This may be plainly obvious but rhythm action videogames in virtual reality (VR) are quite popular, very popular in fact. Back in the day, Harmonix was a leader in the genre thanks to Rock Band and then entered the VR arena with Audica for PC headsets. Today, Harmonix has confirmed a Playstation VR version is in the works and due out by the end of the year.
Unlike the most popular rhythm action title at the moment Beat Saber, in Audica there’s no hacking and slashing, instead you’re armed with two guns, one blue one orange. It’s pretty much about precision target shooting to a beat, hitting a variety of single and multiple colour shaded targets to a soundtrack featuring some of the best artists in the pop and EDM space.
Harmonix plans on having four arenas and a selection of blasters to choose from, as well as a suite of customisation options to personalize the gameplay experience. There will also be a fully complete campaign mode including over 30 songs:
1788-L & Blanke “Destiny”
AU5 & Fractal “Smoke”
Alison Wonderland “I Want U”
Donna Summer “I Feel Love (Afrojack Remix)”
DJ Fresh ft. Ms.Dynamite “Gold Dust”
James Egbert “The Space”
Jeff Allen “Lazerface”
Savant “Splinter”
Noisia “Collider”
Zedd & Grey “Adrenaline”
“Audica has been a passion project created by a small team of dreamers within Harmonix who set out to answer one very important question: Wouldn’t it be awesome to feel like an action movie star with the coolest soundtrack choreographing everything you do?” notes Jessa Brezinski Product Manager, Harmonix on PlayStation Blog.
Harmonix has still to reveal the exact date, price and song list for the PlayStation VR launch, just that it’ll happen later this year. When that occurs VRFocus will let you know.
During our E3 VR Showcase today Harmonix announced that both its dancing VR game Dance Central and shooter-themed musical rhythm game Audica are getting new DLC releases.
For Dance Central the new DLC features include an official fitness app to track calories burned while playing and stats over time. They’re also evolving the game so that NPCs can challenge you to dance as well instead of just your real life friends to make unlocking new gear easier. And finally, Harmonix will be releasing six brand new songs for the game bringing the overall total up from 32 to 38. All of this is coming to both Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift platforms. For more on Dance Central, make sure and read our full review of the Quest version.
For Audica, the updates are quite a bit different. Since the game is still in Early Access its updates have been far more frequent with 10 total so far to date. Now later this month, it’s due to get its biggest update yet. The new update includes all-new songs, a new environment to play in, new weapons to alter the gameplay, and a revamped leaderboard.
Today, Audica is also getting an in-game editor to remix included songs which should offer enhanced replayability. Players can even share their custom song maps with the community as well. There’s even a community contest with prizes for custom maps.
Harmonix seems very committed to improving and updating both of these games, which is a great sign. Combined with the updates that Beat Saber continues to receive now is a good time to be a music game fan in VR.
(Update 05/19/19): This was previously a review-in-progress published on 4/30/19, but has since been updated to reflect my full impressions of the entire game.
Dance Central VR was one of the real stand out demos that I tried at GDC this year. When I walked into that hotel suite and put on an Oculus Quest headset to be treated to the latest VR music experience from Harmonix, I was certainly excited.
Now that I’ve had plenty of extended time with the Oculus Quest and access to the full version of Dance Central VR to mess around with, I’ve got much more robust impressions of the dancing game.
This entire review was conducted using the Oculus Quest version of the game in various rooms and environments, all standing in roomscale arrangements.
Dance Central VR is designed to be played in short bursts, but you can easily sink a few hours into it at a time if you really want to. There isn’t much of a story or campaign mode from what I found, but instead it’s about more subtle progression and immersion. As you explore different areas of the dance club and various surrounding buildings you’ll meet different NPCs that want to dance with you.
Each of the characters have their own unique personalities and voices that really do feel distinct and meeting each of them is part of the fun. As you dance with them more and more you’ll unlock new wardrobe options for yourself, different cell phone skins, and even dialogue choices for your text conversations. It seems silly, but when I had new texts from my favorite characters it genuinely made me a bit excited, sort of like getting a text from a friend in real life. Even if it was just a stupid selfie the fictional character took at the club.
Harmonix aren’t doing anything fancy from an AI perspective to make these characters really feel real by any means, but small things like that made a big difference for me. It made me actually want to log back in just to see what’s going on and kept me checking the floating virtual phone.
