So Division Cell is out! You can download it here for iOS or here for Android. It’s brilliant and well worth the money. An amazingly original mind bending puzzler with infinite replay value. Can’t say fairer than that. We’re very proud indeed to have created the audio for such a fantastic game.
So down at The Audio Grill, David and I have put all the music from the game to listen to or download via Bandcamp. The entire album is only £1!
SO! What’s goin’ down just now? Well things are ticking along nicely. Let’s do a quick update on where everything is:
So working on Avoid Droid for Sony has been just about the best experience we’ve ever had working in conjunction with a corporation ever. They have given us the most important things that anyone can give a developer:
-1 Hardware.
Devkit? Have two! One each! Amazing. Pride of place in both me and Charlie’s workstations (dining tables).
-2 Freedom
We are not being hounded One. Bit. Like, for anything. At the start there was some feedback on the prototype they’d seen which was extremely positive but had a few suggestions from the game consultant who assessed it. We took a lot of the suggestions on board because they were great, but some things we were reluctant to change because it didn’t fit with our finished creative vision of the game. And that was totally absolutely cool with them. God, we love Sony.
-3 Empathy
They understand that we gotta do what we gotta do, and it’s gonna be different from the way most companies do it. They know we aren’t a company with an office and 9-5 working hours and they *understand*. We’ve had Skype calls when sensible people should really be in their jimmy jammers cos it’s the only time we could make it. Nary a raised eyebrow!
So here’s where we’re at just now…
So yeah, we’re really happy. And happy devs are productive devs! We now have the game ported to Vita, so we’re now on to the ‘mystery’ bit of messing around with shaders and gameplay tweaks to make it look and play like the solid, timeless arcade game we want it to look and play like.
I’ve teamed up with a lovely fellow called David Burrows to form a two man music and audio team called The Audio Grill.
You can check out our combined music efforts here: https://soundcloud.com/theaudiogrill/
The company’s vision is centred around the idea that the best people to make music for video-games would be a highly trained professional musician (David) and some guy who makes games and music (Me). Therefore, combining my career insight into design and audio implementation which enhanced the feel of gameplay – with David’s training, composing experience and preposterous levels of musical prowess. Thus, the perfect bespoke music and audio conception and production pipeline is born.
We’re also blogging about the games that we’re creating the audio for. It’s just our insights and philosophies we have while making the music for each of the games, so it’ll gradually grow and become more introverted and bizarre, probably. Come read us! http://theaudiogrill.wordpress.com
But don’t just take our word for it! Since forming The Audio Grill, we’ve already created music for what I’m certain will be a it of a phenomenon. It’s called Division Cell. Here’s the trailer…
The game is by a couple of reeeeeally genuinely lovely and creative guys called Hyperspace Yard. You can, and should, check out the Division Cell website, cos it’s got a tasty html5 version of the puzzles you can generate, play and share on there!
http://cell.hyperspaceyard.com/#070884177733056
(p.s I can do that one in 3 moves…)
Just did some in-game musics for my mate Rob and his game ‘Death Ray Manta’
The game is white hot. Imagine you could encapsulate that feeling of sneakily swigging the milk out of the bottle, stood in front of the fridge, knowing any minute someone could walk in and shout at you – into a videogame. That’s how it feels to play. Keep sipping from that sweet milk bottle all you like, but eventually you’ll get busted. It’s probably the most glorious, euphoric, anthemic fun you can have in a game in under 3 minutes.
Rob compares the experience to a videogame being played as a music chart single. I can totally get on board with that. It’s the thrill of driving on the motorway at night with your lights turned off just to see how many seconds you can do it before you bottle it and put them back on. It’s bouncing round your room while your favourite childhood single is playing, the moment made all the sweeter knowing that it will soon stop. But with prettier particle effects.
It’s available to download in ‘Bundle in a Box’ which seems like an unbelievably good deal: $0.99 for D.R.M., Space Giraffe (one of my all time faves) and some other stuff I haven’t seen before but look fresh.
Edge Online gave Death Ray Manta a well deserved 8, and called my composition ‘relentlessly euphoric’ which was lovely of them! You can hear my tune here…
This has been fun, writing the music for Frutorious. I’ve used a variety of things to make it happen, from acoustic guitars to sequencers and groove boxes.
The theme tune came first, the g-funk and dub later after a spell of ragtime experimentation.
You can listen to it here:
The third in what will probably be an on-going but sporadic series… here’s what the Frutorious theme music would sound like if it were a piece of folk music!
Props to Mr. Pickle for the guitaring x
Plug your headphones in, here’s my audio show reel!
So I wanted to see what the Senor Fruit theme tune would sound like using 16bit instruments instead of 8bit.
The answer is – not as nice! But it’s interesting…
But who is Señor Frutz? Soon all will be revealed. In the mean time, have a listen to the Señor Frutz! Deluxe title theme music
Infinite State Games have released the pre-launch teaser trailer for Shepherd!
Enjoy and spread the word
x
Hahah, I’d forgotten all about this until I woke up this morning singing the music…
In about 2008 when I was working in Croydon, I did the music for my chum Matthew Downie’s game ‘Jimmy Dodger’. Here’s its catchy in-game track…
Jimmy Dodger is a game where you dodge stuff for as long as you can, and of course, collect lots of fruit!
If you liked Jimmy Dodger, and I’m sure you did, you should pop along to Matthew’s web page and download more of his awesome, eccentric wee games
They Can't All Be Zingers! 