Dance Central is a rhythm-based club dancing game that uses Microsoft's Kinect sensor to track players' full bodies as they attempt to replicate virtual dance moves on screen. The game features 32 songs, with more available through downloadable content. The player's overall performance is graded on a five-star scale, similar to Rock Band. Players build up a score multiplier by maintaining accurate movements, and fall out of sync if the body part doesn't match the move, indicated by red blinking in the virtual dancer. A series of dance cards along the right edge of the screen cue the player to perform moves, but these display only the name of the move and a rough sketch, requiring some familiarity with the routine. The game includes training modes like Break It Down to help players learn the routines, as well as Perform It and Dance Battle modes.
Break It Down runs through every song and routine, showing the player the moves before proceeding after they perform them correctly a few times. After three moves, the player chains together what they have learned so far.
Dance Central also features Perform It, where players select a song and run through the entire routine, grading and granting stars based on their performance. Dance Battle is a multiplayer competition where players take turns performing sections of the song, with the person scoring the most accurate performance winning the battle.
Dance Central was released on Xbox 360 in June 2011 for Microsoft Kinect sensors.