Meet 'Chroma,' The Musical First Person Shooter From Harmonix

If The Last of Us and Telltale’s The Walking Dead showed us that films and videogames can successfully share tropes, then Harmonix are attempting to forge a similar alchemy between music and videogames with their new offering, Chroma. Those of you with a musically attuned ear will like the sound of this – no pun intended. Venturebeat.com had the scoop.

Think of the project as musical snipers; kind of like Guitar Hero but instead of playing a note when you tap the corresponding button to the beat, you blow someone’s brains out. Of course, with Harmonix being the studio that brought us Dance Central, Rock Band, and Guitar Hero, at least this crazy experiment is rooted in logic and experience. And imagine the possibilities for perfectly organic musical moments ending in death. Multiplayer could really be a blast.

“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.”

The game runs in the high-end Unreal Engine, with the visuals befitting a laser show rather than a videogame. And instead of the music providing a backdrop for the action, it becomes the action as beat and note changes herald terrain restructures. Here’s hoping special weapon drops occur when the chorus hits. Harmonix aren’t just going into the first person shooter space alone, though; they’ve got Hidden Path Entertainment on their side.

“Truly new experiences in video games are very rare,” says Mark Terrano, chief creative officer/founder of HPE, the studio behind Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Defense Grid: The Awakening. “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!”

Let us know what you think of the project below - but not before you've checked out these screens....

Images credit: Harmonix