Viral app is basically Dance Dance Revolution, but for your face

Think Dance Dance Revolution, but for your face.

The Face Dance app, a music facial recognition based game, is going viral across Asia because of its seriously ridiculous gameplay videos.

In the game, you're meant to mimic different emoji faces that are shown onscreen to the beat of the music. For example, if the app shows a closed eye and an open mouth, you'll have to replicate the exact same face to score points.

According to the app, it uses facial recognition to detect the player's facial expression to see if it matches the expression of the emoji.

The app quickly spun off the #FaceDanceChallenge, with players across places like the Philippines, Vietnam and Hong Kong competing to see who can make the silliest face of all.

We'll let the videos do the talking:

Naturally, we had to give it a try ourselves:

We found, however, that the app is actually more reliant on motion rather than your facial expressions. So if you swing your face dramatically from side to side, the app more or less successfully registers it and awards you.

Case in point:

The app, which is available for iPhone and Android, has already been downloaded 700,000 times, according to the app's founder.

It also reached number one on the App store in Thailand and Hong Kong.

But Giang Nguyen, the CEO of DiffCat Game Studio, based in Vietnam, says he had no idea the game would go so viral when he and his team first created it.

He told Mashable that he had promoted the game on Facebook, created a page for it and then uploaded funny videos of some people playing with the app.

"Then I went trekking for five days with my friends, with no internet, and when I came back [and checked my phone] I was kind of like, what is going on?" he said.

Nguyen first got the idea to create the app after realising there was nothing similar that existed in the market.

It took him and his colleagues four months to develop the app, though there were initial problems.

The game was first released in June, but had to be taken down because there were too many bugs. It was later re-released in July.

He explained that the team had to overcome a number of obstacles, in optimising the experience for lower end phones, because "a lot is happening -- music and camera are recording, while comparing your face with emojis in real-time."

Given how viral the app has become in many emerging markets, we'd say the team's efforts have certainly paid off.