At a recent press preview in NYC, I had a chance to demo parts of the upcoming Rayman Legends, a follow-up to 2011’s Rayman Origins. Legends‘ gameplay will be familiar to fans of Origins, only slicker: it carries on Origins’ distinct, painterly art style, now with even more refinement and the addition of mixed 2D/3D elements. Legends also builds on Origins’ classic platforming with the Wii U touchscreen by implementing a unique co-op mode that allows a second player to tap lums, cut ropes and pull levers on-screen to help player-one reach their end-goal.
Christophe Héral— the composer behind Rayman Origin’s brilliant, cartoonish and kazoo-laden score— is on-board for the sequel. According to a developer at Ubisoft, Héral is hard at work creating music to sync up with the twitch-control precision of certain levels. As you can see from the video above, the results are mesmerizing to watch, and, as experienced, equally gratifying to play: with a synchronized score, players will feel as though they’re playing a platformer and musical score at the same time. Actually, that’s exactly what they’re doing.