Tag: Indie

#WeeklyGameMusic: Undertale (Undertale)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

This theme needs no introduction: it’s Undertale by Tobi Fox. This particular piece of music is a bit of a stand-out for #WeeklyGameMusic, given its clear story-driven composition. The gradual crescendo in this theme helps build up to the final moments of your character journey.

Undertale starts with a bit of a legend: long ago, after a war broke out between the monsters and the humans, the monsters lost and ended up hiding under a deep cave. The two specious never encountered each other again. There’s still a hole, however, that humans sometimes accidentally stumble upon, and as luck may have it, today’s lucky winner to fall into said hole is you, the player!

Advertising itself like an old-school JRPG, Undertale utilizes a turn-based battle system when fighting against random encounters. Unlike old-school JRPGs, the battles plays out more like a visual novel where the player negotiates with the monsters. Monsters can attack via a shoot’em-up-like play-field where the player must dodge the bullets being fired. Ultimately, the player can choose to kill or befriend the monsters they encounter, with the latter concluding the fight peacefully. Naturally, the narrative updates itself to take these information into account in subtle ways.

Undertale is available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Nintendo Switch, PC, Mac, and Linux via Steam.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Mamazon (Dandy Dungeon: Legend of Brave Yamada)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

This week’s #WeeklyGameMusic, to be honest, leaves me more baffled than I can ever describe. Here’s Mamazon‘s theme, composed by Hirofumi Taniguchi from the very meta mobile game, Dandy Dungeon: Legend of Brave Yamada. And yes, for those listening to it now, I, too, have no idea what’s going on. But it sure sounds special!

True to the Onion Games brand, Dandy Dungeon is a bizarre and at moments, creepy game featuring a 30-something programmer developing a game in only his underwear. In a prior life of just-yesterday, Yamada skipped over going to work to instead delve into his own pet project just a bit longer. The very next day, he’s fired. He takes his self-fulfilling prophecy newfound freedom to go right on ahead to finish his dungeon crawler game, and asks you, the player, to beta test it.

Dandy Dungeon is a rogue-like, touch-based RPG where the player traces a path for the hero (who else?), Yamada, to defeat monsters, collect treasure, and exit the floor. While the gameplay itself is nothing to write home about, it’s the bizarre nature of real life and fantasy slowly blending into each other that defines this game’s quirkiness. For example, the “princess” virtual Yamada is rescuing in-game is none other than Yamada prime’s next door neighbor. The great evil boss is none other than the same manager who fired Yamada prime. And despite the virtual game’s fantasy, the very-final-dungeon looks eerily similar to Yamada’s old office.

Dandy Dungeon: Legend of Brave Yamada was originally released for iOS. It’s now available for Nintendo Switch, PC, and Mac via Steam.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: A Quick Break (Cuphead)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

Ready for a hard-to-find tune in a hard-to-play game? This week’s WeeklyGameMusic has you covered with A Quick Break by Kristofer Maddigan from the indie game classic, Cuphead. This acapella piece from Studio MDHR Entertainment Inc.’s debut title encourages the player to…put the game down. Huh. Interesting.

Cuphead‘s story takes the 30’s animation approach of starting awfully dark. Our titular character, Cuphead, and his brother, Mugman, goes off one day to do what all kids love to do: gamble. Well, OK, neither kids nor adults should gamble, and to really drive home that lesson, the devil himself raised a deal with the pair that should they lose the next game, he’ll be taking their souls. Not being the brightest lightbulb in the Christmas tree, Cuphead gleefully accepts this deal, and promptly finds himself losing the very next game. Begging for forgiveness, the pair makes a deal with the Devil (which, again, this blog does not endorse doing) where they need to collect all the soul contracts out there on Inkwell Isles before the end of the day.

Cuphead is a action-platformer in the same vein as the Megaman series. Both Cuphead and Mugman runs, jumps, and fires bullets from their fingers to fight against a wide cast of bosses and levels. Unique to this game is the counter mechanic: an aerial attack that defuses projectiles of a specific color, and regenerates the pair’s special-attack. That said, much of the accolade this game has revolves around it’s animation quality, and its utterly-uncompromising difficulty.

