The creators of Rock Band and Guitar Hero at Harmonix have been working on a new game called "Chroma" for quite some time. The new game is described as a "musical first-person shooter" game and synchronizes combat missions to music.
First-person shooter games have their own inherent rhythm and logic, but Chroma aims to take the musicality of shooter games to the next level. Missions are synchronized with music and every action you take, whether it be throwing a grenade or shooting an opponent with a machine gun, can be amplified if you do it in tune with the music. In Chroma, music and combat are inextricably linked.
Harmonix recently released a preview of the game to select journalists and gamers. Chroma marks a huge point of departure for Harmonix, but the company's founders say that they've been anting to make a first-person shooter game - with a twist - for a long time.
"Chroma has been a dream project of mine for some time," said Harmonix co-founder and CEO Alex Rigopulos. "Watching the teams at Harmonix and Hidden Path begin to bring this vision to life has been tremendously exciting. We're also thrilled to release an alpha version of this game and to evolve it in collaboration with our players. We can't wait to hear what people think of this new approach to both first-person shooters and music games."
Harmonix has a lot of experience with the music end of things, but less so with the shooter aspect of Chroma. So naturally, Harmonix partnered with Counter-Strike: Go developers to get it right.
"We know music, we know game mechanics, we know our player base and what feels good as far as songs," Harmonix Director of Communications John Drake told Ars Technica. "But we know we shouldn't build a shooter from the ground up. That would be a very cocky move."
Still, the game is very distinctly different from other shooter games because of its close ties to the music. In order to be successful when you play Chroma, you have to be able to follow the beat and work with the music. If you have no sense of rhythm, no amount of shooting ability is going to help you advance in this game.
"If you understand the shape of the song, you can play the game better, just like knowing where spawn points are on a shooter map, or knowing where people can camp out and snipe," Drake said. "Knowing the song you're playing along to lets you understand what's gonna happen as the map evolves."
For example, if you throw a grenade and detonate it on a down beat, the explosion it makes will be even bigger. Same goes with machine gun fire. If you coordinate it with the music, every weapon works better.
"Truly new experiences in video games are very rare," said Mark Terrano, chief creative officer and founder of Hidden Path Entertainment. "At Hidden Path Entertainment, we were delighted to help Harmonix realize their dream of a musical shooter and are looking forward to the next step - seeing it continue to evolve with the energy, input, and creativity from the game community!"
