#WeeklyGameMusic Archives - Page 9 of 26

#WeeklyGameMusic: Miller House (The Witch’s House)

Posted on February 7, 2015 by Taro Omiya

#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

What better way to start a romantic month with an RPGMaker horror game? Accelerated heart rate is easily mistaken for love and all that. Anyway, this week’s music is a free music called Miller House, composed by Presence of Music. It’s used effectively during a shocking plot twist from a Japanese horror game called The Witch’s House. A twist so good, it makes every M. Night Shyamalan plot-line boring.

The plot of The Witch’s House is deceptively simple. A young blond-haired girl named Viola wakes up in an opening of a forest, and finds herself stuck in a very unfortunate situation. The forest itself is too thick to pass through, and the passage that it creates only leads to one of two dead ends. One end is blocked by an enchanted and stubborn set of rose bushes that can’t be cut by a machete; the other leads directly to a haunted house. Without much else to do (and being encouraged by a creepy, talking black cat), Viola dives right into the house.

It’s worth noting that for most first-time players, the house will kill Viola within the second room she enters. Yup, it’s that kind of game. As a defenseless girl, Viola will very frequently get hanged, poisoned, crushed, decapitated, eaten, fall, and other wonderful ways to die in this surprisingly detailed game. This game relies on a trial-and-death mechanic to solve every puzzle, although the majority of the puzzles do provide cryptic hints. Similar to other RPGMaker horror games, The Witch’s House also has a few chase moments that, due to its rarity, is shockingly effective at making the player’s hair stand on its ends. It’s rare to find a game that utilizes jump scares well, yet still feel fair and possible to beat. Just be prepared for all the blood and gore: this game does not compromise.

The Witch’s House is a freeware PC game originally developed in Japanese by Fummy (ふみー). An English translation of it exists as a free download at:
http://www.vgperson.com/games/witchhouse.htm

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Liberation (La Muerte de Papo) (Papo & Yo)

Posted on January 17, 2015 by Taro Omiya

#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

This week’s music comes from a touching and tragic game called Papo & Yo. Despite it’s fantastical (or more correctly, magical realism) settings, the puzzle platformer touches what it’s like to live under parental abuse. It’s quite fitting, then, that the credits music for this game, Liberation (La Muerte de Papo) by Brian D’Oliveira, depicts a sad, hollow echo of what feels like a child trying to connect with his/her parent, but the feeling isn’t reciprocated.

Papo & Yo starts with a small, South American boy named Quico hiding from what appears to be a monster (only the shadow is revealed). While being cramped inside an air duct, a magical chalk drawing of a portal appears near Quico. As if entranced, our hero walks through the portal, teleporting him to what looks like a bright, colorful outdoors of a slum neighborhood. Immediately taunted by a girl about the same age as Quico, he ventures out in the new universe he’ve stumbled upon filled with incredible art and imagination.

As a 3D puzzle-platformer, Papo & Yo has a lot of interactive chalk drawings acting as switches, gears, or pulleys to affect the surroundings. Playing around with these drawings can cause various effects, including twisting the ground to turn into walls, or making buildings fly like birds to create platforms. Despite this creative core, however, the most vital game element is the uneasy relation the player has with a monster. Helpful but lazy, the monster can help push heavy objects or provide his bouncy belly as a way to jump towards higher platforms. Unfortunately, said monster also has a horrible addiction to frogs, causing it to become angry and immediately attack poor Quico. The puzzles in the game regularly has the player guiding the monster to vital puzzle elements while it’s in a docile state, and avoiding it as soon as frogs hops in at the most inopportune times.

Papo & Yo was originally developed as a downloadable title for Playstation 3. It is now available on Steam for PC, Mac, and Linux.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Tank 1 (Insaniquarium)

Posted on January 11, 2015 by Taro Omiya

#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

Great game music can come from the unlikeliest places, and casual games are no exceptions. Take this Insaniquarium Deluxe music, for example. Tank 1, composed by Jonne Valtonen, manages to keep a facade of normalcy and simplicity in an otherwise crazy game about saving poor fishes from aliens. Seriously.

