Tag: iOS

#WeeklyGameMusic: Main Theme (To The Moon)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

Returning back to indie games, this week’s #WeeklyGameMusic is the main theme from the narrative game, To The Moon, developed by Freebird Games. The music is composed by the main developer themselves, Kan R. Gao. It’s an oddly optimistic track for a game surrounding around a creepy, privacy-intruding technology.

To The Moon is an interactive story starring Dr. Eva Rosalene and Neil Watts handling a dying wish of an old man named Johnny Wyles. As the title implies, Johnny wants to go to the moon…or more accurately, wants to believe he went to the moon. Naturally, Eva and Neil’s memory-rewriting machine takes care of exactly that: they can adjust Johnny’s past memory to cause a chronological domino-effect of other memories to be adjusted with this new detail. When the duo asks why Johnny wants to go to the moon, though, he answers he doesn’t know. Faced with such ambiguous details, the two attempts to rummage through Johnny’s past to find what convinced him to go to the moon, and what they can do to change his (internal) history.

Gameplay-wise, To The Moon contains very little interactivity. One can explore in an RPG Maker world and talk to characters to learn more details about side characters (and Johnny’s wife). Collecting the right thing, or speaking to the right person continues the plot of the story. A very simple game with a move-at-your-own-pace story and no lose conditions.

To The Moon is available on Nintendo Switch, iOS, Android, PC, Mac, and Linux via Steam.

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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: Give Me a Chance (The World Ends With You)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music. This time we’ll cover Give Me a Chance, composed by Takeharu Ishimoto and sung by Ayuko Tanaka and Mai Matsuda. It’s a composition from the cult-hit Square Enix game, The World Ends With You, an almost trading card game (TCG) JRPG and a banger soundtrack.

You can tell The World Ends With You is created by the same company famous for their Final Fantasy franchise when it stars an anti-social, brooding teen named Neku. This insufferable jerk eventually learns to get better when he’s suddenly pitted in a life-and-death game about fighting sound-based monsters and lazy grim reapers using a deck of shirt pins. To survive this terrifying game, this loser must make a sacrifice arbitrarily chosen by the game master (in this case, his memory, of course) and pair with a partner to fight together with. Did I mention this all makes sense in context?

Anyway, where The World Ends With You best shines is its real-time combat. Originally developed for the Nintendo DS, this game utilizes nearly every single feature in the portable console, including — get this — the closing-the-lid sleep function, as part of combat. Unfortunately for this blogger, his introduction to the game was on iOS, so he’ll describe how the combat works there instead: The World Ends With You TCG-like battle system operates by having each pin execute when a specific touch or swipe gesture is made. Multiple pins in a deck may share the same gesture; the pin placed on the top of the deck gets prioritized first, until it hits a cool-down state, in which the rest of the pins takes effect. Partners can also be summoned, using yet another gesture assigned to them: this helps build both a combo meter, and a super attack. It’s super fun, and I highly recommend checking it out!

The World Ends With You is available on Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Nintendo DS.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Anna (Device 6)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

Anna opened her tablet, launched the web browser, and clicked on a link. It was a blog post, first starting with a nonsensical sentence, “#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.” What followed immediately after that was a Youtube video. And right below that? A paragraph, describing exactly what she did, five seconds prior to her reading this sentence. Now it’s describing what she’s doing right now. That’s weird, she thought, but didn’t think twice about it as she clicked the Youtube video, Anna by Jonathon Eng. As she listened to its jolly and romantic tune, she heard a doorbell ring outside. Excited, she jumped up, answered the door, and carried her new package back to the kitchen: Simogo’s award-winning game, Device 6.

Anna wakes up. She’s not in her kitchen anymore. In fact, she doesn’t even recognize this small, circular room. How did she get here? How much time has passed? Where did her phone and tablet go? Before going to full-panic mode, Anna stood up from the dusty wood-plank floor and thought carefully. “I was playing Device 6,” she recalled, “an interactive fiction that uses the most of my tablet’s capabilities.” Indeed, Device 6 was a fascinating mystery nove-, er, game. The word often twisted and turned, like shape poetry, requiring the player to turn their phone/tablet to read further. Every once in a while, old vintage photos and sound effects would pop-up to help the reader’s imagination. Most important of all were the puzzles. “Oh, the puzzles,” Anna thought, “like that part where there was a yellow frame with a 4-digit number on it! The minor detail seemed unnecessary until the game revealed an image of an electric safe — locked by a 4-digit password — that you can interact with. It was a wow-moment, where I realized the clues to the game’s puzzles were scattered around in the story’s text itself.”

“But wait, I feel like I’m forgetting something important,” Anna pondered, “how did that game start? What were the first few sentences?” She closed her eyes, pushed hard on her forehead, until finally, it came to her. “Yes, the game started like this:”

Anna wakes up. She’s not in her kitchen anymore. In fact, she doesn’t even recognize this small, circular room.

A few, silent moments passes before Anna exclaims, “well shit, this is creepy!” Shaken and confused, she scans around the room until she find a large, wooden door. “Gotta start somewhere,” she told herself, and carefully approaches the door. As she grabs its doorknob, she notices a yellow frame hanging next to the door, with the number, “2006” imprinted on the bottom. “That’s going to be important,” she noted, and pulled the doorknob open.

Notice: Bowler Cap, Corp. would like to kindly remind you that Device 6 is available for iPad and iPhones. Please enjoy, and have a nice day!

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Weekly Game Music: Squids Wild West (Squids Wild West)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

New week, new music.  This week, we’re doing something a little different.  Instead of a Youtube video, here’s the SoundCloud music player, coming directly from this week’s music composer, Romain Gauthier.  I’ve posted his music twice already, but theSquids Wild West theme from, well, the iOS game Squids Wild West is something truly special.  Give it a click, and check it out!

Anyhoo, Squids Wild West is a direct sequel to the mobile game, Squids.  Previously, a group of treasure hunting squids accidentally broke the valve sealing the evil goop.  Realizing their mess, their quest to cleanse the underwater world leads them to the sharp-shooter Clint and sumo wrestler Sammo’s home town, ye Seawood.  There, the party attempts to find the master Winnick, and get down with the evil mastermind controlling the ugly goop.

Squids Wild West is a turn-based RPG involving…flinging squids at evil shrimps, crabs, and other watery beings.  It plays a lot like Angry Birds, where squids are flung on a flat surface instead of a trajectory.  Damage is calculated based on the squid’s attack points and fling strength, meaning enemies closer to the squids are more likely to get the brunt of the force.  Along with slamming their own body into crazed wild-life, each class of squids have their own special abilities.  For example, sharp-shooters can shoot projectiles at a far-away enemy, while sumos can create shockwaves to hit enemies within close proximity.

Squids Wild West  was released on the iOS in 2012.  It’s also available on Android.

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Weekly Game Music: Lullaby (Crayon Physics Deluxe)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

New week, new music.  Let’s move on from the anger-filled sad music, and onto a far more calming one.  Here’s Lullaby by composer _ghost.  It’s a simple composition that even children can enjoy, much like the game it comes from, Crayon Physics Deluxe.

Crayon Physics Deluxe is a puzzle game where the things you draw with a crayon becomes real objects, usable to solve its numerous levels.  All puzzles involve pushing a ball into a star, typically located in some ridiculous location.  The more creative the solution, the better!

Crayon Physics Deluxe was released on the PC in 2009.  It has also been ported onto Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android.

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