In an unexpected twist, the company behind major music video games like Rock Band, Guitar Hero, and Dance Central is releasing information about their newest game: Chroma, a first-person shooter with “music as your weapon”.
In an interview with Arstechnica, Harmonix spoke about their newest game in development. Think of it as a multitplayer FPS game, like Counter-Strike or Battlefield, but each class’s weapon is only effective on certain beats of the music chosen for the level.
Sound a little confusing? It’s a brand new and almost alien aspect to the first-person shooter genre, the Arstechnica interview attempts to explain:
The Assault class’ standard grenade launcher shoots ordnance that explodes on the downbeat, for instance, while the Tank class can bend fired rockets toward the opponent by tapping out a beat with the fire button. The Sneak’s sniper rifle, on the other hand, sees its power max out with one-hit kill shots at the end of every measure; fire any other time and the shots will be weaker (can you keep your target in your sights long enough as you wait on the beat?).
That doesn’t mean that you aren’t allowed to jump or shoot during the rest of the time, but you won’t be rewarded or be as successful if you just attempt to run and shoot blindly. Harmonix wants this game to be a mixture of two genres of video games — performing accurately to the beat of certain music as well as being a successful team member during a FPS skirmish.
Harmonix has brought in the same developers from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive to assist them in developing the FPS mechanics of the game. The game is still in a very early Alpha stage, but Harmonix is excited to bring this brand new format to the video game table. Only time will tell if it will be a successful marriage of the two genres or not.
Sound interesting? Check out the teaser trailer and some gameplay pictures in the full interview at Arstechnica. There is no information about what platforms will carry the game, but Steam is mentioned at the end of the teaser.