Cuphead was released for Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PC, and Mac via Steam.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Peper Steak (OFF)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

We’ve highlighted Mortis Ghost’s OFF in the #WeeklyGameMusic before…over five years ago. Since I consider that a long enough time to return back to the topic, let’s talk about the most memorable track in the game, Peper Steak by Alias Conrad Coldwood. It’s perhaps the most bizarre JRPG battle music I’ve heard to date.

OFF is a freeware RPG Maker game that takes the popular turn-based JRPG narrative and completely deconstructs it. The nefarious plot starts with you, the “puppeteer,” to take control of the Batter and “purify” the world. After all, if the game tells you specters are evil, then surely eradicating them is the right thing to do, right? So begins the Batter and your journey as you explore a universe composed of four basic elements: metal, meat, gas, and plastic. With it to (not) assist you are some of the most pathetic and scared NPCs to grace text on-screen, as you and the Batter takes down each guardian of this universe.

OFF uses a time-based battle system where the party attacks after their cooldown time is over, obviously taking inspirations from older Final Fantasy games. Since enemies can attack your party while you are making decisions, naturally, the game encourages you to make quick decisions. Otherwise, the usual RPG Maker fare applies: exploration is largely grid based in a stark, minimalist world. Objectives frequently involve the usual RPG tropes, including finding keys, trading items, entering codes, etc. Oddly enough, the game does feature an overworld…but mysteriously, is only one screen large. While purely there for aesthetics case, it does make the player start to question the intentions of Batter’s journey…

OFF is a free PC game that was originally written in French. A translated version is freely available at Starmen.net.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Whetfahrt Cheesefunk (Bit.Trip Presents…Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

You’d think a jazzy composition wouldn’t work too well on a game that requires paying close attention to the music’s rhythm, but the auto-runner Bit.Trip Presents…Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien (phew!), developed by Choice Provisions, throws away all common sense and just makes it happen. Whetfahrt Cheesefunk, composed by Matthew Harwood, takes a nice, soft swinging beat, and crescendos it to a deliciously chaotic composition. An interesting decision for a game that demands every single fiber of the player’s attention, lest they get hit, and be forced to replay from the beginning of the level.

The game’s album is available on Bandcamp, by the way: choiceprovisions.bandcamp.com/track/whetfahrt-cheesefunk

Runner2 is a bizarre side-story the happens between two Bit.Trip series entries, Runner and Fate. In short, series villain Mingrawn Timbletot fires a laser at Commander Video, thus whisking him away into a new dimension…the 3D realm! Tired plot point aside, this leaves Commander Video doing what he already does best in Bit.Trip Runner: keep running right in hopes of finding an exit out of this world.

While an auto-runner in the same vain as Canabult, Runner2 has multiple levels with a clear ending, collectibles, and even boss battles. Naturally as the music would imply, the audio design is the primary highlight of Runner2, making it a stand-out among other games in the same genre. Obstacles and collectibles are deliberately placed to create a sense of rhythm and memorization one would expect from music games. On top of this, each successful action is awarded with a note that, stung together, creates a procedurally generated music matching with the composition already playing in the background. In essence, the player gets to feel like they’re composing music.

Runner2 is available on Windows, OS X, and Linux via Steam; Playstation Vita, 3, and 4; iOS, Xbox 360, and finally, Wii U.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Discothéque Rouge, After Hours (Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

Need a little more chiptune in your life? The absolutely talented Chipzel has you covered with this week’s #WeeklyGameMusic. Her remix of Discothéque Rouge, After Hours, from Pocketwatch Games’s multiplayer heist game, Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine is some of the tastiest gems out their to savior. Enjoy it…while it lasts…

They can’t keep us locked in! Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine begins with a group of criminals breaking out of prison, and sneaking out. The triumph is short-lived, however, when the company realizes they’re penniless and wanted. After much deliberation, the party comes to a decision: escape to Monaco, by every means possible. Thus begins their long journey of gathering more criminal connections to assist their freedom.

Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine is an award-winning cooperative heist game. You and three other skilled thieves infiltrate heavily guarded buildings to — what else? — steal everything valuable. The innovation kicks in when every player realizes they’ll need to share information between each other as they deal with each character’s limited vision and hyper-specialized abilities. It’s pretty normal for something to go wrong during the heist: alarms triggering, guards taking notice, etc. After all, much of the fun is trying to figure out how to deal with the escalating situation amongst your group of friends.

Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine is released on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Xbox 360, and Nintendo Switch. It’s also available on Steam.

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