DOPA DASH beginner's guide: dash on the beat, boop the crowd
Controls, how the beat is judged, energy, vibes and bumps, how a level is won and what unlocks first in DOPA DASH.
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DOPA DASH is a color party rhythm arcade game. The city has gone gray and bored, and you fix it by dashing on the beat. Every gray friend your dash passes through gets booped, turns colorful and joins a dancing line behind you. Nobody gets beaten here, not even the bosses.
This guide explains the controls, how your timing is judged, what costs you a vibe, how a level is won, and what opens up as you play.
Controls
On a phone you tap the spot you want to dash to. On a computer you click. Space or Enter starts a level, plays again or resumes, Esc or P pauses, and M mutes.
Every gray friend your dash passes through is booped and joins your line. The longer the line, the bigger the party and the more each boop is worth.
Tapping on the beat
Every tap is graded against the song as PERFECT, GOOD or OFF, and the verdict appears in one fixed place, the HIT! spot above the beat bar at the bottom of the screen.
The PERFECT window is at most 60 milliseconds either side of the beat and GOOD is at most 110. Both are a fixed share of a beat, so they shrink on faster songs: on the fastest song, drum and bass at 174 BPM, they are about 45 and 79 milliseconds. A tap up to 95 milliseconds early that still grades PERFECT or GOOD is held and fires exactly on the beat.
Energy and safe landings
A dash on the beat costs no energy. An off-beat dash uses one of your three energy bolts, and the bolt comes back if that dash boops anyone. Empty bolts refill one at a time every 1.2 to 2 seconds.
Landing on the beat also reaches a little wider and keeps you safe for a moment: 0.3 seconds after a PERFECT and 0.15 seconds after a GOOD.
Vibes, bumps and getting bored
- A dash that boops nobody shows MISS and costs nothing else, but an off-beat tap breaks your beat streak.
- A gray friend that touches you while you are standing still is a bump: it costs one of your three vibes, bounces you away and knocks about a third of your line off.
- Red spikes, from a chestnut with its spikes up or a boss slam, knock your whole line off.
- Friends knocked off run around for about 3.4 seconds. Dash through them to bring them back.
- If 1.6 seconds pass without a boop, friends start leaving from the back of the line, so keep booping.
Lose all three vibes and you get bored, which ends the run. A run that lasted at least 15 seconds can wake up once with full vibes by watching a short ad, and Remove Ads owners wake up without one.
Winning a level
Each Party Tour level has one goal and a clock of 30 to 90 seconds. Level 1, for example, is MAKE 60 FRIENDS in 45 seconds. Goals include friends made, party size, PERFECTs, beat streak, friends in one dash, drops, shiny friends, holding on, and befriending the boss.
Reach the goal to clear the level, and every second left pays 300 points times your party multiplier. Run out of time and the level fails, although a level at least half done can get 10 more seconds once (ENCORE) by watching an ad. A cleared level gives one star, plus one more for each of the two scores shown on its level card, for 180 tour stars in all.
DROP and PARTY TIME
On-beat taps and boops fill the DROP meter. When it is full, a drop is set on the first beat of a coming bar, with a three-beat count-in. You do not need to tap the drop itself: just stay on the beat through the count-in. An off-beat tap or a bump pulls the meter below full, and the drop is lost.
When the drop lands, PARTY TIME gives you 6 seconds with no bumps, double points, free dashes and one vibe back.
Your first level and what unlocks
Your first level opens with the PERFECT drill on level 1's own floor and song: land three PERFECTs, or skip it. A HOW TO PARTY card explains the rules, then level 1 starts with five sleepy friends stacked above you, so one tap on the top one boops them all. Every menu is on the home screen from the start, with an LV sticker on anything still locked:
- Crew and Dex: after clearing LV 2
- Draw: after LV 4
- The Daily: after LV 5
- Records: after LV 6
- Free Party: after LV 10
Saving your party
Your tour progress, stars, crew and crown level are kept between runs. On dopadash.io a guest DOPAPLAY account is made the first time you open the game, so saves merge across devices without going backwards. Your beat timing setting stays on each device.
