Game info: website
Listening/music info: soundtrack album, opening theme single
Credits
BGM: Yasuaki Iwata, Ryo Nagamatsu, Reo Uratani
Theme songs: Yuki Fukazawa, Yasuaki Iwata
Info
Here’s a game that I assumed was like just an RPG Maker game by a small team but is in fact made by a real company with a budget, Akatsuki Games; they’re the devs behind TRIBE NINE, a game with music by Masafumi Takada and Ryo Nagamatsu that apparently came out for real earlier this year and then very quickly died because it was a live service gacha, sigh :). Anyway, HYKE isn’t a gacha, probably! Instead it’s a top-down action RPG with combat that looks similar to like Hyper Light Drifter I guess, and it’s about a witch who loves camping or something.
The team behind this is interesting because four of the audio staff used to work for Nintendo: sound designer Takuro Yasuda, sound producer Mitsuhiro Hikino, and composers Yasuaki Iwata and Ryo Nagamatsu. Reo Uratani, formerly of CAPCOM, also wrote a few tracks; plus Tadashi Kinukawa, formerly of SEGA, was the sound director, so this was a big party of people who until recently worked at other, larger game developers. Unlike Uratani, who’s shunted off on his own later in the credits with other contractors, Iwata and Nagamatsu are listed under the dev Akatsuki Games and have their pieces tagged with the artist of “Akatsuki Games Sound Team,” which is interesting because they don’t otherwise list on their social media or websites that they’re gainfully employed; I’m not sure if they’re just part-time employees, or if they’re full-time employees but also maintaining their freelance stuff, or something else.
This is a decently sized soundtrack, more than three and a half hours of music, so it spans a number of styles like orchestral, EDM, bluesy and harder rock, and loungey jazz, but being a game with a big narrative focus on camping, there’s a big streak of peaceful, intimate, and contemplative music throughout the soundtrack, evoking campfires with acoustic guitar or simple natural beauty with piano, tuned percussion, and other acoustic instruments. Some of that is just a bit whatever to me, not really resonating with me a whole lot, but a decent amount of it does keep things interesting with nice chords or a synth in there to create a more complex texture, so there’s a lot I enjoyed at least a little bit. And again, this is a big soundtrack for an action RPG, so there’s plenty of dramatic or quirky or [other descriptor] music in there too. Sometimes you’ll even hear a piece of music that randomly sounds exactly like a specific Nintendo game for no reason, like Splatoon (that’s “Secret Underground Lab”) or the Blight battle themes from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (that’s the first minute of “VS. Fall Out” with a similar opening ostinato and Phrygian dominant usage and immediate movement a half step up).
Iwata was the lead composer, doing about 3/4 of the soundtrack himself. I wouldn’t say I’m overly familiar with his style beyond what he did for BotW, though to be fair, I do think some of his contributions there kick a whole lot of ass. My favorite pieces in BotW by him tended to have nice big extended chords and/or mix acoustic instruments with cool synth sound design, and wouldn’t you know it, a lot of my favorites in HYKE you could describe the same way. It’s almost like there are certain types of music I gravitate toward, a wild thought for sure.
Nagamatsu wrote the smallest number of pieces but his were definitely the weirdest, both on a purely compositional level and a “how could this piece of music possibly fit in this video game specifically” level, so it goes without saying that he was my favorite contributor; some of them are quite normal of course, it’s not all incoherent nonsense, but I do so appreciate that he continues to offer developers baffling nonsense and they continue to pay him for baffling nonsense. Uratani’s tracks I generally found to be the least interesting of the three, but a few of his tracks do have some really good chords, so he’s cool. Everyone’s cool, this is a decent soundtrack.
The game’s ending theme song was written by Iwata, and the melody is used in a number of other tracks in the soundtrack as a main theme (though it’s not the theme featured in “theme”); it’s an alright pop song, it occasionally sneaks in some chords with a little bite but otherwise it’s nothing super out of the ordinary. The opening theme was written by a composer I’ve never heard anything by, Yuki Fukazawa, whose bio blurb on his profile on his agency’s site says his career goal is to “surpass Tchaikovsky,” which is… a real bold statement to just throw out there, isn’t it? But I did like his song more! It’s in a little more of a fantasy folk style and mixed with a touch of electronic sound production, which is more to my taste, and I appreciate that it’s more in-your-face with some chord changes and modulations. It’s not as good as Tchaikovsky, though.
Recommended tracks:
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“Humorous Conversation” (Yasuaki Iwata) is a quirky character theme with some nice back-and-forth flute and clarinet action and a couple of extra beats stashed in the end somewhere
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“Rufous Forest” (Iwata) has a little bit of light music flavor to it
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“Flowing and drifting” (Reo Uratani) was Uratani’s most ambient contribution and he did a really good job with this one
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“Mystic Lakeside” (Iwata) is the piece that randomly sounds exactly like a Breath of the Wild ambient piano overworld theme
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“Mysterious Jungle” (Ryo Nagamatsu) has a cool handpan(?) riff in the background and I love the growly double bass line at 1:02
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“Spaceship Wreckage” (Iwata) is one of the most fully electronic tracks in the game
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“VS. Extra-Terrestrial” (Nagamatsu) is some certified baffling nonsense, this is the kind of shit you can only get from Ryo Nagamatsu (this character is an anime girl like most of the rest of the cast by the way, not a random alien with a freaky or grotesque design)
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“Relaxing with Cherry Blossoms” (Uratani) is a mix of chill downtempo electronic and Japanese instruments
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