Disney Interactive and Harmonix Announce Fantasia: Music Evolved

Harmonix, the creators of Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and Dance Central, have today announced their newest project. Entiled Fantasia: Music Evolved, the game is a Kinect-driven collaboration between Harmonix and Disney Interactive.

The gameplay centers around Dance Central's beat-focused, move-matching mechanics, though Forbes notes that "the motions are more about gestures than specific dance moves," and you can use whichever hand you want to achieve these motions. Interestingly, Forbes also reported that there are motions which involve pushing towards the screen, which has always been troublesome on the Kinect but is reported to be more capable on the Kinect 2.0 thanks to its increased awareness of depth. The Kinect is not fully used for exploratory segments of the game, where it seems gestures are still used lightly but actual movement is (wisely) performed on the controller.

There's some kind of story here involving the player being an apprentice of the sorcerer Yen Sid, but how that ties into dancing to Bruno Mars' "Locked Out of Heaven" is unclear. It is good, however, to see that the soundtrack will be made up of music that isn't aimed to just kids, because when I saw "Bohemian Rhapsody" in that list, my heart skipped a beat.

Specified as a 2014 release, Fantasia: Music Evolved will be released for the Xbox 360 and Xbox One. When asked on their facebook page about a possible Playstation release, Harmonix responded with a pretty basic "We don't have anything to announce for other consoles at this time."

Check out the announcement trailer below, which shows off no direct gameplay but does feature trendy people waving their glowy arms around.