Simple enough that everyone can hop right in but with enough challenges for advanced players.
Once you pick a server and a channel, you can enter any room and start dancing. Rooms can have up to six players, and one of them will be the DJ, picking the music, scenario and game modes. Playing the game is done via the arrow keys and the space bar. Arrows will be displayed on the screen and you have to press them in the right order. The smaller bar above the arrow combinations will have a sphere and a shiny spot. When the sphere passes this spot, you hit the space bar to successfully do your move. Every time you do a move, you advance a level and get a new sequence with more arrows.
If you hit the space bar at the right time you get a perfect move and more points. If you can do several perfects in a row, you get chain bonuses. At the end of a song you will see a score table showing how many moves of each kind everyone did, plus how much experience and beats you've earned.
Beats are the game's currency and you can spend them at the mall to buy clothes, hair and faces for your character. The game also uses an alternate currency system which exchanges real money for in-game cash to access more outfits in the fashion store.
Although you can play by yourself, you won't gain any experience or beats doing so, so don't be afraid to jump into a room or accept an invitation. I recommend playing it with a couple of friends, though, since you will always have someone to have fun with. I have a few friends who started playing as well, and when I'm by myself in a room with strange people, it's just too awkward. Not to mention that people don't seem to enjoy holding the rooms for too long, I found it too common for players to all leave after a couple of songs.
The major setback is the license level system, which forces players to spend their hard-earned beats in order to level up. At certain points in your dancing career, you stop earning experience and a little icon appears near your character's head. That means it's time to take your test/. Although I'm not too fond of this system, I can see in it a way of making players improve their skills to be able to reach the next level.
For a free online game, Audition is pretty cool and very user-friendly. I was also impressed at how to game looks. The backgrounds are varied and colorful, ranging from a beach to a pirate ship, a basketball court or a subway station. Most impressive are the character movements, they had to have spent a ton of time on motion capture and animation, and I actually find myself missing my moves just to watch how other characters dance. The music is also pretty good, a mix of pop, hip-hop and dance tunes.
There are plenty of single and team challenges, so even though you're always pressing arrows, the gameplay doesn't wear you out. Some of the modes include Boys Vs. Girls battles, Couples dance, B-Boy which is like a memory game where you mimic the opposing team's move, and a hilarious Simon Says mode called One-Two Party where you watch an NPC do a few moves and then repeat.
Audition is one of those games that anyone can start playing right away. It's simple enough that everyone can hop right in but offers enough challenge for advanced players. Best of all, it can be played casually. Review text part of Grrlgamer.com. Full text, screenshots and guide at http://www.grrlgamer.com/review.php?g=audition