Amplitude is a fast-paced rollercoaster ride through an all-digital landscape, where musical notes have been “silenced” by encapsulating gems. By destroying the gems with their ship, the Beat Blaster, players release the music within. Each track on this crazy ride represents a specific instrument, so gems can activate sounds including guitar riffs, bass lines, drum beats, vocal lines and more. Players blast through each song section, building the music, darting from track to track, and locking that soundscape together before transitioning to the next musical area.

Amplitude has a fast, arcade-like pace. Players scurry around to blast notes, grab power-ups, and capture successive musical phrases, and can skyrocket their score by never missing a note and streaking for multipliers.

Harmonix aims to update cult classic title for modern game consoles with higher-fidelity visuals, new music, and more!

While we were focusing on the gameplay for Amplitude multiplayer, I started posing a question to the team: What can we do to even the playing field when pro players sit on the couch to play against new players? During a team meeting, I discussed thoughts that I had for things like “rubber-banding” and power-up distribution, and out of nowhere, Amplitude Audio Lead Pete Maguire threw out the idea of team play. TEAM PLAY!? Genius!

Team play is something we’d never done in Amplitude before, and allowing players to team up 2v2 or even 3v1 sounded like an amazing way to even the playing field without disrupting the current design. We decided to give it a shot, and after some iteration and tweaking, we are proud to say that it’s already super fun.

It’s been a really interesting challenge, balancing the gameplay carefully between casual and hardcore. We want to create a game that can be super fun in a party situation, while also being tight and sharp in a way that could potentially even appeal to the competitive gaming community. I think that we’re on the right track now that we have both the classic Free-For-All Multiplayer mode and the new Team Play mode. Time will tell, but we have a couple of months to really suss it out, playtest the crap out of it, and get some great feedback from fans.

With the advancements in technology and the huge creative leaps forward our studio has taken, Harmonix wants to rebuild Amplitude for current consoles and make it an even more amazing experience than before. The developers aiming to deliver an updated soundtrack, incredible visuals, and fine-tuned controls. These improvements will be layered on top of the core mechanics and hallmark difficulty that made both FreQuency and Amplitude such amazing experiences when they first debuted.

In addition to better control over timing windows, this will also allow us to run at 60 frames per second and smoothly port the existing mechanics to PS3 and PS4.

The game, as designed for this Kickstarter, focuses on the core Amplitude experience. Single player and local multiplayer are included in the design, as are leaderboards for online bragging rights. The Beat Blaster (the ship), music notes, tracks and FX will all be modernized and gorgeous. The cyberworld around the tracks will be designed by artists and crafted by coders so that every pixel on screen can be driven by the underlying music. Even as we work through our plans for this Kickstarter, the game is beginning to take shape – an HD reinvisioning of the cult classic, smartly updated for today on every axis.

Music is at the heart of Amplitude. The all-new soundtrack will focus on songs with an electronic-based feel, with tones spanning dark and moody to bright and bouncing. 

Harmonix's audio team is uniquely capable of composing amazing music with ideal GAMEPLAY in mind. All the amazing patterns and runs that made Amplitude's gameplay so fun need sick music crafted to match perfectly. For this game, Harmonix plans to focus their efforts on music that is custom-created for the game. This has the best chance of creating KILLER gameplay feel and a well-balanced list of songs. And you can help us pick which tracks make it into the final shipping tracklist! Take a look at the backer rewards for more details on how you can make your voice heard, contribute tracks to the game, or get your hands on a limited edition vinyl soundtrack!