Game info: Steam
Listening/music info: soundtrack album
Info
Here’s an indie rhythm game/parasocial relationship simulator where you listen to a bunch of denpa music and flood the internet with anonymous posts to spread the gospel of your virtual obsession Yunyun. There are five original denpa songs commissioned for the game (with a couple bridging into hardcore and rock), but most of the in-game songs are somewhat famous denpa songs licensed from elsewhere, mostly from older PC games but from other random sources too like Touhou arrange albums by IOSYS. There’s also a little under an hour of BGM for the game’s story segments and miscellaneous menus.
It’s probably not hard to figure out that I’m not a big fan of the cutesy, hyperactive pop of denpa, though sometimes the chaoticness of the production and composition can be fun; MOSAIC.WAV in particular have done a few things in the space that I like. So aside from the occasional random weird bit I didn’t find the original songs for Yunyun Syndrome particularly interesting, though I think they’re basically fine for denpa.
The BGM was done by a bunch of reasonably high-profile J-core artists, all folks you’ll see constantly contributing to rhythm games and original music compilations year after year after year. So these are obviously all electronic, though in a mix of styles from hardcore to synthwave to electro swing to glitchy trap to etc. A couple of unusual instrumentation choices show up in a few different tracks: occasionally there’s some cartoon sound effects, which I guess makes sense because this is a goofy game, and occasionally there’s some chiptune sounds, which isn’t because the game has an 8-bit aesthetic (it doesn’t) but might be there to go along with the slightly dated computer UI that parts of the game have. Pedantically it doesn’t really fit that because the UI and denpa are more 2000s than the late ’80s/early ’90s chiptune sounds, but if there’s actually a thematic reason that’s the best one I can think of.
The BGM’s alright. About half of it is on the chiller/ambient side and the other half is more active dance-y stuff, and not super surprisingly I liked the former more than the latter. The writing in the chiller tracks was maybe slightly more interesting and weird overall than the others but not vastly so, the main difference is just there’s more of the kinds of sound design I like in those tracks than the others. The production on all the tracks is all fine, everyone here has been doing this kind of music for ages and it shows.
Recommended tracks:
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“Denpa-tic Imaginary Girl ‘Q’” (MARON, vo. KOTOKO) was the most “XD so random” of the new denpa songs
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“Observing Glitch ‘YUN-YUN’ -Fragment-” (Laur) is one of the glitchiest tracks, though there’s another variation (“-Shape-”) that’s even moreso
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“EXC3PT!ON_H4NDL1NG” (DJ Noriken) is the most prominently chiptune track in the game
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“EMERGENCY” (P*Light) is just some straightforward psytrance
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“Hollow” (Getty) actually reminded me a little of PRAGMATA in having piano, synth noises, and polymeter
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“A Pause in Passing” (aran) has a nice distorted lead at 0:16 that gives me steel guitar vibes
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