Curate of Curiosities

I would like to discuss something that I can't really bring across in text commentary form: the game's soundtrack.

Earlier on, I mentioned that when the Siren starts to work her magic during the arcade cabinet quest, a slowed down version of the game's title theme plays. To most of you, this will mean nothing, as I haven't shown you either theme.

But the soundtrack is still worth mentioning regardless. It's pretty unlike something that you would expect from an RPG. It's almost on the level of Space Funeral in that regard.

The game's page on itch.io credits the soundtrack to one Rrrrrose Azerty, providing a link to their Twitter account, which in turn hosted a link to their personal site, Loyalty Freak Music.

The site hosts a variety of albums in a variety of genres, and of course, their music has been used in indie games before. They provided the soundtrack for Adventures with Anxiety under the name Monplaisir, and, most surprisingly of all, even provided a track for Everhood, the indie game that's basically an interactive concept album crossed with Yume Nikki, hallucinogenics, and the Wikipedia page on Buddhism.

It's not clear just from looking through the site what album was repurposed for the game's soundtrack. Fortunately, there was a clue to be found within the game itself. Throughout the game, particularly early on, you can purchase vinyl records from a traveling musician, that change what music plays in combat. The vinyl for the default battle themes is called Fuzzy Trip in Remix Land.

It didn't take very long for me to find what I was looking for: Fuzzy Trip in Remix Land, in other words, I Hate You, Please Suffer's original soundtrack. Though, as I suspected, the album was not composed specifically for that game, and, true to its name, it mainly consists of samples of public domain recordings from the early 20th century.

The very first song on the playlist is indeed the title screen theme, which samples Angels Serenade by Valentine Abt. Its main instrument corresponds to the mandolin used in the original song, but the distortion makes it sound like an echoing woodwind, appropriate for both the start of a game centered around suffering, and for the vengeful spirit who uses the main character as a vessel.

The second track plays for the first time when the intro ends and you start the game in Ramona's apartment. The best way that I can describe it is the theme of someone who has found themselves at rock bottom and is left with nothing else to live for.

The music that plays in the forest comes from track 7. It's the most obviously cribbed from a vinyl recording, with audible crackle right when the music starts. For some reason, it reminds me of Everything At The End Of Time, the now-infamous concept album about dementia.

I probably should have brought this up earlier, but I did notice that the theme that plays in the lighthouse sounds like a distorted version of Danny Boy. It's track number 15, "When I think about my lovely doggo." Yep, that's the title. There's something about the use of theremin in this track that makes it feel both unsettling and nostalgic. It's in a rundown location that holds sentimental value to one of the party members, that just happens to be overrun by magic-infused wildlife, with a particularly vicious monster locked in the basement, so it's quite appropriate.

Not every track in the game's soundtrack comes from this album. For example, the music that plays in the Tower comes from tracks 7 and 21 of the album called October, created by the same composer under the name Soft and Furious. Appropriate for a track played in a repurposed office building, the music is both insincerely upbeat and maddeningly repetitive. You can practically feel the strain that the employees at the office were no doubt under, even before the fragment of the space god that formed the Tower warped them into the shambling, zombie-like forms we see in-game.

Oh, did I mention that their music was also used in Slimes, scitydreamer's previous RPG?

That's all I have to say about the soundtrack, really. I would just like to point out that the composer has both a personal blog and an itch.io page.