Plus – Free Indie Soundtracks

By: Derek Yu

On: August 7th, 2008

II (“Pause”), the retro/chiptune music label and community, has launched a new section to their website called Plus, which is specifically devoted to free indie/doujin game soundtracks. So far there are only two albums available, the Rescue: The Beagles OST, composed by Disasterpeace, and the Another Bound Neo (doujin FPS) OST. Label co-founder and artist Phlogiston says more are on the way, but he’d love to see developers contact II and release their soundtracks. You might recall that Phlogiston is the musician behind cactus and VilleK’s Brain Damaged Toon Underworld, among other things. He’s also collaborated with the chiptune music collective 8bitpeoples.

Great idea! Developers, submit your music – I hope to see many more games on there in the future. And definitely poke around the rest of the II catalog, too.

(The Rescue: The Beagles album art displayed above is by the very talented Annabelle Kennedy. Full version of the artwork can be seen here!)

TIGdb: Entry for Rescue the Beagles

500 Bananas!

By: Derek Yu

On: March 15th, 2008

cactus and VilleK have set up a new blog for Lo-Fi Minds. Their inaugural post has screenshots and descriptions for their two current projects, Brain-Dead Toon Underworld (made for our VGNG Compo), and Secret Agent Hotel. Both games look/sound absolutely fantastic, natch.

I also thought this would be a good time to make a request for donations to our friend cactus. I’ve gotten more value and excitement from all his games than your average triple-A mainstream title. His work inspires me every day as a game designer and an artist.

cactus is incredibly creative and talented, but could definitely do more to market himself. But I really wonder if he should have to? Shouldn’t being good at making games be enough to make games for a living? I think so. And I’m dreaming about alternative business models to let people like cactus make great freeware and keep at it.

But until then, let’s give a little back to this supercool dude and support him on his quest to entertain and amaze us! Everyone who met him at GDC fell in love with him (for some *cough*Brandon*cough*, it was romantic love). He’s a really nice, genuine guy, who just wants to make games and be happy. It would be awesome for cactus to be able to put all his energy into being himself and not have to get a ho-hum job to make ends meet.

I’m putting in $20 to start, and suggesting $5-$20 donations from those who want to. We can’t easily keep track of how we’re doing, but feel free to post a comment letting us know why and/or how much you donated. I hope you do!

Donate here! (PayPal link at the bottom of the page.)