In our grand tradition of featuring games industry experts on the Akupara Blog, today’s entry is brought to you by Cat Arthur!

Akupara and Rogue Snail approached me in 2019 to give Relic Hunters Zero a fresh new soundtrack to go along with all their updates in Relic Hunters Zero Remix and I immediately said yes. I felt very lucky to contribute to such a beloved title with millions of players worldwide and the idea that so many people could hear my music pushed me to write the best stuff I’ve ever made. I wanted to make something bright and cute, but also full of determination and driving energy, just like the characters themselves. It also needed to reflect the outer space setting of the game and it obviously it needed to slap. They called the game “Remix!” They named it a music thing! The music has to be a focal point! It had to be chiptuney to match the art style but not so chiptuney that it sounded like an NES game. Relic Hunters uses pixel art but doesn’t face the restrictions a 16 bit game would and I wanted the music’s aesthetic to run parallel to that. I used emulations of NES, Commodore 64, and Sega Genesis sound chips for a lot of the core instruments but I also used more modern synthesizers to fill out the songs and create the extended harmonies. It’s all synthesizers, though. Usually I write with a lot of guitar and bass so this was kind of a challenge, to make everything in the daw, on a keyboard or clicked in.

So lets talk about that track huh?

This is the first real song most people are gonna spend significant time with. It’s the title screen and main menu music. Technically, you hear the cutscene music first but after you watch the story once most people are gonna skip it. This is the first real declaration of what the game is about and what’s gonna be used in most promos and media for Relic Hunters Zero Remix. It had to be the immediately accessible and impactful.

It opens straight into the main theme, no intro. The melody needed to be strong, epic, and adventurous but also I wanted it to get stuck in your head really badly. Then it goes into the verse, which is driving, building, and full of high sparklies. I’ve written a lot of music for slot machines and this gets drilled into you, so now they always slip into whatever I’m writing. During the C section I alternate between measures of 7/8 and 4/4 to preclude what is gonna happen musically later in the game. As you get deeper into the game, the music becomes more dominated by weird compound meters. I should say I did that because I wanted the music to be more challenging as the game gets more challenging, but honestly I just listened to too much Dream Theater growing up which broke my brain and I can’t write a whole song in 4/4. Then I restate the melody and follow it up with a harmonized variation. I did what I call Iron Maiden harmonization, where I diatonically double the melody a 3rd below, just like Iron Maiden does between 2 lead guitars. This probably has a more formal name than Iron Maiden harmonization but I don’t know it. Up to this point, the song has been pretty emotionally intense so the following section is chill and cute. It also has a bass feature because no song is complete without a bass feature. It then transitions into the loop around and builds backup to state the melody again.I wrote these songs to stand on their own as much as I wrote them to fit the game.

I’m very proud of this soundtrack and I hope you’ll give them a listen when you play Relic Hunters Zero Remix!

You can follow Cat on twitter here, Soundcloud here, and Spotify here! As always, if you want to connect with Cat or any other member of our team, you can join the official Akupara Discord!