The actual dancing bits were a lot of fun, if a little simple. Dancing is split between two difficulty modes, Normal and Pro, but I found myself wishing for something in between. Most songs were extremely easy to get 5-star ratings on your first try on Normal, if not your second. However playing songs on Pro, which offer far less guidance and change moves very quickly, was a bit overwhelming at first. You get used to it after a while, but a third option, or even a super high-end choice to not have any cue cards at all requiring choreography memorization, would have been great.
There are 32 songs in the game, including:
Bruno Mars ft. Cardi B — “Finesse (Remix)”
The Chainsmokers ft. Daya — “Don’t Let Me Down”
DJ Snake & Lil Jon — “Turn Down for What”
Haddaway — “What is Love”
Pitbull ft. Ne-Yo, Afrojack, & Nayer — “Give Me Everything”
Rob Base & DJ EZ Rock — “It Takes Two”
Since I played on Quest the tracking did seem to have some limitations. A lot of dance moves ask you to spread your arms out wide and make a fist or twist them a certain way, but the tracking cameras seemed to miss those movements occasionally. The same goes for any sweeping gestures down below or up high. Generally if I made a conscience effort to keep my hands in front of me and not too far above, below, or to the side it didn’t matter, but you don’t want to be thinking about your hand placement around you when you’re trying to dance.
Visually it looks really good, but on the Quest I noticed some performance issues here and there. Frame drops were a problem during some songs and if the battery was running low (say 25% or lower) they seemed more frequent. I also perceived the fixed foveated rendering very obviously in Dance Central VR — something that was much less noticeable in other games.
Outside of dancing there is a wardrobe to customize your look, as well as multiplayer lobbies to queue up with other dancers. The social hub is a cool, fun place to hang out and talk, but then you can also have private dance battles with a variety of rulesets to pick from. You can even dance alongside a friend for co-op dances too so it’s not all competitive.
For players that want to get particularly serious about their dance moves there is also a studio. Here you can break down songs into their individual parts and dance moves and practice them in slow motion. The trainer will even show the arcs of your hand movements so you can clearly tell what you’re doing wrong. It’s a great training tool, but it never felt intense enough to really warrant that kind of belabored practice to me. I had more fun just dancing and acting silly.
Final Score:7/10 – Good
As it stands, Dance Central VR doesn’t nail every move, but it more than sticks the landing when it comes to getting you moving and grooving to the beat of the music in VR. When you slide on a headset and let the music take over it’s genuinely easy to forget where you are in real life as you dance along to the rhythm. I’m a terrible dancer, but Dance Central VR made me feel like I knew what I was doing. It’s got some technical hiccups and it’s a bit meandering in its focus, but the core mechanics are a lot of fun.
Dance Central VR launches on May 21 for Oculus Quest and Rift S — this review is based on the Oculus Quest version. Read our Game Review Guidelines for more information on how we arrived at this score.
Harmonix has officially released tools and documentation that will help users modify beat maps for Audica (2019), the studio’s recently released futuristic ‘rhythm shooter’.
The new system was created to allow players to re-use Audica’s existent soundtrack, and while the studio calls it “the first step” in creating a more streamlined ‘Audica Creator Initiative’, it’s unlikely we’ll ever see official support for custom tracks. A more laissez faire mod system, tantamount to how Beat Saber (2018) allows mods on PC, could land the studio in some unwanted trouble, the studio says.
“We strive to provide you with the best licensed music in our games, and we cannot jeopardize our partnership with the music industry by supporting or condoning IP infringement of any kind, including mods or customs that use and distribute copyrighted music without the proper licenses,” a Harmonix Discord mod says.
The studio says their long-term goal is to make Community Maps easier to access from within the game itself, possibly by letting users download and rate maps without leaving the headset.
“How far we go in developing this feature will depend on your feedback, so tell us what you think and let’s make something awesome!” the studio says in a blog post.
How to Download & Play Community Maps
Harmonix plans on streamlining this process in the future. With its most recent update though, Audica now features a folder in its game files where users can drop downloaded Community Maps; you’ll also find the tools and instructions for authoring maps there too.
Here’s the default folder location for both the Steam and Oculus Store versions:
Community Maps for Audica’s OST can be found in the #audica-community-maps channel of the official Discord server (invite).
