surasshu

the soundtrack for PCB, our falling block jam game, is out now on bandcamp! i wrote a bit about our game development here, and you can check out the game jam entries here (many bangers if you’re into this type of genre!). i want to write a bit more about the music itself, so here i go…

as soon as we came up with the concept of using PCB, i wanted to lean into a Y2K, frutiger aero aesthetic typical of stuff like PS2, DS games or even wiiware games. this would mean a lot of synths, a lot of breakbeats and digital drums, and a lot of vibes.

initially, because we had two distinct states in the game, i wanted to create a layer system whereby the first layer (placing board blocks) would be active and staccato, and the second layer (laying down the trace on top of the board to connect the components) would be more ambient and chill with pads and melodic elements. this can still be heard in the first two tracks: “welcome to PCB” is the ambient layer and “training manual” is the active layer.

however once we pivoted to just having one “mode”, i decided that doing interactive music in this way wasn’t really beneficial, and it was much more important to create a good vibe without overstaying its welcome. i drew a lot of inspiration from stuff like the PS2 startup sound, soichi terada’s works (ape escape of course, but especially fantavision and his early release called “sumo jungle”!), and polarium.

i actually came up with several brands myself because i was working a little ahead of the artist alex, so my process was more or less to compose freely while keeping a theme in mind, and then pitching that theme to alex, and he’d run with it and come up with a logo and a color scheme. i think that workflow ended up fitting really well, and it was fun to come up with various increasingly unhinged brands, such as a transhumanism brand for the more slow-paced and trippy track “□”, or the extremely dense and fast pace of “nanosoft”, which is a nanobot company.

we also considered that these companies are all increasingly shady or questionable as you progress in the game, although i don’t think that came out very much in the actual game in the end. i still kept that in mind when composing the songs, which is why most of them are a bit intense and abrasive. that sets them apart just a bit from the typical smooth vibes of that era, i think!

anyway i hope you enjoy the songs (and the game), thank you for reading!