Game info: Wikipedia
Listening: Bandcamp
Info
Oh boy, I get to use the “unreleased” tag again! Wait, that’s not really an “oh boy” situation, is it? Well anyway.
This was the next major game in development by the folks who made Celeste, another platformer but more explorationy this time in contrast to Celeste’s more sequential design. It was in development for years but they cancelled it in December of last year, in part because gamedev is hard and in part because there was an IP dispute that ended with one of the team leaving. The composer Lena Raine just released an album of all the music she had written for it, so that’s nice.
The stated influences of the soundtrack are film/anime soundtracks of a few decades ago, with specific composers mentioned being Vangelis, Joe Hisaishi, and Yoko Kanno. Some elements of their scores were already present in Celeste, like big ’80s synths in “In the Mirror” and strings throughout the Farewell expansion, though it hasn’t necessarily been as concentrated as it has been until now, and there’s some new stuff to Earthblade like smoldering noir sax and trumpet in “Poison in the Roots.” This is all mixed together with some piano and electronic production that’s standard not just to Celeste but Raine’s other works as well. It’s a pretty nice and engrossing sound, probably my favorite overall work by Raine in that respect, though predictably my favorites were specifically the ones that blast the big ’80s sound at you.
Tonally it’s a mix of mystery and melancholy, mostly calm but not always a safe or relaxing calmness. There’s kind of an open feeling to it, evoked both through a vastness of sound and a general refusal to evoke just one single, isolated thing in a singe song. It’s a pretty nice look into a world that we’ll only ever have just a small look into.
Recommended tracks:
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“Child of the Earth” has a bunch of cool mechanical stuttering in the background
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“Verdant Mysteries” pulls out some occasionally spicy chord/melodic movement in the section starting at 0:45
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“Poison in the Roots” is that track with the noir sax and trumpet in it, but it makes you work for it first through choral vocals, formant synths, and beats
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