Tag: PC

#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: 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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#WeeklyGameMusic: Heavenly Star (Lumines II)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

The next #WeeklyGameMusic is a popular track that has appeared in quite a lot of games, ranging from No More Heroes to Child of Eden. As far as this writer can tell, though, it originated from Q? Entertainment’s block-based puzzle game, Lumines II. Sung by Genki Rockets, it tells a story of “an artificial space girl” and her rather optimistic understanding of what Earth (which, in lore, she has yet to visit) is like.

Lumines II is the second game in the Lumines series: a color-block-based puzzle game where one drops blocks to create a 2×2 same-colored square to score points. The innovation comes from how the game calculates combos: the 2×2 same-colored squares doesn’t get eliminated until after the Time Line — a vertical line which swipes from the left of the screen to the right in regular intervals — passes over it. In other words, clever players can rapidly drop a ton of blocks to create more 2×2 squares before the Time Line makes a full pass over their formation, thus aggregating to a larger score.

While the basic premise of Lumines is simple, the game excels on presentation, and in particular, it’s dynamic music generation. Much like Tetris Effect, each and every action the player takes creates a sound effect and instrumental that affects both the background music and visuals. As a consequence, playing Lumines often feels like sketching music on the fly, just as much as thinking through the puzzle that you’ve created for yourself.

Lumines II was originally released on the Playstation Portable. While this sequel is no longer in print, its predecessor, Lumines Remastered is available for PC on Steam and Microsoft Store.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Curiosity (Frog Fractions)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

How do you compose an intelligent-sounding music for a comedy game that’s anything but? Indie game studio, Twinbeard might have an answer for you in this week’s #WeeklyGameMusic with Curiosity, composed by…Twinbeard. Let’s pretend to be smart by listening to this calming music from the parody edutainment Flash game, Frog Fractions, where it recounts the completely ridiculous “history” of boxing.

Hmm, how to describe Frog Fractions? Well, as one would expect, it features a frog, and a bunch of “fractional” insects trying to eat at its precious apples. By clicking on the insects, the frog will slurp it up, keeping the apples preserved. The frog earns points when it collects an apple that has dropped from a tree. Later, an upgrade allows the frog to swim right and left across the pond, as well as quite oddly, down. Swimming down will̷͇̈́.̵̢̉.̶̦͌.̶̣̀ḋ̷̘ő̷̤ ̶͈̐ṡ̸̭o̴̭͂m̷̜͝e̸͙͋t̸̮̃h̵̬̍ǐ̶̤n̵̠͆g̴̢̒.̵̪̽

Frog Fractions is available for free on PC via Steam.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Time Unfolds (Arrangement 1) (Birthdays the Beginning)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

Allow time to fly by in this week’s #WeeklyGameMusic with the relaxing track, Time Unfolds (Arrangement 1) by Takayuki Nakamura. It’s the most common song that plays while playing TOYBOX Inc. & Arc System Works’ sandbox game, Birthdays the Beginning: a bizarre simulation about birthing new animals and species through terraforming. The music matches nicely to the mellow theme of the game that, quite frankly, is a lot more complex than the cutesy-graphics imply.

Like many highly-customizable games, Birthday the Beginnings have a story and creative mode. The narrative for the former stars an unnamed protagonist, who comes upon what seems like a mysterious treasure map. Curiosity gets the better of them, and they decides to follow its directions into a mysterious cave. When our hero delves too far into it, they seemingly get teleported into a new dimension where they can fly over a blank cube, and get pestered by an annoying Navi-like character explaining the rules. Our lead plants the “seed of life” handed to them onto the cube and starts terraforming in hopes of finding an escape from this dimension.

Birthday the Beginnings is essentially a simulation of evolution. Building mountains or digging valleys affects both the temperature of the new terrain, and the overall temperature of the cube. Balancing this aspect is critical to deliberately unlock more creatures, as older ones may need to die off. Aside from simply changing the land’s elevation, items are provided to augment the landscape slightly, including seeds of water and life to make waterfalls and new species accordingly.

Birthday the Beginnings was released on Steam for PC and Playstation 4. It’s sequel, Happy Birthdays, is seemingly only released in Japan for the Nintendo Switch.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Opala (Two Worlds)

Posted on by Taro Omiya

Sometimes, this #WeeklyGameMusic post series likes to look into tracks from unexpected places. Take, for example, Two Worlds by Reality Pump: a game touted as the Oblivion/Skyrim-killer…then fall into complete obscurity as rapidly as it came in. It once returned back to fame in 2016’s Summer Games Done Quick…where a speedrunner beats it in less than 3 minutes. Well, surprise, surprise, the game has a really beautiful soundtrack! Opala, in particular is a stand-out composition from Harold Faltemeyer.

(Psst! You can buy the soundtrack on iTunes! music.apple.com/at/album/two-worlds/699269326)

Two Worlds opens with the hero’s sister getting kidnapped and held for ransom. It turns out the kidnappers are planning nefariously to unseal Aziraal, the god of fire, from its tomb. It’s up to you to rescue your beloved family member…by taking on a huge number of quests factions give you.

As one would expect of a game dubbed Oblivion-killer, Two Worlds is an open-world WRPG. Customization and freedom is the key goal of the game, as the hero’s individual attributes and skills can be incremented per level-up in any way the player pleases. Naturally, the player can gain favors from the game’s 7 factions by taking on quests each one gives, thus changing their alliances. And of course, if you really want to, you can outright kill villagers if you so desire. Normally a bad choice, but said mechanic can be taken advantage of…such as the aforementioned 3-minute-long speed run.

Two Worlds was released on Xbox 360 and PC. A sequel for the game was released as well, this time on Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC, and Mac OSX.

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