I’ve been able to play FEZ a week earlier than the release, and today the press embargo is officially lifted. So I feel the need to say one or two things about it.

One:

IT

IS

AWESOME

Two:

THE SOUNDTRACK, HOLY COW

10/10

would bang

Seriously though.

FEZ is a loveletter to video games. Classic video games mostly.

The first things I realized while playing it:

1. The visuals are amazing. 2D, but revolving around a 3D axis that is made of voxel like worlds
2. The platforming is great. Renaud must have put in a lot of attention so the game feels good to play
3. The game is huge and insanely detailed. Everything you see in screenshots usually has a reason to be there. Wow.
4. The music is the best thing I’ve heard in a long time.

So after I realized that, the first thing I did was hug Phil, because I was literally moved by all this. I forgot how much fun video games can bring to you. I forgot that you can enjoy every minute and don’t need to feel like you are being forced to get through a campaign, grind levels, drive or ride from place a to b every “mission, get through the longest cutscene in video game history, play the same mission over and over again, press quick time event buttons or walk a straight line the entire game until you see the end.

I’m not saying FEZ doesn’t have any of that. There is a lot of backtracking involved. But thankfully the game gives you a lot of chances to warp yourself to the place you want to go. Which is where the world map comes in super handy too. You see, FEZ has a huge world, in fact I think it’s made out of around 150 differently sized areas. And there is a lot to find.

The world map though seems to be complicated and confusing, and I’m sure it’ll be one of the biggest criticism of the game. I hovever think that it’s pretty neat and very clearly laid out. It’s complicated to people that only started playing the game. If you really want to finish FEZ though, you’ll notice how easy it is to figure out which place you should visit next to see what you haven’t found yet.

Because, holy crap, there is a lot to find. And the fun part about is that some of the things you need to find are filled with mystery. So much mystery that you might even end up spending up to 5 hours on a single puzzle. Don’t be scared though. If you don’t want to do that, like I did, you can simply ignore such puzzles. The game gives you a lot to do and you don’t need to see everything to enjoy your stay in the world of FEZ.

And one big recommendation I can give you, if you DO want to find out everything FEZ has to offer, is to avoid gamefaqs. I haven’t had so much joy figuring out one of the harder puzzles with my entire family by looking at the clues and trying to find a logical solution. This one little puzzle that gives you obvious points to work on got us all together, a family that has essentially only one person that likes video games, me, and still we all played it and enjoyed it a lot when we finally figured out what we were supposed to do. This is something I also forgot video games could do.

And then there’s the soundscape. I already said that the music is awesome, but the sound design is also spot on. Filled with frequency and bitrate filters, so it feels like it’s lowpoly, but it’s extremely detailed. You can hear the sound of wind, water, birds, a forest, storms. Even if the wonderful music isn’t there, the sounscape is still there to support the game’s mood.

All in all, FEZ made me happy. I forgot that video games can make you feel as good as this game made me feel.

Sheesh, I’m really not a good writer. Bleh, still, FEZ IS AWESOME.

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Have you heard of Weebls Stuff? It’s a great british dude who somehow manages to make a living by creating weird looping songs and funny videos on top.

Last month he asked me to remix one of his newest accomplishments, the Savlonic song “The Driver”. Here:

And this here is my remix

All in all a very fun gig. I also recently added the instrumentals to my remix because people demanded it for some reason

Those are free, but the full remix itself costs money, as Weebl and I somehow have to buy food. I guess. So if you want to support us two, you’re awesome.

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Here are two very small teasers to the soundtrack for the Minecraft documentary:

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Hi.

I really let this blog rot, didn’t I. AGAIN.

So to get back to it again, here are some things that happened to me in the last 2 months.

• My brother had a serious car accident that should have killed him, but he only got a fracture. We’ve gotten a lot closer in that time, and I’m so glad he’s not gone.

• My brother got me sick with some stomach infection he got from the hospital, and for that we hate each other with as much spite as possible. I’m kidding, but the sickness was pretty serious. I threw up, and I counted, 20 times in 24 hours.

• I started seriously working on music for the Minecraft documentary, and if they, could happen, kick me out of it, I at least have a new album which I believe is pretty kick-ass.

