Game info: Steam
Listening: iTunes/Apple Music, Steam
Info
Here’s the newest game by dev Asobism, some kind of cute colorful roguelike autobattler that’s a sequel to an earlier game they did, Vivid Knight. I haven’t listened to any music from any of their games before besides two pieces that big fave Yasuhisa Watanabe wrote for Dragon Poker, but I do have a very good reason to listen to this one, which we’ll get to momentarily but which has already been spoiled by the categories I’ve filed this post under.
Four composers did the soundtrack for this game. Two of them work for the dev: Kohei Matsuoka, who previously worked for music production company PURE SOUND, where he worked on the Summon Night series and other random stuff, and Ryosuke Kojima, a guitarist who formerly did a bunch of songwriting but apparently does this game thing now. A third, Mizuki Kamada, works for the music wing of creative production company G-angle. I am not at all familiar with anything that any of these three folks have ever written.
The last composer is the reason we’re listening to this and is much more mysterious: Minako Matsuoka, a name which seemingly does not appear in any other video game ever. However, she writes her first name in the same (fairly common) way as GAME FREAK composer Minako Adachi, who happens to be married to *checks notes* composer Kohei Matsuoka of the game developer Asobism. So, did Adachi compose seven pieces of music for this game as a side gig and get credited under her married name so as not to fall afoul of the traditional Japanese taboo about moonlighting? Sure looks like it!
The soundtrack starts off in a reasonably typical fantasy adventure style with some synthy folk/world-ish music: lots of piano, acoustic guitar and other strummed strings, winds, hand percussion, and background strings, mixed with some occasional synth noises and electronic percussion. After a little bit though it branches out a bit, getting a little quirky with shop/character themes and eventually bringing in some EDM, rock, and jazz on occasion, though sometimes still with some of that folky instrumentation so it’s not completely out of place.
My favorite contributor was predictably Adachi, who mostly wrote a bunch of Pokémon-ish music but with a slightly different soundscape, but I thought all four of them did a decent enough job; I’d describe all of their outputs as “fine with an occasional cool track,” so as a whole I’d say the soundtrack is pretty good, not great but pretty good. Ryosuke Kojima was the main composer and he had a stronger trend of lyrical, anime-pop melodies in his pieces than anyone else did, which isn’t necessarily appealing to me, but he some of his tracks have good chords and he also did more of the mystical-sounding pieces than anyone else so obviously I can’t hate on him. Kohei Matsuoka’s pieces tended to be a bit more ensemble- or band-focused in their instrumentation and more jammy writing. Mizuki Kamada wrote three boss themes, so his tracks are all on the heavier side of things.
Recommended tracks:
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“Lymbos” (Kojima) is one of the more ambient mystical tracks, I like the scratchy metallic noise that comes in the background around like 0:30
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“Dungeon – Beast King’s Lair” (Adachi) super sounds like a Pokémon area theme
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“Demon Jeweler – Husslin” (Kojima) is a lo-fi electronic groove, one of the more out-there tracks in the game in that way
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“Dungeon – Sunken Ship (Boss)” (Kojima) shows off some of that anime melody thing at 1:02 against some somewhat jarring chords
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“Dungeon – Rapacity (Boss)” (Kamada) has some nice radio tuning-ish noises right before the loop at 1:26
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“Theme of Anansi” (Adachi) is a comedic haunted house theme, apparently this guy is a spooky grim reaper wearing a tie
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“Dungeon – Depths of the City of Avarice (Battle)” (Matsuoka) is a prog version of a jazz band theme for the non-combat parts of this dungeon
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