Opus Major announces debut title Majjam, a musical multiplayer game

Indie game developer Opus Major today revealed its debut title: Majjam, a multiplayer adventure game revolving around music. Majjam is a social experience where players can join together to make music that drives back encroaching darkness by combining their characters’ abilities and instruments to create melodies together. According to the developers, it was inspired by the creativity and passion of jam sessions, married with a fantasy aesthetic. The game is coming to PC first, with Opus Major considering future launches on console and PC.

Majjam is currently available to wishlist on Steam, and players can sign up to participate in an upcoming closed alpha playtest in September. Within the world of the game, players use magical abilities called Jamming, weaving together tunes to beat back an encroaching dark fog called Kodé. The game auto-harmonizes all players’ music, creating a single combined song that reshapes the world around them when they work together.

Opus Major CEO and co-founder Jean-Nicolas Vernin told GamesBeat in an interview, “We very much believe in the engaging power of music to communicate, even in a non-verbal way. And hopefully, bring as many players as possible together to wander around in the world of MAJJAM and protect it from the destruction of an evil antagonist. We built a meta system where every single musical action of players feeds the world with energy to repel that destructive presence. The more people jam together, the more the world will push back the destructive force and expand.

Vernin added that the game’s development has not been easy, as the studio has gone from two people (Vernin and co-founder Pierre-Armand Nicq) to 20 in the two years since it launched. “Doing a real-time online game from scratch, with a team of 20 people in about 24 months requires a huge amount of passion, intensity and velocity. We feel grateful because of the team we have at Opus Major, the jammers, who are amazing people with very strong game making skills.”

Opus Major announced earlier this year that it had raised $10 million in funding to build the game, which it then referred to as “Opus No.1.” Vernin said, “We also feel grateful to have been backed immediately by outstanding investors, Griffin Gaming Partners and Alven, who believed in us since day 1 and did not hesitate to fund our seed round while the industry has been facing a major crisis, especially studios having a focus on content.”