Game info: Website, Wikipedia
Listening: Bandcamp, iTunes/Apple Music, Amazon
Info
Well here’s a cryptic survival horror game about zombies, love, eastern European totalitarianism, and the dissolution of space, time, and the self. I found combat (specifically aiming) to be incredibly finicky, but otherwise it’s a nice spookin’ with cool worldbuilding and art direction, and it might make you lie in bed crying at 6 AM (not speaking from personal experience (possibly speaking from personal experience)).
The soundtrack was done by two people I’ve never heard of before, Cicada Sirens and 1000 Eyes (who also did sound design under the human name Tom Schley). Their work is pretty consistent and harmonizes well together; I think it’s not particularly obvious while listening through that it’s the work of two different people, though you might pick up on some individual quirks here and there (1000 Eyes uses odd time in a few tracks, for example). The music’s in a dark industrial/ambient/noise style instantly recognizable as horror game music: lots of big mechanical percussion, scary synths and other noises, and distortion effects. There’s also plenty of calmer, quite pretty music accompanying safer areas and emotional moments. It’s very evocative of Akira Yamaoka’s non-guitar music for Silent Hill, probably quite intentionally, but with an appropriately more robotty/retrofuturistic touch to the sound palette. Cool stuff!
The current soundtrack releases are missing a few pieces of classical music used in the game, and apparently the digital release also doesn’t include a piece by the game’s director & sound designer Yuri Stern because that ended up as a bonus track on the vinyl release. Will there be an easily accessible and complete soundtrack release some day? Who knows!
Recommended tracks:
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“Mynah” (1000 Eyes) layers a big metallic hit with a big synth bwomp for a massive sound during a boss fight with a massive enemy
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“Eulenlieder” (1000 Eyes) is warm and soothing, with a bit of an edge from noise and detuning, before busting out Big Synthwave in the second half (the only track in the game to do so)
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“Nue” (1000 Eyes) begins an uneven rhythm at 0:10 where every other measure is slightly laggier, a cool effect for a boss that kind of stumbles around
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“Sea Smoke” (Cicada Sirens) has a moment of hesitance at 0:26 when the piano phrase ends before it feels like it’s supposed to
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“The Red Gate” (1000 Eyes) is a nice layered piece that melodically at 0:24 reminds me a little of the Ico save theme
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“Lived In” (Cicada Sirens) is warped and frayed, a disturbing accompaniment to [COMPARTMENTALIZE TRAUMA] to
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