Rock bands and video games joining forces is e nothing new. Back in the 80’s we had the game “Journey Escape” for the Atari 2600. Today’s generation enjoys “Rock Band” and its various spin-offs.
Now another iconic band will join the gaming world–the Grateful Dead.
An online game based on the music and culture of the band could hit gaming platforms by August and will be developed by Curious Sense, reports USA Today.
Developers will mine “the music for themes and words and characters and settings that would adapt well to games, and then looking at the best types of games out here and utilizing them,” says Curious Sense founder Adam Blumenthal. “The experience will exist online as its primary destination, but we’re also building a mobile version of it.”
But while Curious Sense will have wide access to a wide catalog of the Dead and can use their music and likenesses in the game, Blumental says the game won’t be a clone of “Rock Band.”
“I know that I want to create the ability for players to feel like they are playing in the band, that they are sort of jamming with them, but in a way that is different,” Blumenthal says.
The world will be built around the band and its music, he says. “If you know their music well, you know the themes that are prevalent are the Old West and trains and rivers and space and biblical themes. So I think we will have a world that is designed with different regions that look and feel like these themes, and players will sort of zoom into them.”
As players click through the environment, they might be zapped “through a rabbit hole into a world that will look completely different from the larger world,” Blumenthal says. “It could be Terrapin Station or it could be Dark Star, and they will be taken into a game specific to a song. … Even Angry Birds, this new blockbuster game, that model could be adapted for a game based on the song Samson and Delilah in which the chorus is, ‘If I had my way, I would tear this old building down.’ ”
Another possibility is a pinball game based on the introductory animation sequence in “The Grateful Dead Movie” from 1977.
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