Simply download whatever Community Map you want to play and drag into the game folder community_maps/maps/. Make sure the file name follows the format [short songname]_[map name].[filetype] in order for the map to be read by the game. Eg: destiny_awwbees – Hyper Mode.mid.
Start up the game, and you should see the new map has been added automatically.
Harmonix has also posted a basic guide on how to create custom maps on the Audica website, however the studio maintains users unfamiliar beat map creation “may find the process has a steep learning curve.”
If you’re looking for more help outside of the included instructional file, the company’s Discord server is a good place to start (invite above). Mods aren’t allowing talk about custom tracks though, so you may need to look elsewhere if you’re dead set on blasting away to your favorite songs.
For those looking for a musical change away from Beat Saber then Harmonix’s latest Audica may just scratch that rhythm action itch. This week the studio has released the next update for the virtual reality (VR) title, embracing the creative modding community by introducing Community Maps.
Harmonix has released authoring tools and documentation for Audica, allowing players to create fully-supported, alternate target maps for the soundtrack. “We’ve been listening and heard that you all want more support for custom content, and today marks the first step in what we’re internally calling “the AUDICA Creator Initiative” with the introduction of Community Maps,” states the studio in a press release. “Our goal is to provide a platform for our incredibly creative modding community to showcase their talents to all of AUDICA’s players.”
The studio goes into detail in a blog posting, with the core of it being that to make Community Maps you’ll need a basic understanding of Reaper to proceed. Any maps made can then be shared on the Harmonix Discord channel for others to download and play. Plus, maps automatically get official leaderboards.
Or for those that just want to play the maps, head to the same Discord channel and find the #audica-community-maps sub-channel. Being an early access title this process on Audica isn’t particularly streamlined which Harmonix is planning to improve in the future. For now, you’ll just have to carefully follow the blog instructions.
After the release of Rock Band VRin 2017 Harmonix return to the VR scene last month with a first-person shooter (FPS) style rhythm game called Audica. Gameplay involves two guns, one orange and one blue, with which to shoot a variety of single and multiple colour shaded targets.
“Audica is a bold experiment by Harmonix, trying to mix up the rhythm action genre with mechanics that only VR can truly provide. It really does sit on a knife edge between standout gameplay design that keeps you on your toes and just being overwhelmingly complicated, assaulting your senses from every direction,” VRFocuswrote in its preview.
As further updates are released for Audica, VRFocus will keep you posted.
I’m not a good dancer. You can ask anyone that went to school with me, attended my wedding, or were ever unfortunate enough to witness me playing any of the various Just Dance or Dance Central games and they’ll all agree that I just can’t dance. But that didn’t stop me from having fun with Dance Central VR.
At GDC 2019 last week I met with Harmonix at an offsite demo suite to check out this new iteration of their popular dancing rhythm game and was delighted to find it running on not only the Oculus Rift, but also the Oculus Quest.
Check it out for yourself:
For a game that’s suddenly been announced out of nowhere there’s a lot of meat on its bones. With 32 songs at launch ranging from well-known modern hits to classic dance jams it’s shaping up to have a really solid track list. So far that includes:
During my demo Harmonix also showed me the Wardrobe where you can deck out your avatar with various clothes and outfits you’ve unlocked as well as a multitude of hair styles and even different cell phone skins. There’s a dance studio too for practicing where you can break down songs into segments and slow them down to really nail the dance moves. Each song will have two difficulties and they’re including high score leaderboards.
Harmonix told me that Dance Central VR is being partially funded by Oculus as an Oculus Studios title which means it will include fully cross-platform multiplayer and will be 100% cross buy so if you own it on one headset then you’ll own it on both. This also means that it’s an exclusive to the Oculus Home Store.
For someone that likes music games a lot such as Beat Saber, Rock Band, Guitar Hero, DDR, and the original Dance Central games, this new VR iteration feels fantastic. Dance Central VR will be hitting Quest on day one as a launch title and coming to Rift at the exact same time as well.
If you’re going to PAX East, you can check it out for yourself. And don’t forget to let us know what you think down in the comments below!
Dance Central, the rhythm game franchise from Harmonix, is officially coming to Oculus Quest and Rift this year with the aptly named Dance Central VR. Who knows, you may even learn to dance?
