The Music of CRIMBO!

Hi everyone, AJH here.

It’s great to be releasing a brand new Little Shop of Pixel game, especially one spreading holiday cheer! We had such a great time making the game and I like to think it shows!

Inspiration

The guys have wanted music in a LSOP game for a while and CRIMBO was a great chance to test it out and when they asked me to put some music together for the game I jumped at the chance.

We knew we wanted something upbeat for the main game, something up-tempo, light and festive. With the many of mainstream Christmas favourites still under copyright we looked at seasonal traditional folk songs. The Sussex Carol just seemed to pop out and after a few different interpretations we settled on the version you hear in the release.

For the title screen I wanted something more atmospheric, something more ethereal even magical – and once the snow (not bug snow!) went in it just reinforced the vibe. At the same time it snowed here in the UK, so I sat watching snow in the game and outside the window - the game and reality in sync provided the perfect inspiration!

Arkos

The music for the game was created using the fantastic Arkos Tracker. It’s been an extremely long time since I used a soundtracker program and it was my first time on the AY chip but Arkos is so intuitive, smart and clear that I had tunes running from the start. If you haven’t checked it out I highly recommend it. Great work guys, keep it up!

Heroes

Finally, creating the music for CRIMBO gave me the perfect excuse to rediscover all my chip tune heroes, old and new. More on this in another post, but I highly recommend the excellent Modizer iPhone app. Chip and mod tunes on the move! We must be living in the future!