Do you remember the joy of playing a fresh, new, and addictive arena shooter? I do, and sadly these days we regularly see rehashing of old concepts, developers either not willing to try something new or just wanting to cash in whenever they can. Enter Harmonix (with the help of Hidden Path Entertainment), a seasoned developer who is known for having a knack for music and or rhythm based games, who have a bold new take on the classic arena shooter formula.

They’re working on a game called simply Chroma, an arena shooter that replaces bullets with music, war torn vistas for a neon stained playground where you and your band mates, not squad mates, battle each other with music itself. The goal of Chroma is to unify musical rhythm games and progression based shooters, while also hopefully uniting the fanbases of both, while being accessible to fans of both genres as well.

Check out the announce trailer below:

There’s a few things about the development of Chroma that are exciting to boot, specifically the fact that it’s going to be free to play and released via Steam, and that it’s already looking this awesome in its alpha state. A proper alpha is set to begin at the end of this month, with a wider public beta to open up later this year. Instead of releasing the game in a traditional model, Harmonix wants players in as soon as possible to help tweak and fine tune the Chroma experience.