14 DAY TRIAL // Chroma, the new music-powered first-person shooter from developer Harmonix, already sounds pretty weird and information offered after the initial announcement about team play and fast travel deepens the mystery surrounding the title.
John Drake, one of the developers working on the title, tells VG247 that the entire fast travel system is linked to beats and to musical notes and will only be open to those who truly master the core mechanics.
He explains that, “If you jump on the downbeat, you get launched into these tubes and then you can chain them together. There’s whole note, half note, and quarter note ones, so you’ll actually play a rhythmic pattern and ping pong around parts of the map around the outside.”
Harmonix has already said that it wants to create a free-to-play title that is open to both fans of the old Rock Band and Guitar Hero franchises and those who love fast-paced first-person shooters.
Drake adds, “When you’re playing with eight versus eight in a small part of the arena and you have multiple people shooting weapons that are all snapped to the grid so the sounds they’re playing back all feel musical, you can actually hear one team sort of washing over the other team.”
At the moment, the developers are still testing ideas for the game and seeing exactly how players react to them and they will be able to offer more details once they settle on some core features.
Chroma is set to be launched before the end of the year and it will probably be offered on home consoles as well as the PC, although no official info is yet available.
Harmonix has already said that it wants to create an experience that’s very different from any other free-to-play title offered at the moment.