Game info: website
Listening: YouTube, extracted audio
Credits
Audio Design – The Audio Guys: Dan Gardner, Denis Liudkevich
Composer: Michiel van den Bos
Intro Cinematic – Music: Tee Lopes
Info
So I only just found out after seeing an interview about this game right before release that Michiel van den Bos is still in the game industry, writing music! He started out in the demoscene in the early ’90s, writing music as MCA of the group Vicious, and like a lot of European demoscene composers, that eventually turned into writing music for video games. He’s definitely best known for his contributions to the shooters Unreal, Unreal Tournament, and Deus Ex, but since then he’s apparently kept busy doing some soundtracks for games by Triumph Studios and the Sonic mobile games developed by HARDlight which I’ve only found out exist right now. And this is a Sonic mobile game developed by HARDlight, so here he is!
You can definitely hear that some of the tunes were clearly written by a tracker musician in leads, both in the timbres of the patches chosen and they way they’re written with ornamental notes and portamento slides. The electronic music styles chosen also come out of that era of tracker modules, with a healthy dose of a cutesy, upbeat Sonic vibe. fusoxide described this as “this sounds like what I’d imagine a sonic DS game OST developed in mainland europe to sound like” and that’s right on the money. It’s a fun, throwback kinda soundtrack, good for the soul.
As noted in the credits, the intro movie theme was done by Tee Lopes; it’s super cheesy and has geetarz in it. He’s not credited, but the game also has VGR’s “Green Hill Zone” remix from Sonic Mania Remixed in its audio files.
Recommended tracks:
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“Menu” has a section from 1:10 to 1:54 which is probably the closest the soundtrack gets to Unreal-style drum ‘n’ bass
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“Scrambled Shores 1” had what I felt was the most old-skooliest tracker melody, I kinda feel like the melody is also alluding to “Green Hill Zone” in parts
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“Dream Factory (Ambient)” is one of the lower-key tracks that each zone has for some reason
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“Seaside Hill” has a lot of dramatic demoscene prod energy in its climax; this might be a remix of “STAGE 01 : SEASIDE HILL” from Sonic Heroes, but I don’t recognize which part if so
(track titles are unofficial)
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