Insaniquarium Deluxe generally has two phases: fish simulation phase where you manage the money dropped by the guppies and carnivores, and the alien phase where you use lasers to kill them before it consumes every fish in the tank. The stage ends when you purchase three egg pieces, hatching a new helper. The majority of the time is spent in maintaining your fish population, feeding them properly, and adding more fish into the tank without running out of money. The formula is shockingly addicting as each stage introduces new aliens, helpers, and obstacles to make your resource management that much more difficult.

Insaniquarium Deluxe is available on PC via Steam.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Title Theme (Orchestral Arrangement) (Ib)

Posted on January 3, 2015 by Taro Omiya

#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

Welp, I’m in the mood for a RPGMaker horror game. Here’s a pretty darn good one, with a simple but moving narrative, forgiving horror mechanic, and very likable characters. KaRASU’s rearrangement of kouri’s Title Theme does a great justice to Ib‘s use of juvenile perspective to increase its creepiness factor. Welcome to Ib‘s mystical art gallery, where the lead character’s 9-year-old innocence can’t save the gallery’s dark influence on her sanity.

Ib is a 9-year-old girl walking around curiously through the legendary Weise Guertena’s art gallery with her parents until she comes upon one large, very immersive painting. It’s at this moment that the lights turns off, all visitors (including Ib’s parents) disappears, mysterious writings starts appearing on the walls, and the paintings starts to animate and even make creepy sounds. Amidst the horror and confusion from all the commotions, Ib finds herself staring at a floor installation depicting the ocean that’s begging her to jump in. And so she does, into the prideful, distrusting, and envious world of Guertena’s finest works.

Ib is a story-driven RPGMaker horror game that is thankfully tame on both story and horror. This surprisingly well-balanced adventure involves avoiding enemies while solving very clever puzzles, and learning more about each character that joins your party. While the game is very forgiving, with a unique 5-hit-point health meter depicted by an image of a rose, the method of recovering health is very limited.

Ib is available on the PC for free. An English translation of this Japanese game can be found here: http://vgperson.com/games/ib.htm

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Fungi Forest (Donkey Kong 64)

Posted on December 29, 2014 by Taro Omiya

#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

Do you hear that? Yup, I’m late again. Anyway, this week’s music is a nice and pleasant composition from Donkey Kong 64, written by the infamous Grant Kirkhope. While Grant is more known for his jaunty, bouncy compositions, Fungi Forest is a tame music more focused on silence. A soothing music fitting to a large and epic forest.

Donkey Kong 64. Well, that’s another game that needs almost no introduction. Basically, King K. Rool kidnaps Donkey Kong’s 4 friends and their golden bananas, so it’s up to the lazy Kong himself to save the day. Ah, those were the good times. Anyways, Donkey Kong 64 is a 3D platformer that’s known to be one of the worst offenders of its genre, collecta-thon. From the hard-to-find golden bananas to the color-coded bananas that only a specific Kong can collect, it’s only natural that many people criticized the sheer amount of plot coupons they needed to collect to progress through the game. Still, most critics agree that it is a solid platformer that has tight controls, fascinating worlds to travel through, and a good fun to be had.

Donkey Kong 64 was originally made for, you guessed it, Nintendo 64. It is available on the WiiWare as a downloadable retro game.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Forest (iBlast Moki 2)

Posted on December 20, 2014 by Taro Omiya

#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

Good ol’ Romain “Ninomojo” Gauthier has yet another beautiful mobile game music, this time for an adorable puzzle game called iBlast Moki 2. As the score’s title implies, Forest depicts a tone fitting of…well, actually, anything that’s happy. Anyway, brew that hot cocoa of yours, sit back in that comfy couch, and listen to this wonderful track for that Christmas holiday mood.

iBlast Moki 2 is a quirky (and an early) mobile puzzle game that involves primarily placing bombs to launch the adorable Mokis –don’t worry, no blood or gore in this game — into the warp gate. While timed bombs will be your primary tool, with the time it takes to blast the bombs being fully controllable, a variety of other tools — including ropes, paint bombs, and ships — will assist Mokis’ travels. And that’s not to mention a level editor that exists in-game, making the possibilities endless!

iBlast Moki 2 is available for download on iPhone, iPads, and most Android devices.

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