Here’s a quick breakdown of what to expect: In the Studio, users can practice their moves either alone, or in front of an assistive UI to analyze dance performance, a bunch of which looks super gestural-based. Heading to the Club then brings you to a number of spaces with different dancers; this is where users will dance competitively to post high scores on leaderboards.
Image courtesy Harmonix
The Lounge is where you can host private and public dance parties for up to four people and also play a number of mini-games.
Dance Central VR is said to offer competitive and co-op multiplayer, and solo game modes too. It’ll be interesting to see how well dancing works, considering leg tracking isn’t something Quest or Rift can do. This most likely means the game is using an inverse kinematics system that’s guessing where your legs are while tracking your hands and head.
Image courtesy Harmonix
Dance Central VR is also promising a 32-song soundtrack with everything from 1970s chart-toppers to today’s hits. Harmonix has released these tracks publicly so far:
Bruno Mars ft. Cardi B — “Finesse (Remix)”
The Chainsmokers ft. Daya — “Don’t Let Me Down”
DJ Snake & Lil Jon — “Turn Down for What”
Haddaway — “What is Love”
Pitbull ft. Ne-Yo, Afrojack, & Nayer — “Give Me Everything”
Rob Base & DJ EZ Rock — “It Takes Two”
It’s uncertain if Dance Central VR will be considered a Quest launch day title or not, although it’s slated to release in Spring 2019, the same launch window as both Quest and Rift S.
Harmonix knows what it’s doing when it comes to rhythm action videogames. Having created Rock Band and its immersive kin Rock Band VR, the studio has the sort of legacy that firmly puts it at – or near – the top on the genre. So when Audica was first announced there came a natural wave of excitement to see what the developer had come up with. Now available via Early Access on both Steam and Oculus Store, Audica offers up a distinctive gameplay experience that could well be the marmite of the virtual reality (VR) world.
That’s because there’s no getting away from the fact that it’ll be compared to Beat Saber whether the studio likes it or not. The sword-wielding rhythm title has set the VR world alight – it’s easy to assume most owners of a supporting VR headset have played it – namely due to one overriding factor, its gameplay was ludicrously easy to pick up and fun to play, yet the Expert difficulty levels are mind-bogglingly difficult to master.
Audica, on the other hand, isn’t so intuitive from the off. Using a pair of coloured guns – one blue, one orange – the title is about shooting targets in time with the music. Miss the beat and the shot will miss the target. Yet this isn’t just about shooting boring targets, Harmonix mixes things up with standard single shot targets, ones which require multiple hits by holding the trigger, sideways gangster style shots, and massive chained targets.
So even on the second ‘moderate’ difficulty setting, for first-timers, Audica can be a bewildering experience, as the targets aren’t coming straight at you. The majority of them are actually flying in from either side, so you can’t focus on one point, instead, you need to be aware or your periphery vision to keep up.
Not keeping up in the physical sense – you won’t burn as many calories on this as you would Beat Saber – it’s the myriad of different target options that fly at you, and remembering what target requires what action. Which all means Audica takes time to settle into, way before you start considering highscores. However, for fans of rhythm action videogames Audica provides an experience like no other, and could certainly be described as unique.
Being an Early Access title does mean that it stills needs work and does lag in certain areas. The first and most importantly is the track list. You’ll quickly get through the ten that come supplied, and while they are all of high quality, they do feel somewhat samey with only a couple that really stand out as consistently repeatable.
Actually, production values across the entire videogame are top notch, from the way the guns handle to the visual effects when targets are hit or successive combos are achieved. Audica may be being made by a small team inside of Harmonix but it certainly doesn’t look like it.
Audica is a bold experiment by Harmonix, trying to mix up the rhythm action genre with mechanics that only VR can truly provide. It really does sit on a knife edge between standout gameplay design that keeps you on your toes and just being overwhelmingly complicated, assaulting your senses from every direction. Audica is not to be taken lightly, yet with that difficulty comes intense satisfaction on completion. It’ll be exciting to see what else Early Access brings.
Now that Audica has officially launched on Oculus Quest and is available on PSVR and PC VR headsets, we thought it was the perfect time to revisit our review and update it for the current version of the game with a finalized score.