• I started learning Japanese and must say, katakana is much harder to write than hiragana.

• I’m still alive! That’s news, isn’t it!

• Every year I want to release a new original album, and this year I already started planning. I at least know the name and the cover, and the thematics. WHICH I WILL KEEP SECRET UNTIL I START WORKING ON SOME MUSIC.

• I’m still independent, and I love it. I don’t know how much longer though and try to use my time by learning as much as possible. For example I started learning Beethoven pieces. It’s not fun, but fun!

That’s all for today.

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This game is pretty cool:

Just watch this. I’ve seen this game for about a year now and it’s starting to look really promising. So as an afterthought I decided to make a video with some experiments on how I would probably compose it. Here:

Now, I’m having mixed feelings about this though. People say I should definitely aim at getting this gig, but I’m not really sure myself. The developer said he will probably not be able to give the composer dedicated to this game a decent percentage, he actually stated to not do this for the money.

Money is always a sort of secretive thing between composers and game developers, but I’d like to be a bit more open about this. I’ve seen a lot of composers having low payments, some even would be happy with 100 dollars for 40 minutes of licensed music.

I can only say, don’t underpay yourself.

There are several ways on how to handle a risky gig where the people behind it have no idea what the money outcome would be. Either you want a flat fee, which would, in low numbers be something like 100$/minute. If you want a flat fee, definitely try to keep the license of the music for yourself. You might be able to earn a bit of money from the original soundtrack if you do it clean.

I’ve heard about a guy that made the main song for a very big game, which you know too, and he asked for a small flat fee and had to give away the license to his music too. Damn shame.

You could also ask for a percentage, which is probably what the gunpoint dev wants to do. It’s also the most risk free way of handling things for both parties. Even if the game fails, the developer doesn’t put a hole in his pocket, and the composer at least gets a bit. With this variant you should be very sure not to do too much work. I mean things like 5 hour soundtracks for some indie developed mmorpg. Just a weird extreme example. Not even percentages will get your work effort back, hahah.

A too low percentage might be a bit of a gamble though. Sometimes it’s really hard to judge, but I don’t like percentages under 5% for composers at all.

You could also mix up the two if the developer might be confident.

And there are also million other ways, but these are the main ways of handling composition business.

So, the developer straight out said it would be a very low percentage and the composer shouldn’t do it for the money. On which I disagree. Music quality always comes first, but you don’t want to put in too much effort into something that might be big, but doesn’t help you out enough.

Tough thematic.

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This is crazy! If you ever wanted to get my music for really cheap and perhaps, like 9 other albums, why don’t you get it right now?

This Music Bundle contains the following albums

Minecraft Volume Alpha

Cobalt EP

Super Meat Boy Digital Special Edition

Impostor Nostalgia (BGC418!)

Ravenmark

ARES

Return All Robots!

Mighty Milky Way

PPPPPP (VVVVVV!)

Tree Of Knowledge!

Phew, that already is a long list, but if you pay $10, you actually get seven more albums!

Wind-up Knight

The Binding of Isaac

72 Minutes of Fame (yes!)

MilkSnake

Antigravity

EXTREME Road Trip

and something sweet, some unreleased Mass Effect 2 tunes, Contigency!

That sums up to over 360 titles with more than 15 hours of well-polished music. It’s a crazy deal and I think you’ll love it!

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I’ve been crawling through my server a month ago. And I thought that not all old songs were that bad, so I’ve been compiling them in this free album RIGHT HERE:

You can download it for free. Just bear in mind that this is partly really old stuff, so not everything might be cool beans.

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I’ll be at MineCon next week, having a talk and playing some music at the Miner’s party, including some remixes of some Beefsteak songs.

But aside that, I will also give out gift codes of my albums!

If you are at MineCon and want a random gift code, the only thing you have to do is just find me and ask for one.

So go find me!

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So henceforth I will replace the word “Minecraft” with “Beefsteak”.

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I’m not a DJ. I’m a producer. And with that I try to compensate for me not being a DJ by playing unique songs. That generally means I pick some of my favourite songs and put a touch of my own style on top of it. So right now I’m collecting music for the next 8 days to hopefully have a really slick set for MineCon.

So yeah, I might be silent on this blog.

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