New Blasphemous DLC: Strife & Ruin!

My friends from The Game Kitchen have just released their new DLC for Blasphemous, called “Strife & Ruin”, and... I'm glad to announce that it features some music by me!

Mauri contacted me some months ago because they’d like me to write some classic chiptune tracks for a special “8 bit zone" they were working on. Inspiration in the classic NES Castlevania titles was pretty obvious (genre, graphics, etc.), so I had to go and do everything in the old good famitracker! I knew that some of the developers were big fans of the classic Akumajou Densetsu  soundtrack, so VRC6 channels were mandatory. I was superthrilled and excited about the commision!

My favorite music genre on the NES is that baroque-clockwork-rock from oldschool FX! EP by Virt, which is for me a step beyond in the classic Konami style... I started to write some stuff in that direction, but I guess that my first tests were way far too proggy. You know, getting to know what you shouldn't do is part of the job, and sometimes there's a bit of trial and error.

I had a general idea of what was the sound of the game because I've been following its development since the very beginning, but at that point I had to stop to study in a deeper way what my friend Carlos Viola had been doing with the compositional work on the game (something that I should have done since the beginning TBH 😅). The soundtrack is a bit in the foreground, especially if you compare how "in your face" was in The Last Door, their previous game. Music comes to the forefront in boss battles (which are one of the strongest points of the game) and narrative moments (dialogs with special characters, animated sequences, etc.). 

This meant that there weren't many tunes I felt I could transform into chiptune style easily, because the original tracks are all about ambience, so I had to look for something else. The team linked me to one of the most beloved tracks of the previous DLC, called Baile de violetas, which was a nice bet for a 2A03 adaptation. I also liked the music from the original trailer too, so it ended up like the base for the "Press Start" tune.

With a little bit of this and a little bit of that, I ended up with five tunes! That's a lot more NES music than my average in the last five years! The last one, the track for the boss fight, was inspired in the original classic NES game, which at the same time, was inspired by Night on Bald Mountain by Mussorgsky (thanks Narek for pointing this out!). You have to love the crazy use of that saw wave!!

My friend Parejo did a really good job with the audio implementation and sound effects and well, I think that the overall output is really nice! The Game Kitchen is one of the most solid teams I know of, and I'm sure they're going to do even greater things in the future! Thanks to Mauri, Enrique, Maikel, David, Dani, Baxa, Parejo, Carlos and the rest of company for letting me join this great adventure!

If you don't have the game yet (you should!), you can watch and listen to this gameplay video!