Arena-based FPS games are a dime a dozen; ever since Team Fortress 2 came along, developers and publishers have been trying to capture that hat magic. But Chroma is an FPS with an unusual twist, and from the last developer you’d expect.
Specifically, it’s from Harmonix, and as you may have already guessed, music is important to how you play the game. Here’s the first trailer the developer’s dropped for it:
As you might have guessed, you play as one of several classes, and you have to use music and rhythm to get an edge on your opponents. If this sounds a little familiar, it’s not too far from Harmonix’s early games, like Amplitude and Frequency, albeit in a very different genre.
The bad news is that it’s going to be free-to-play, although it will be on PC, so it’ll probably be more like League of Legends in that respect than the butchering of classic games we’re seeing on mobile platforms. And you’ll be able to start offering feedback right away; you can sign up for the closed alpha right now, and the game will be taking advantage of Steam Early Access so players can tweak it right up to its launch.
In other words, you might finally be able to shoot your friends at a rave. And really, isn’t that what gaming is all about?