When Audica first hit Early Access it was early 2019 and Beat Saber fever was still in full sing. Beat Saber was absolutely the VR shot heard around the world and clearly Harmonix was listening closely.
To their credit, they have the most experience with crafting music games out of anyone on the planet. They’ve established their legacy as the music game creation game company with titles like Amplitude, Rock Band, and Dance Central to their credit, not to mention VR games like Rock Band VR, Singspace, Dance Central VR, and even Harmonix Music VR, so it’s no wonder they took note. Since then, Pistol Whip has burst onto the scene as another rhythm-based VR shooter, but that one is its own beat entirely.
Comparing Audica to Beat Saber is inevitable, but it has just as many differences as it does similarities. It definitely offers something distinct and different, but not necessarily better. The relatively unwieldy mechanics and lack of overall fluidity makes it harder to recommend than its main competitor’s dead simple pick-up-and-play approach — but let’s dig into the specifics more clearly.
The basic premise in Audica is that you shoot blue and orange nodes inside VR using motion controllers to the beat of the music. Instead of slicing boxes, punching orbs, or blocking objects, you shoot colorful targets. It’s just different enough to feel unique and challenging, obviously requiring a different type of hand-eye coordination than physically punching or swinging. And when you nail it and rack up a huge combo, it feels extremely satisfying.
Once you get in the zone Audica has a way of feeling almost more like a dance than anything else. You’re not only aiming at targets as boxes close in on the center, but also swinging your arms to swat down orbs trying to hit you and scanning the field with your head to locate the next target. The way the game engaged my head and forced me to move and look somewhere other than straight ahead was definitely an adjustment for games like this. We’ve yet to really see a rhythm music game in VR that takes full advantage of the 360 space, other than 360 levels in Beat Saber, but playing Audica on Quest definitely had me looking from left to right constantly.
When you watch footage of this game it’s a bit hard to tell the nuances of each movement, but there are actually a lot of different ways to shoot a target in Audica. There are basic shots with circle targets, diamond shaped shots that require holding the trigger to channel electricity, as well as dual combo shots, chain shots that require tracing a pattern while holding the trigger, as well as both vertical and horizontal shots. It’s a lot to digest.
Even though the tutorial throws everything at you quickly the actual difficulty stages are pretty diverse. In Audica you have entire new game mechanics to contend with depending on which setting you pick which really does help make it feel like a progression within the game rather than notes just moving more quickly.
As it turns out, gameplay is actually very similar to an obscure downloadable rhythm game you may not have heard of calledOsu which involves dragging your cursor through circles as they shrink and timing it as the outer circle hits the center. Or like in Elite Beat Agents for DS. Basically that, but in VR and with two guns.
I think my main issue with the core gameplay loop is that it doesn’t feel as fine-tuned as it should. For example, with modern VR headsets like the Rift S and Quest, the main two I’ve played this game on, it’s easier than I’d like to miss new targets because of the narrow field of view relative to my actual eyesight. Frequently on the second difficulty tier and above, new targets will appear outside of the headset’s vision. The only indication that a target is there is a faint aura that emanates just before it appears but if you’re turning your head or already looking at an existing target it’s way too easy to miss it. A headset with a wider field of view would help, but I only tried it on Quest and Rift S for this review. It becomes less of a music rhythm game and more of a “quick reflex reaction time” game.
However, the main thing Audica has going for it is a deep and varied selection of songs — especially if you factor in the DLC as well. When you buy the game you’ll immediately have access to over 30 tracks right off the bat ranging from EDM and electronic tracks, as is customary in this genre, but also with a few pop songs and even some metal via Dragonforce thrown in for good measure. They don’t all fit the gameplay that well as far as I’m concerned, but everyone vibes with music differently.
If you add in the DLC, which is reasonably priced at $2 per track or $19.99 for the whole 2019 Season Pass, you get even more variety with artists like Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, Imagine Dragons, Post Malone, Fall Out Boy, and more. Having that much to pick from is really, really nice and new track releases happen very consistently.
Another issue is that the key action you’re performing (quickly aiming at and shooting targets) doesn’t feel natural. Usually when you shoot a gun in real life or in other VR games you’re holding it up, arms steady, and taking aim carefully or at least with some stability. On the contrary in Audica your arms are swimming through the air, almost like you’re in a ballet, as you swat away objects and quickly take aim at new targets just as they appear. However, this does foster a need to memorize the song patterns and it becomes a much more skillful game, which will appeal to hardcore players. The skill ceiling feels enormous here.
