Rock for Free with ROCKFREE

"You might be thinking, 'Flash game, how hard could it be!?' But I guarantee if you play it on Novice and then go play it on Rockstar, you'll be blown away."

The music genre continues to grow, and with it, so do the number of Guitar Hero clones. But when is a Guitar Hero clone not really a clone? When it tries to do something a little different. ROCKFREE, the online-only, micro-transaction music game from Acclaim, aims to put a new spin on the way we rock.

"This isn't a million-dollar console game but rather Flash, the future of gaming," said Mike Zummo, ROCKFREE's Game Director. "Of all the reasons this is true, the most important to Acclaim is the way we work with our gaming communities to create great titles. That's part of our mission statement. Today's gamers expect to be a part of the development process or to be able to provide content post-release in games. What we've seen in our early beta test of ROCKFREE is just the power of working with our communities and building a game in Flash.

"To be able to take suggestions from our forums, put them into the game, have the community test it and provide feedback within the same day. With so many of these instances we had to create a mechanism to let our gamers know what to expect when they log in for the day. Our mechanism is called Message of the Day. In the spirit of community feedback, one of the things that was stressed was the ability to go right into the game, which was a great suggestion. I don't know about you, but as a gamer myself, there's nothing more frustrating than trying to play a game and having it say, 'Welcome! Please register.' I don't know if I want to register. I haven't even tried the game. Again, great feedback from the community. Our response to that was to create a Play-as-Guest feature. Come in, click the button, and you'll play. [Then] you're going to want to register.

"The [game's best] features will be fully appreciated when you're registered." Some of those features include the Changing Room, My Rocker, My Songs (where all your purchased and personally uploaded songs are located), Practice, Leader Boards, Tutorial and of course a mode for multiplayer. "We have fun graphics...but that's kind of yesterday's outfit," he says, glancing over possible wardrobe changes. "I'm gonna jump into the Changing Room. What you'll see is, five different categories of items. Hair styles, shirts, pants, shoes and guitars." The current plan is to release new items every week, allowing players to quickly purchase them by clicking Buy More icon.

"When you're in the rock shop, you'll be able to see items that are available," he continues. If you already have an item, it appears that it won't display in the shop, preventing players from accidentally purchasing two of the same thing. "The way this will work is, you can click on icons to bring items up on your avatar. If you want to purchase it, click the little cart icon and you'll checkout."

One of the other features of the Changing Room is being able to switch between genders. "You can go in, change her parts to whatever you have in your inventory."

But when it comes to gameplay, it isn't how the characters are dressed that matters. "I want you to think of the My Songs storage as kind of a CD case. You have slots. Every slot holds one song. The reason slots are important is because the more you play a song within a slot, the more bonuses you're going to accumulate. You'll progress through the game faster, and that will give you access to new items, new venues to play in, new songs, all kinds of great things."

To acquire new songs, you'll go through ROCKFREE's extensive song library. "It's kind of a power search. We're planning on having quite a library, so we can't just have a listing of a few items. There are over 300 items in our library right now, about 32 of which are Acclaim's licensed songs. We're anticipating that within 30 days of release we'll have up to 600 songs in our library, 50 or so which will actually be Acclaim songs. It just goes to the importance of allowing the community to put up their own content, be a part of the development of the game. The 'uploaded by' [portion] of the song library shows if it was uploaded by Acclaim, is one of our official tracks, or if it was uploaded by one of the community members."

Multiple difficulty settings ensure that gamers of all skill levels will have a good time. "You might be thinking, 'Flash game, how hard could it be!?' But I guarantee if you play it on Novice and then go play it on Rockstar, you'll be blown away. The speed and intensity in gameplay is noticeably different at each difficulty setting."

Since this is a Flash game, you'll be able to play using your keyboard. But if you have a USB guitar, the gameplay is going to be much closer to that of Guitar Hero. "People looking to recreate the experience they may have gotten with other products can do so by plugging in their USB guitar."

ROCKFREE is currently in open beta. Visit http://rockfree.com for more information.

About Acclaim Games
Acclaim is a revolutionary company with a familiar name. Three years and 7 million registered users ago, former Activision CEO Howard Marks purchased the Acclaim name looking to revive one of the video game industry's former giants. With the help of renowned game director David Perry, Marks succeeded. Today, Acclaim offers some of the finest in multiplayer online gaming while using a new, free to play business model. Acclaim strives to offer its users a fun, community-oriented experience with a selection of titles ranging from casual browser games to hardcore MMOs. To learn more, visit www.acclaim.com