Just ‘cause it’s Christman/Chanukah/Kwanzaa/Festivus doesn’t mean you have to be listening to Jingle Bells and all that festive stuff (although you’re very welcome to!). Here’s some music from the indie game world to rock your stockings as we approach the new year!
The Aquaria OST – Alec put together an amazing production for the Aquaria soundtrack, which he composed. This 2-disc, 50-track beast comes with an 8-page booklet that features artwork by myself and Marian artist Katie De Sousa, as well as an 8-panel mini-poster featuring screenshots from the game and liner notes. It’s a really beautiful package that comes in 3 flavors: unsigned, signed, and digital.
Fez Demo EPs – The mysterious Polytron Corporation has released 3 demo tracks from Fez, their upcoming XBLA game. The tracks, composed by Jason “6955” DeGroot, are available as a free download, or can be ordered as a limited-edition CD (250 copies). Check it out if you like chiptunes.
Zeno Clash OST – The Zeno Clash OST was released yesterday. Composed by Patricio Meneses, the soundtrack features 18 tracks and can be downloaded via iTunes or purchased as a CD.
Machinarium Bonus EP – Amanita Design has released five free bonus tracks for their incredible adventure game Machinarium. These are available as mp3s. The full soundtrack comes with the game if you buy it directly Amanita’s website (what are you waiting for?).
Game music 1 – Finally, the legendary indie chiptune artist Phlogiston released a free compilation of music he wrote for various games, like Bisse’s I Was in the War, cactus’s Air Pirates and PING PONG, and Darthlupi’s Wonder Bounce. He invites indie game designers to contact him about releasing their soundtracks through his label Pause. You would be amongst good company.
Well, that’s a lot of great indie game music right there. Hope you all enjoy these stocking stuffers. Please be sure to post any good soundtracks I may have missed that came out recently.
Amanita Design’s Machinarium was released last Friday. The game is superb. It’s a beautiful adventure game set in a unique world populated with all kinds of lovable, crazy robots (the protagonist is especially endearing). In my opinion, the visuals are peerless – every room is gorgeous, and filled with little details and surprises that ignite the imagination. The puzzles can get pretty difficult, but by and large I found them to be relatively intuitive and well-done. They’re quite varied, too, and include a mix of hotspot-hunting, inventory-management, timing, and mini-games.
Machinarium marks a very high point in the adventure-gaming and I highly recommend it. Even people who are put off by the slow pacing of most adventure games should try it, as there’s no dialogue in Machinarium and you are sucked into the game itself very quickly (even the title screen is fun!). You can play the demo right in your browser on the game’s website. The full game is $20.
The indefatigable Brandon Boyer has posted some lovely concept art by Amanita Design. These are sketches for Machinarium, their adventure game which is coming to the PC and Mac this Friday. You can download a short demo and also pre-order the game from the Machinarium website.
Having played it, I can safely say that it is a must-buy for fans of adventure games.
Amanita Design, the creators of Samorost and Samorost 2, have released a new project, made for the BBC. Questionaut is a beautiful quiz game with some adventure and puzzle elements to it. The questions, which cover topics ranging from writing to math to science, are aimed at 11 year-olds, so they’re a bit on the easy side… but the entire production is so lovely that it doesn’t really matter.
And they’re still working on Machinarium, which is due at the end of 2008 but really couldn’t come fast enough!
Amanita Design, the developer behind the beautiful and surreal Samorost series of games, is working on a new flash adventure game called Machinarium, slated for release in the second half of 2008.
Amanita was reluctant to reveal too many details at such an early stage, but the game will use a classic point-and-click interface, and share certain similarities with the Samorost games, such as 2D backgrounds and characters, and no spoken words. However, Machinarium will be much longer and more complex in many ways, and this time around, the art will be hand-drawn and players will have a small inventory.
Everyone in Machinarium’s original world is a robot, including the main hero of the game shown in one of the concept drawings below, who must stand against the bad guys from the “Black Cap Brotherhood”.
