by TheNesta » Thu Apr 26, 2012 11:00 pm
I really like this thread, I keep coming back to it every week with new stuff to share, and of course it's always great to hear what other people like, and are sharing too. So, to celebrate the awesomeness of this thread I'm going to share even more music! Hooray! This time is a triple dose of Indie Game love, and a little something special on the side.
Skullgirls
Skullgirls is a new downloadable 2D fighting that that has been released on both XBLA and PSN. It's a wonderful little fighting game, with awesome mechanics, and an even better roster of all female characters that range from interesting to down right sexy. I'm totally in love with this super stylish game, and of course, as usual, the music is a treat. Composed by Michiru Yamane of Castlevania fame, with help from Revenge Labs, here's some of my favorites:
: As the name suggest, this is the character selection music. I always feel that the character select theme is important, as you hear it a lot. 'I wanna take you for a ride' Anyone?
: This is one of the stage themes. Can you hear the Castlevania influences? Also one of my favorite stages to fight on, as the background is decorated by fish people, including the adorable Minette.
: This is the final boss music, which includes parts of the game's main theme. It sounds pretty epic to me, and it's a good fight to boot.
: Finally, this is one of the game's character ending themes. This one's for Valentine, one of my favorite characters. It's so sad, but calming at the same time. It reminds me a bit of a song from Final Fantasy VII called The Nightmare's Beginning, which is a personal favorite from that game.
Lone Survivor
This is a neat little indie game I just found out about for PC. Lone Survivor feels very much like older Silent Hill games, right down to the music. The game itself is sprite based, and the music matches it quite well. But I think you'll hear some similarities to Silent Hill music all the same. I have to imagine the creator Jasper Byrne was channeling Akira Yamaoka when he composed these songs.
: The game's title theme is probably my favorite song on the soundtrack. It's really reminiscent of a Yamaoka opening to Silent Hill. It's the first thing I heard when I booted up the game, and I got pumped right off the bat.
: Again, this is another song that reminds me of something straight out of Silent Hill. It's kind of haunting, but pretty at the same time. Seeing as how the game is very intense usually, this must play during one of the brief moments of salvation.
: Another refrain from the madness. This is a beautiful piece that really shows the range of piano music. Of course, pianos are beautiful themselves, but this strikes me as eerie and mysterious.
: When you wake up at the beginning of the game you are... Home. Is it a safe place? Is any place safe in this crazy world? Who can say? But at least you get a brief calm before the storm with this surreal song.
Fez
I know you guys know what Fez is, so I'll just get to the point. It has a pretty amazing soundtrack, some very nice chiptune sounding work that Composer Disasterpeace clearly had a lot of passion for. The music matches the games whimsical setting, and provides a calming companion to you as you unravel the mysteries of Fez. Oh yeah, by the way, there's hidden messages in the music.
: Adventure is the first thing you hear in Fez, and it pretty much sets the tone for the whole game. Gomez is going on an adventure, and it's going to be one full of childish wonder, and whimsy.
: Gomez finds himself in a weird industrial complex as he searches about for cube bits. The song, as well as the environment full of mechanical platforms, and steam pipes gives off a very steampunk feel.
: This is perhaps my favorite song in the bunch I'm sharing with you guys today. It plays in a small section of the game that depicts a rainy night, at a small hotel. Complete with neon lines and an urban setting. I don't know what it is about this area, and this song, but it is easily my favorite part of the game. I wonder if this some sort of dream version of my hometown. All the beauty of a lit up Las Vegas strip, but with a rainy forecast, and peacefulness. Maybe I'm just thinking too much, eh?
: Again... the game begins and ends at Home. Gomez starts out here, before revealing the truth of the universe, and he returns here once he has completed his objective. It's a peaceful melody that really soothes the heart.
Homestuck
Forgive me for derailing things a bit here, but I wanted to share some music from a different medium for a moment. I realize this is for Game Music, and lord knows I've shared more of that than I probably should at this point. But I'd like to take a moment to share some of my favorite tracks from the webcomic Homestuck, which is somewhat of an obsession of mine. The only reason I'm putting this here, is because I feel that the music is very similar to something you would find in a game, and I think it meshes with the contents of this thread.
Before I get into that, a quick run-down. is massive webcomic that tells one continuous story, and has been over the course of three years. It's a combination of long text logs, accompanied by single panel images, animate gifs, and of course the infamously epic flash updates. As you might imagine, it's a pretty massive undertaking to get into, but once you do, you'll probably be hooked.
One of the things that is so special about Homestuck, is the massive amount of music that is composed for it. Obviously some of it is used in the flash updates, but a lot of it is just there to evoke emotions for you in regards to the characters you know and love (or hate) from the comic. I currently have 22 hours worth of Homestuck music on my iTunes playlist, and most of it is absolutely fantastic. There's a Homestuck sound team that does a lot of this stuff, but the community gets really involved with it too. But, I digress. The following are some of my favorite tracks from the various albums:
: Like many of the songs I'll be highlighting here, MeGaLoVania was used in a particularly awesome flash that depicted some pretty amazing stuff happening in the story. I just love it, because it rocks out so hard and really gets me pumped up.
: Crystamanthequins is probably my favorite song in all of that 22 hours of music, and for good reason. It's frickin' epic. Like MeGLoVania it also plays during an important flash, which is probably my second favorite flash in the whole comic. I've gotten chills, and misty eyed while listening to this song because it just gives me so many feelings.
: This one is a recent favorite of mine. Like the rest it plays during an awesome flash, etc. This one is really funky (like, real funk, not bad funky) and it's a pretty accurate representation of the character. As an added bonus, I feel like I can include a link to the flash so that you can get a taste of the comic in it's prime. You won't really know what's going on, like, at all, but it's pretty radical all the same. Yeah, I dunno. Hyperlinking doesn't work for that, so just click on the ugly link to see the flash. It's called Prince of Heart: Rise Up.
: This one is a classic, it's more or less the theme to Homestuck at this point, or at the very least the theme for one of the main characters John. It's been rearranged, remixed, and re-sampled so many times, most of them fantastic, but this is the original. It also have sort of a whimsical vibe to it and provides a brief refrain from all of the insanity.
: And finally, we have Cascade. Which is, fair warning, 13 minutes long. This song accompanied a monstrous flash of the same name and length which not only brought the MSPA site down, but Newgrounds, and several other sites as well. If you ever get into the comic, and you make it to Cascade... oh man, it's just so damn epic. As you can hear in the song, should you bother to listen to all 13 minutes of it, it's broken down into different segments which compliments what's going on in the flash. Even though this song is 13 minutes long, I've listened to it like 70 times, and it still hits me hard. I can't even point out my favorite part in the song. There are so many. Ahhh... it's just incredible.
