Game info: Wikipedia
Listening/music info: soundtrack album
Info
This album contains just the game’s background music; I’m going to listen to the vocal album next.
Takeshi Abo is a guy who’s been writing video game music since the early ’90s, doing mainly (but not exclusively) visual novel soundtracks. I only got into him about a year and a half ago and have still mostly only listened to his modern works, starting with the Science Adventure series, of which this game is the latest entry. They all have very good soundtracks: Abo’s music is full of cool, highly synthetic sounds (with a particular penchant for mallet synths and pads) and interesting chord changes, with some occasional odd time/rhythmic layering. And the latest game’s soundtrack follows right in their footsteps, I’m very pleased to report!
What to expect if you haven’t listened to one of these games where the title is two words separated by a semicolon: besides the compositional features I listed earlier, these games as I understand them are mysterious sci-fi stories, so there’s a lot of atmospheric, foreboding, electronic music, dark but not scarily so. His music for the games always has this unmistakable “visual novel” sound to them, which makes sense because that’s exactly what they are and what he’s been honing to perfection for so long.
Recommended tracks:
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“QUEST” has some cool slight detuning for dissonance
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“DIVERGENCE” is an arrangement of one of my favorite previous tracks from the series, “Explanation” from STEINS;GATE
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“HER MEMORY” goes big on chord planing and has some lovely subtle polymeter at 1:04
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