Game info: website
Listening/music info: soundtrack album, Bandcamp, Steam
Info
New HAGANE soundtrack! He did the music for the last game by this dev, Maiden & Spell, so it makes sense that he came back for this soundtrack. Rabbit & Steel is a co-op roguelite intended to be the distilled essence of MMORPG raids, so you quickplay series of boss fights while building new characters from scratch every run. Also all the playable characters are rabbit girls.
HAGANE’s a very video game music-ass composer who clearly grew up with and has been inspired by the history of video game music; his bio on his site once said “from retro to modern, his specialty is a timbre mixing together the old and new of game music,” so he’s open about it himself. He has dabbled in pure chiptune but more commonly incorporates FM and other lower-fi synths and samples as elements into his music, evoking that “modern production retro music” feeling. His chords are also pretty consistently great, any piece of music he writes is basically guaranteed nice jazzy chord extensions and unexpected jumps, no matter the style.
Rabbit & Steel’s soundtrack at times sounds like mixes of RPG and shmup music, which I’ve just realized as I type this sentence makes perfect sense since the game mixes MMORPG raids with bullet hell battles. The soundtrack combines orchestra + piano, EDM, and unexpected chord changes together in a way that reminds me just a little bit of standard field and battle music from Phantasy Star Online 2, which is one of the very best things in the entire world you could remind me of. Cool soundtrack!
Recommended tracks:
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“Kingdom Outskirts – Calm” is one of the prettier tracks, especially from 1:47 to the loop
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“King’s Arsenal – Action” has some delightfully fake lead sax
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“Red Darkhouse – Action” has the most unleashed piano of the soundtrack at 0:52
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“A Mysterious Battle” is one of the most EDM-heavy and therefore shmuppiest-feeling tracks in the game
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“The Moonlit Pinnacle” is appropriately dramatic for the final area of the game and also one of the only tracks featuring some funky electric bass like at 0:41
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