Disaster Band Review (Xbox One)

STAFF REVIEW of Disaster Band (Xbox One)

Thursday, July 18, 2024.
by Adam Dileva

While I consider myself to be quite good at rhythm based games, I have no real world musical talent. I still remember in grade 1 or 2 where we were given Recorders to play for the first time, and as you can imagine a room full of young kids playing instruments, the ear-piercing notes and terrible sounding music that emitted is something I still remember. That said, I can still pay Hot Crossed Buns on the Recorder, so I guess my musical talents aren’t completely zero. Remember that terrible sound of kids playing instruments for the first time? Expect a lot of that in Disaster Band.

It was inevitable that with the wild success of Trombone Champ, that there was going to be other similar games following right behind. Disaster Band is that next game, but you are no longer confined to a single instrument, instead able to choose from a larger amount than expected, and form a band of up to four players online for probably one of the worst sounding, yet hilarious, bands you’ve ever been a part of. “There's nothing wrong with playing wrong.” Easy to pick up and play, you can expect some hilarity when playing online with some friends, just don’t expect anything close to a Rock Band experience.

Where Trombone Champ was limited to its singular instrument, Disaster Band vastly surpasses that with 15 “instruments” to use. I quote the “instruments”, as some of them aren’t what you’d initially expect, and there’s also very little difference between them all. Sure a guitar sounds different than a flute, but they all sound pretty terrible, which is half of Disaster Band’s appeal.

With 15 instruments to choose from, you’ll recognize the names and descriptions of most, but there’s also a handful that I had no idea what it was until gameplay started and I could see it. There’s no way to see the instruments or hear what they sound like before choosing it and jumping into a song, so if you’re not sure what a Pipa or Timpani is, you’re in for a surprise.

The instrument list is as follows:

- Trombone
- Recorder
- Vocal Soloist
- Pipa
- Chello
- Choir
- Electric Guitar
- Erhu
- Theremin
- Timpani
- Whistler
- Kazoo
- Violin
- Yangqin
- Cat. Yes, you can ‘play’ a cat, and it sound just as you’d expect.

As in any musical game, your goal is to hit the notes at the correct time accurately for the most points. This is of course the main goal, but even when you do hit the notes perfectly, the music in Disaster Band isn’t really going to sound all that great, though seemingly this is purposeful. Regardless of which instrument you use, they’ll all kind of sound terribly similar. This is of course part of the humour of Disaster Band, though if you’re looking for accurate representations of the included songs, you won’t find that here, but that’s also part of its charm. There is three different assists you can choose from, allowing you to play freely, to an almost auto-play mode, depending on how much you want to challenge yourself.

Just like Trombone Champ, you control a small circle on the left side of the screen that you can move up and down to control pitch. As the notes come from the right side of the screen to the left, you need to try and match up your little circle with the oncoming notes that can be flat and constant, or move wildly as you hold the button. Playing accurately gives you more points, playing poorly does not and also makes fart sounds to occur to indicate how bad you’re doing. Juvenile? Yes. Hilarious? Also yes, for the first while anyways. And no, there’s no way to disable this, so get used to hearing a lot of farts while playing the classics. The simple controls means anyone can play without a tutorial, and even if you do hit all the notes perfectly, you’ll sound terrible as a band, so don’t worry about needing to be perfectly accurate.

I’ll admit, the first hour of hearing terrible renditions of songs was entertaining, and my daughter thought it was hilarious, but it does lose its appeal after a while hearing the same limited tracklist over and over again. Sure, the number of instruments can make songs sound slightly different, but this too gets old after time when you’ve played them all a number of times. Every instrument just sounds out of tune, and I’m sure this is purposeful, but this means you won’t hear how a song is ‘supposed’ to sound even when you hit the notes perfectly. Again, this is meant to be Disaster Band’s appeal, it just grows tiresome after a while.

What sets Disaster Band apart from being a simple Trombone Champ clone isn’t its small track list, but rather its Mod.io support. This means you can create any of your own tracks via a PC (MIDI format) and then share them with the Disaster Band community. The 20 or so included songs have some tracks you’ll probably recognize, but the song list is quite weak overall as they are also quite short. I'll admit, I spent almost an hour trying to do a song myself, and gave up. It's there, but it's not simple or foolproof.

The track list for included songs are as follows:

- Alla Turca
- Amazing Grace
- Brother John
- Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy
- Derp Derp
- Family Business
- German Anthem
- In the Hall of the Mountain King
- Maple Leaf Rag
- Morning Mood
- Off to New Shores
- Prelude No. 1 in C Major
- Ride of the Valkyries
- The Blue Danube
- Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
- Gymnopedie No.1
- Silent Night
- Toccata Without Fugue
- Trivial Canon
- We Wish You a Merry Christmas.

If you don’t know the titles by the name alone, there’s no song preview, so just like choosing an instrument, you’ll probably be going in blind for a number of them. There’s also no way to sort or filter songs, though to be fair, with such a small selection it’s only a few button presses away.

The Mod.io integration is what will hopefully make Disaster Band worth it once the community starts to create some songs. There’s only a handful to download at the time of writing this, of which I really only enjoyed one or two and didn’t like the others at all, but of course musical preferences are subjective. There’s infinite possibilities for songs in the future, but judging what was available at the time of writing this, it’s quite bleak.

Another feature that makes Disaster Band set itself apart from Trombone Champ is the inclusion of online multiplayer for up to four people. You can play solo, duo, trio or even as a quartet, with each band member choosing which instrument they’d like to play. You can create private rooms require a code to enter if you want to play with just your friends, or play with random strangers and bond over your terrible musicianship. While I didn’t find a lot playing online, the few jam sessions I did have were lag free. The four positions in the band even take their names after MOBA games (Carry, Support, Mid-Laner, and Tank) for whatever reason.

If you thought playing solo or with a friend had the music sounding terrible, wait until you play with a full band of four. Hilarious yes, at least for the first while. Everyone sees the same sheet of notes scrolling across the page, but the notes you need to specifically hit will be highlighted in green, where all the others players’ notes will appear grey, this way you don’t get confused on which you should be playing. While I applaud the inclusion of online multiplayer, the lack of split screen or local co-op was a downer, as me and my daughter wanted to play together.

I shouldn’t be surprised that the visual esthetics match the audio, as it’s all hand drawn stick figures. I’m sure this was also purposeful, but there’s really not much to look at other than one to four stick figures playing instruments, notes scrolling across the screen, and some background videos that are faded as to not be too distracting. With all the music being MIDI quality, you can guess the quality of the audio as well.

The way Disaster Band attempts to keep you playing is the Mod.io support, though that’s going to fall to the community to create new songs to download and play, of which I’ve not really seen much of yet. The other is making the achievements a slog to unlock, as you need to play instruments for a set amount of time, so you’ll eventually become numb to the out of tune songs and fart sounds by then.

Disaster Band is hilarious... at first. The novelty of playing terrible sounding music is funny for a while, but with such a limited song selection (currently), the gag can get old quickly. The potential for longevity is there with Mod.io support, but that will rest on the shoulders of the community to create, which has not been seen yet. At under ten bucks USD, I’d still suggest waiting for a sale until more song content is created. Maybe my Hot Crossed Buns on the recorder doesn’t sound too bad after all.

**Disaster Band was provided by the publisher and reviewed on an Xbox Series X**

Overall: 4.5 / 10
Gameplay: 6.5 / 10
Visuals: 2.0 / 10
Sound: 5.0 / 10

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STAFF REVIEW of Disaster Band (Xbox One)

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