Band Saga is a musical roguelike—basically it generates action roguelike dungeons based on its own Genesis-like FM sequencer, which can then be played through. You can generate levels based on importing your own MIDI music, or by composing music within the game (which can be shared with a text string online with other players). Also interesting is that you can change a song while playing through the dungeon based on that song, which would then affect the dungeon you are in. And as you can see from the trailer, the animation is also very nice.
I interviewed Rekcahdam to get a more in-depth look into how it all works, read it under the jump!
Both a new Humble Bundle and a new Indie Game Music Bundle have come out this week (coincidentally, as they’re otherwise unrelated).
The Humble Bundle includes Bastion, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Psychonauts, LIMBO, and Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP.
The Indie Game Music Bundle includes the OST’s of Terraria, Plants Versus Zombies, Dustforce, Ilomilo, and Frozen Synapse (plus much more if you pay over $10).
LabChirp by Labbed is, like Bfxr (which we posted about previously), a tool for synthesizing sound effects. LabChirp is lesser-known than Bfxr/Sfxr, and each program has options the other program doesn’t. I’m not an expert in sound generation at all (although I have used both programs quite a bit, and create the sound effects for my games using them), so here’s my ignorant appraisal of it:
The second pay-what-you-want Indie Game Music Bundle is up. The albums it features are: Aquaria, Sword & Sworcery, To the Moon, Jamestown, Machinarium, Shatter, 8-Bit Pimp, Mighty Switch Force, Cat Astro Phi, Passcode, Machinarium Bonus EP, Tower of Heaven, Eternal Daughter, Songs for the Cure ’10, Squids, and Thunderbeam. Another album will unlock after 207 more purchases.
Although you can pay as little as $1 for the first 5 albums, the full bundle is priced as $10 or more, and includes FLACs. All the songs are guaranteed to be high-quality, DRM-free mp3s.
There are less than 24 hours to purchase the Indie Game Music Bundle, which features 21 albums! The albums are: Minecraft: Volume Alpha, Cobalt EP, Super Meat Boy, Imposter Nostalgia, Ravenmark: Scourge of Estellion, A.R.E.S. Extinction Agenda, Return All Robots, Mighty Milky Way / Might Flip Champs, PPPPPP, Tree of Knowledge, Wind-up Knight, Binding of Isaac, 72 Minutes of Fame, Milk Snake, Antigravity!, Extreme Roadtrip, Contingency, Circle, Cardboard Box Assembler, and Bitejacker. Most recently, they’ve also added Songs for the Cure ’11, a nice compilation that was originally sold to promote cancer research.
Although you can pay as little as $1 for 10 albums, the full bundle is priced as $10 or more, and includes FLACs. All the songs are guaranteed to be high-quality, DRM-free mp3s.
The beta for Fract has been out for a while, but the news of “official” production beginning on the full game and the addition of Henk Boom (of Pax Britannica fame) to the husband and wife studio has gotten me all excited about it again (even though it isn’t expected to be finished until early 2012).
It’s a first person adventure game with an electro, Tron-ish theme in both look and sound that hooked me from the beginning. The beta is short if you can quickly figure out the puzzles, but Richard Flanagan says it’s only a “slice” of what he has envisioned for the full game. Also, I hope the final puzzle wows you as much as it did me the first time I hit the play button.
Fract’s beta was made in Unity and comes in Mac and Win flavors. However, it is only downloadable, since it’s a hefty 117 MB (a heads up for those of you who have to consider bandwidth caps).
Four years after the release of Everyday Shooter, Jonathan Mak has announced his latest game, Sound Shapes, a “musical platformer” that lets you play, create, and share levels built using a music sequencer-like editor. EDIT: The game is a collaboration between Jonathan and musician Shaw-Han Liem (aka I am Robot and Proud).
(Source: Esquar, via TIGForums)
Stephen Lavelle’s browser-based extension of the free sound effects tool sfxr is complete, and has been dubbed “Bfxr“. Bfxr allows for the creation of more complex sound effects and includes features such as a mixer and a persistent list of created songs. A downloadable version is also available.
Increpare has modded Tom Vian’s Flash port of sfxr, a simple sound effects creation program by Dr Petter. Aside from the improved interface, as3sfxr-b adds a number of new features, including a playlist of created sounds, triangle waves, and the ability to share sounds with friends via a link. Increpare is currently taking suggestions for the app at this TIGForums thread.
Links: Tom Vian’s Flash Port, sfxr
Merry Chrimbus, everyone! To coincide with the opening of his new website, here’s a gift for you from Gryzor87, the musician behind Locomalito‘s Hydorah and L’Abbaye des Morts: a full-color, 95-page manual on how to use Pixel’s free PXTone program to make your own game music. But the word “manual” doesn’t quite do the project justice – Gryzor87 not only walks you through the app’s features, he also provides a lot of excellent advice and examples on how to make music that sounds good and fits the theme of your game. The download comes with pxtone and plenty of sample songs, voices, and other examples, too.
In short, it’s a one-stop source for anyone looking to get into making their own game music, and a work of art in its own right. I’m definitely going to be using this. Thanks, man!