Clone Hero

Clone Hero is an indie music rhythm video game created by Ryan Foster, first released on March 1, 2017. The game is a clone of the "Guitar Hero" franchise, and as such, features nearly identical gameplay. The main draw of the game is its ability to play community-made songs, which has resulted in a large fan community around the game as well as a resurgence in popularity for the genre.
Gameplay.
"Clone Hero", by design, features nearly identical gameplay to "Guitar Hero". Specifically, the game is most similar to later entries in the series such as "World Tour" and "", using GUI assets from those games. Gameplay involves hitting colored inputs on a guitar or drum-shaped controller to play along to songs, although in "Clone Hero" these inputs can be mapped to a keyboard or any other input device. Unlike the "Guitar Hero" series, by default there is no penalty for missing notes, aside from breaking a combo, making it impossible to fail a song, although there is an option to enable this.
For guitar, players must hold specific buttons that line up with combinations of five colored notes that appear on the screen on a "highway"; when the notes hit the bottom of the highway, the player must strum to hit the notes in time with the music. Notes can be singular, or multiple at a time, forming a chord. Notes can also be sustains, in which the player must hold the matching button(s) after strumming, the duration of the hold being indicated by a line following the note or chord. There is also an "open strum" note, represented with a purple bar, which requires the player to strum without pressing any other buttons. In addition to normal notes, there are "HOPO"s ("hammer-ons" and "pull-offs") and "tap notes", which both do not require the player to strum them to hit them, with the difference between the two being that a string of HOPOs must begin with a strum, and the player must re-strum if they miss a note. Certain notes may also be part of a "star power phrase", marked by a series of notes with star outlines. Successfully playing the marked section will reward the player with star power, which can be used to double the combo multiplier for a limited time. For drums, gameplay is similar, involving one less possible note; players must hit a corresponding drum or cymbal when a note hits the bottom of the highway. There is also a bass drum note, represented by an orange bar, which unlike the guitar's open strum can be combined with other notes. The game also contains a mode which emulates the gameplay of "Guitar Hero Live", which is notably different from other games in the series, involving six guitar buttons instead of the standard five.
"Clone Hero" has the ability to play community-made songs, called "charts". However, unlike games in the "Guitar Hero" series, these songs do not need to be original compositions, and can instead be any audio file a member of the community wishes to turn into a playable chart. This allows for any song to be made playable in the game, but also leads to many humorous and/or non-musical audio files being turned into charts, as well as the creation of many intentionally impossible charts. The freedom offered by the game's system has also spawned many charts that are created as brutal challenges to other players, far beyond the difficulty of anything in the standard "Guitar Hero" series. While "Clone Hero" includes the main four difficulty modes seen in "Guitar Hero", the vast majority of charts are designed for Expert mode.
Development.
"Clone Hero" started as a small project of Ryan Foster's in 2011, then called "GuitaRPG", built in the XNA engine and bearing simple, 2D graphics. Around 2015, the game's name was changed to "Guitar Game" to reflect its forking away from the RPG style, and had been upgraded with pseudo-3D graphics made with 2D graphics with warped perspective. The project was later moved to Unity, and received its final name change to "Clone Hero". Development continued until 2017, the game's first alpha release.
Reception.
"Clone Hero", along with "Guitar Hero", was listed as one of "Gamepur"'s top 10 best rhythm games. "Clone Hero" has also made an appearance at Awesome Games Done Quick 2020.