We’re incredibly excited to announce the April 19th PS4 release date for our new indie music game, Loud on Planet X, featuring Tegan and Sara, Purity Ring, METZ, Metric, Lights, July Talk, F*cked Up, Cadence Weapon, Austra, and many more! (We will be announcing three more top international artists the week of release.)

Loud is a strange mash-up of two genres we love — rhythm tap and tower defence. Choose from a cross-section of top indie music artists, then defend your stage from hordes of quirky aliens by tapping to the music and using a fun assortment of makeshift weapons like speakers, strobe lights, fog machines, amplifiers, bouncers and custom special attacks!

The original idea for Loud on Planet X sprang out of obsessively playing old arcade classics with the sound down, listening to our own music instead. Patapon and Rhythm Heaven are big influences, and there’s an obvious splash of the awesome Plants vs. Zombies baked into our core mechanic.

Our Lead Developer Andrew brings a lot of background in rhythm games and was part of the team on Sound Shapes, the great PS3 and PS Vita rhythm game featuring Beck, deadmau5, and Jim Guthrie, among others.

We started by reaching out to bands we love within our vibrant local Toronto scene, helped by some generous introductions from Mike and Jonah of F*cked Up, and Brendan and Justin from Broken Social Scene, who each also contributed original tracks to the score. We’ve ended up with 14 great and emerging musical artists that are all excited to be on board, each with their own in-game special attack. It has really helped that most of the bands are big gamers (though possibly none more than Lights, who also has some pretty great World of Warcraft tattoos).

After getting a solid response to our alpha build of Loud at Indiecade East, GDC, PAX East, and SXSW in 2015, we ended up running a successful Kickstarter campaign last summer that garnered some solid media coverage and helped get us here — finally ready to launch! It has been a busy year for our small but fierce team working out of Bento Miso in Toronto, and we’re excited to show you what we’ve been up to!

Loud on Planet X will launch April 19 on PS4. We’re also hoping to add PS Vita soon. Look for more news to come!