The pure physicality of hitting things though, the cornerstone of what makes so many VR rhythm games addictive, is all but missing. Pointing and pulling a trigger just isn’t as satisfying as the impact of slashing or punching. Even other shooting games like Pistol Whip manage to be more visceral because of the dodging and active nature. In Audica, you basically just stand still. In this way, it feels like something is missing.
There’s a Campaign mode which splits the tracks up into different thematic categories you progress through, but the bulk of your time will likely be spent in Solo play mastering the various difficulty levels. There’s a Group Play mode as well that’s designed for passing the headset, which works great on Quest especially if paired with Chromecast streaming for parties. There are also leaderboards, naturally.
One very unique feature Audica has going for it is the ability to craft your own beat maps for songs directly inside the app itself, which is really unique and fun. However, it does not have anywhere near the same level of custom beat map modding support that Beat Saber does. If you don’t like the songs included in Audica, you should skip it entirely instead of expecting the community to mod in songs you want.
I hate to have made so many comparisons to Beat Saber in this review, but especially on the PC side of things where the active modding community is providing Beat Saber with a near infinite number of songs and so much more, it’s hard not to. For a lot of people the question is: Why should I buy Audica if I already have Beat Saber? And that answer is gonna be very different for most everyone.
Audica VR Review Final Verdict:
As it stands Audica is definitely something different, for better and for worse. The gameplay mechanics are enough to make it stand out, especially if you dedicate the time to really dig into it, but in a crowded VR rhythm game market the circumstances surrounding how and why it’s different aren’t always in its favor. If you’re a big fan of VR rhythm games, make no doubt: there is plenty to sink your teeth into and you’re gonna have fun, but if you’re picky about finding your flow in a game or already enamored with Beat Saber, there may not be enough to pull you in
Audica is available now on Steam for PC VR headsets, Oculus Home for Rift, PSN for PSVR and Oculus Quest at a price point of $29.99 on all platforms. This review is primarily based on the Oculus Quest version of Audica, but we’ve played it on PC via Rift and Rift S as well.
Editor’s Note: The first version of this review was published in March, 2019, when the PC Early Access version of Audica released. As of today, February 4th, 2020, the review has been updated and rewritten to account for the launch version of the game.
Put those sabers down as there’s a new rhythm action videogame in town which wants to eat up all your time. Today sees the return of Harmonix to virtual reality (VR), following up from Rock Band VRwith a gun-toting experience called Audica.
Arriving via Early Access on both Steam and Oculus Store, Audica looks to make its own mark on the musical rhythm action genre by challenging players to shoot and smash targets to an infectious electronic beat. Harmonix, being the developer it is, has already got quite the lineup of tunes for players to enjoy, with an initial ten available today, and over 25 planned for the final release at the end of 2019.
The songs revealed so far are:
1788-L & Blanke “Destiny”
AU5 & Fractal “Smoke”
Alison Wonderland “I Want U”
Donna Summer “I Feel Love (Afrojack Remix)”
DJ Fresh ft. Ms.Dynamite “Gold Dust”
James Egbert “The Space”
Jeff Allen “Lazerface”
Savant “Splinter”
Noisia “Collider”
Zedd & Grey “Adrenaline”
In addition to the ten songs, the early access version will include one weapon type, four difficulty settings, one environment and online leaderboards. The studio has yet to confirm how quickly more tracks will be added in the months ahead.
The gameplay involves two guns, one orange and one blue, with which to shoot a variety of single and multiple colour shaded targets.
For the fully finished version, Harmonix plans on having multiple environments to play in, additional weapon sets, campaign and practice modes plus the possibility of more gameplay options. “We will be actively participating in discussion on our Discord, Steam forums and Reddit throughout development about topics including song selection, authoring and the development of new features, mechanics (should Audica have overdrive?), environments and weapons,” notes the studio.
Audica can be downloaded now via Steam and Oculus Store for $19.99 USD / £15.49 GBP, supporting HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. As Harmonix releases further details including additional tracks, VRFocus will let you know.
That’s because there’s no getting away from the fact that it’ll be compared to 
