Game info: Wikipedia
Listening: soundtrack album, emulated audio
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When I listened to a bunch of random soundtracks by Kuniaki Haishima last year, I skipped one of his games because an unofficial translation of the game was in the works and I knew for a fact I was going to play it as soon as it dropped. Well, it dropped a few months ago, and I finally finished playing it last week! So here we go.
Kowloon’s Gate is an adventure game made by some folks who would later go on to make Planet Laika, including writer/director Nakaji Kimura. It takes place in a grotesque, monster-filled version of Kowloon Walled City that’s reappeared in this world after having been destroyed a few years before, and your job is to send it back where it came from before an energy imbalance destroys the world. It also ends up being about Chinese history and mysticism, the internet, greed, solidarity in the face of hardship, and of course, completely unexplained surreal nonsense. I found it a bit more grounded than Planet Laika, in that generally speaking more of the events of the game follow logically from the systems and lore it establishes and there’s less random hallucinogenic bullshit that happens for no reason. But like, just less random hallucinogenic bullshit that happens for no reason, not no random hallucinogenic bullshit that happens for no reason.
It’s got two modes of play. Half of the game, the charmingly-named “JPEG dungeons,” is overworld segments where you navigate between static screens, randomly talking to people and solving simple item-based puzzles until you find the one thing to do that advances the story; it’s actually really similar to Planet Laika, if that game had Mystlike node-based navigation. The other half of the game is fairly basic dungeon crawling through sprawling 3D building complexes that you’re trying to purify from malice by battling a bunch of inanimate objects that’ve been turned into monsters.
The general background music for both of these segments is actually pretty similar: droney ambient with metallic percussion, warping pads, weird noises, and some occasional traditional Chinese instrumentation because the game takes place in China. To the extent there’s a difference between the two, the dungeon-crawling themes tend to have a little bit more of a darker sound through lower drones and somewhat more insistent or boomier percussion, though there are some darker city themes that are indistinguishable from the dungeon themes (like “Tai Chang Road”) and some lighter dungeon themes that sound like they should be city themes (like “Wangren Road”). It’s a fairly standard kind of Haishima dark ambient sound, most similar to Forbidden Siren 2 probably if it was a little less evil/hostile and a lot more Chinese, which isn’t a bad thing in my book because I do like Haishima’s sound.
Most of the rest of the soundtrack is for events: character and character-adjacent themes used in some dialogues, audio from prerendered movies that often has voice lines baked in, and special navigation themes for the city when something weird’s going on. There’s also a small amount of miscellaneous music: two battle themes, some game over themes, some music for when you’re using the computer, etc. These pieces are more varied than the exploration themes, sometimes getting more melodic, including some different instrumentation (particularly orchestra), or ramping up in intensity or chaoticness. Generally I liked these a little less than the exploration themes, but some of the loud event themes and intentionally off-putting character themes are really good.
Not a surprise that I’m a sucker for a Haishima soundtrack at this point, but this one was cool! Probably at a medium level of “wtf is going on here” unhinged for him, not as unnecessarily insane as some of his other works, but the incorporation of the Chinese instruments gives it a pretty unique feel.
A short and very incomplete soundtrack-ish album (-ish because some tracks have extra parts, possibly these are Haishima’s originals before being programmed in) was released in 1997, but Clarice Disc released a much fuller album in 2014, with the caveat that most of the tracks contain multiple pieces of music separated by silence for some reason (soundtrack publishers rightfully stopped doing this by the early ’90s because it sucks). This album also includes all of the movie audio too, which is cool, though they all have the sound effects and voice lines in them too so I guess the original clean audio doesn’t exist any more. At the end of the album there are alternate versions of a couple of tracks from some demo version of this game that apparently existed (I like this version of “Lung Shing Road” more than the final version!), as well as some unused music that’s present in the game’s data; there are a few other unused(?) tracks they chose not to include but they’re all either minor variations of other music or 100% environmental sound effects.
Recommended tracks:
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“Kowloonfront” is the city theme you hear the most so it’s good it’s one of the best ones, melting into the warm comfy sound zone
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“Navi Office” plays during one or two scenes where you’re talking to people through CRT screens, I just like the noise manipulation in this
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“Rescue” took me by surprise when it first started playing and I had to stop for a minute and listen to it, love that little motion down that happens at 0:08
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“Disturbing Event” is more on the scary side of things, dissonant plonk city
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“Suijian” is one of the most discordant character themes, this guy has had a rough ten years
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“Sea of Qi” kind of approaches ambient industrial with that beefy, bassy synth blap that first starts at 0:31
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“The Champion” is one of the more skittery dungeon themes
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“Qinglong’s Choice” was the movie track I think worked best as a standalone thing, the sound effects work well musically for me
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“Unused Track 9” is orchestral catastrophe in a way the proper soundtrack doesn’t ever get but it’s definitely reminiscent of stuff Haishima’s written elsewhere
(track titles are unofficial translations largely based on the fantranslation)
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