Mushroom Men’s ultra-immersive music and sound design

MTV’s Multiplayer blog recently posted a couple of short videos from upcoming DS/Wii platformer Mushroom Men that show off just how unique and cool the game’s music and sound design will be. While the headline is sort of a misnomer (calling it “the weirdest video game music we’ve heard in a while”), the post goes on to explain that the music is actually an integral part of the game’s environments – and that the whole affair literally runs on the music. It’s all rather psychedelic (fitting for a game about mushrooms, no?), but not in a distracting way.

In an interview snippet with remixer Matt Piersall, he revealed that

“The entire game runs at 120 beats per minute, so it’s literally on an actual clock…We’ve put this whole game on beat, so visual and ambient environmental effects will happen in time with the music. It’s a very subtle feature but it adds to the immersiveness.”

It’s actually really cool – check it out for yourself in the embedded video. It reminds me a bit of Banjo-Kazooie and Psychonauts – the sort of cartoony goofiness mixed with musical cues (in BK, the theme music of each level remained constant, but the instrumentation and tempo changed so that the music felt radically different in different areas, and Psychonauts was just awesome in every aural aspect). The game is due out next month for Wii and DS.

Read [MTV Multiplayer]