Fruit Ninja meets Guitar Hero in upcoming VR game Beat Saber

Shawn Knight

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Staff member

Rhythm games like Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution have proven incredibly popular with players over the years. What’s great about these types of games is that once the novelty wears off, all that’s needed is a fresh gimmick to get people interested again. Such appears to be the case with Beat Saber, an upcoming virtual reality title from developer Hyperbolic Magnetism.

As the name suggests, Beat Saber tasks players with using virtual lightsabers to smash through colored blocks to the beat of music. It sounds simple enough – after all, you’ve only got two hands – but as seen in the teaser above, things are a bit more complicated as you must do so directionally (each block has an arrow indicating the direction in which it must be sliced).

Think of Fruit Ninja, but with music. And in virtual reality.

The game, in development since 2016, has no official ties to Star Wars and as the developer highlights, all of the music is handcrafted in-house. It can be played in short sessions or for many hours via career mode.

If successful, it's easy to see how this could develop into a major franchise complete with music licensing and other tie-ins (like Star Wars).

Look for Beat Saber to launch in Q1 2018. No word yet on pricing or platform support although if I had to guess, major players like HTC Vive and Oculus Rift seem likely.

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