofotistou25 Apr 2026, 16:43

this is like elite beat agents, crypt of the necrodancer and doom all at once. WOW. Super original, sounds *amazing* and I'm so surprised that you had time for a tutorial!

Amazing work! One of my favorites!

PanDuplan26 Apr 2026, 12:29

Super creative idea, mixing tracks like this is really impressive!! Feels very unique and just fun to play. The audio is awesome, everything somehow blends really well which is kinda crazy. Aliens are super cute too! Took a bit to get used to all the controls, but once it clicks it feels really satisfying. Could maybe use a bit more challenge, but overall awesome entry!!

GuitarBro28 Apr 2026, 02:52

This is a really novel idea! It's a bit difficult to do everything in time since there are so many controls, but the concept is quite straightforward once you get the hang of it. Nice that you managed to fit in 4 tracks and were able to figure out how to tempo sync them well. The art also has quite a lot of personality and works pretty well, even if it's a bit minimal. The 2D-in-3D kinda reminded me of some early playstation/n64 games that did a similar technique. Overall, a pretty solid entry!

picross1 May 2026, 02:33

Hilarious idea! I liked mixing the tracks a lot. Very funny character designs overall as well. The movement felt pretty good and it made me want a little more feedback on the shooting (and maybe an aiming reticle perhaps) - feels like it needs a little bit more game juice. Really nice work!

pickens-inc4 May 2026, 18:27

My favourite entry I've played so far, this was an absolute delight!! I love love love rhythm combat, and I respect the hell out of however you managed to get that audio code working in the jam time. I found it really fun and intuitive, and I adored the doom-style portrait looking around as I moved, but with the cat ear headphones.

The only thing that was missing was chunky game-feel. Nice sounds when you're "hurting" the enemies, chunky tape deck noises when you switch out tracks, etc. But it was a fantastic entry. I was literally just saying out loud when fighting the boss "This is getting pretty easy, it would be cool for the difficulty if this boss guy switched up what he wanted whilst I fought him", and then he did! Amazing stuff, it lasted the perfect amount of time too.

AO-854 May 2026, 21:03

Really cool entry! you managed to make a pretty complicated gameplay interaction managable by the thoughtful tutorial and hud elements. Really cool!