Game info: Wikipedia
Listening: main soundtrack, Super Meat Boy remixes
Info
I wasn’t planning on listening to this soundtrack, since I’m not an especially big fan of Danny Baranowsky’s music and I’m not super familiar with any of the other guest composers, but I heard a couple of really good tracks when I watched a friend stream it, so I’m hitting this after all!
This is a slightly more traditional lane-based rhythm game from the folks behind Crypt of the NecroDancer, featuring a bunch of characters from that game and its DLC who’ve been randomly transported to the real world. As such, a lot of the soundtrack features a similar style to Baranowsky’s Crypt score—a mixture of electronic dance music, chiptune, and spooky gothicism—along with a good number of straight-up remixes. The original Crypt score didn’t stick entirely to one style though and neither does this, especially since there are five guest composers, so there’s also some rock, metal, blues, funk, downtempo, etc. mixed in there too. Additionally, the game has minigames and a more active storyline with cutscenes,
By far my favorite tracks were the ones by Sam Webster, sometimes in collaboration with Nick Nausbaum, both of whom I’ve never heard of before this game. Their tracks are all pretty warm and saccharine with a bit of a prog R&B feel, and they’re definitely all the stuff I liked the most from a harmonic and tonal perspective. There were some occasional parts of other tracks that I enjoyed, but nothing else was close to the level of those tracks for me.
A week after the game was released, they added three bonus remixes of tracks from Super Meat Boy, all arranged by Baranowsky. These are arranged in similar styles to the original soundtrack, which I don’t particularly care for at all, so I didn’t especially care for these either.
Recommended tracks:
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“Disco Disaster” (Danny Baranowsky) starts off with a nice multipart expansion of a recurring NecroDancer theme at 0:08
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“Elusional” (Jules Conroy) is a pretty nice slow burn-type jam
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“Om and On” (Alex Moukala) has the big bass this artist got famous online for
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“Morning Dove” (Sam Webster & Nick Nausbaum) was the first track that made me sit up and pay attention, bursting out of the gate with some nice synths and le chordz
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“Heph’s Mess” (Sam Webster & Nick Nausbaum) is described in the comments by fellow composer Alex Moukala as having Thundercat vibes, and that’s pretty accurate
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“Count Funkula” (Danny Baranowsky) has some nicely fake sax in it
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“Rift Within” (Josie Brechner) starts off with a nice clipped, detuned bell before doing, uh, a lot of other things
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