Battlecake!

May 2nd 2009

It is with great pleasure that I introduce to you: Battlecake!!

Battlecake is the videogame music arrangement/cover band we started in September 2008. Since then we've played 6 major and not so major concerts, including setting up and putting on our own 3-hour show to a ticketed audience of over 200 videogame music appreciators.

I'm the floppy-haired keyboardist from the videos. I recommend anything in our Carnival 2009 playlist as that's our latest and most awesome show to date, but our one-time-only acoustic/jazz set has some great moments.

[Why would a hard-rocking videogame semi-metalish band do an acoustic set? Because we didn't know the gig was acoustic until 2 weeks beforehand, and it seemed like a fun challenge.]

Global Game Jam: Bird & Fish

Feb 16th 2009

So Greg Peng e-mails me at 11pm the night of the Global Game Jam and asks if I can have a soundtrack ready for his entry in 2 hours. Of course I don't really have time, and I'm tired, and I have schoolwork to do and other commitments... but how can I resist? Especially with the unique, sentimental, bittersweet aesthetic he asked me to paint...

It's about a bird and a fish who are best friends, but if they remain together one of them must die. The two versions of the theme are made to be able to mix together dynamically depending on whether the pair are in the air or underwater.

I'm on kind of a Bossa Nova kick for whatever reason and had been studying some Joe Hisaishi earlier that day, so how this turned out was kind of inevitable. The slidey synth noodling on fish isn't explained by anything in particular.

sin(Surfing) is getting pretty popular...

Dec 20th 2008

Top 10 for a while now! It's a cool game, and I think it's fair to say that it pays to have something ready at venue launch (just look at Apple's App Store).

sin(Surfing) is also getting some very nice reviews as part of XBL Community Games coverage. The music is getting a lot of attention and praise - just what I like =) (although for projects that require it, pulling off the "music that blends in so well they only notice it subconsciously" thing is just as satisfying).

The devs have been receiving a ton of requests for a downloadable version of the soundtrack - here's the Official OST they put out.

sin(Surfing) Released!

Nov 20th 2008

Greg Peng and Raph Mun's Xbox Live Community Games project has been released! It was originally developed for TIGSource's procedural content compo, but with the new venue you'll be able to play it on your 360.

The soundtrack is a chippy tune of mine I originally wrote for a different (now defunct) project a while back, but they requested it - and they were right, it meshes beautifully! Be sure to check out the demo!

One Button Game Design Compo

Oct 4th 2008

The CMU Game Creation Society ran a pretty cool compo recently. The theme was "One Button Games" - cool theme, huh? There were a bunch of really interesting entries. I took this opportunity to delve into Flash development a bit more, using ActionScript 3 and FlashDevelop.

It turned out to be a cool little game - not polished at all, but feel free to check it out. It's a game of simple timing and minimal tactics, but its trick is to divide your attention. Won me first place and a copy of Spore =D