My Favorite Gaming Music #21 – Time for a REMIX.

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There are two reasons why I wanted to talk about my favorite music in video games today. One, I didn’t have a lot of time to play a new game to review on my blog. Two, it has been too long since I wrote an entry in this series. So, that’s why I’m doing one of these again. Normally, the rules are that I’m only allowed to talk about original tracks from the games and only one track per franchise. This time, it’s different. One track per franchise remains, but now, it’s a remixed version of the track. So, I hope you are ready for some amazing music since here we go!

Hyrule Lemon – Essence of Lime (Remix: The Legend of Zelda – Oracle of Ages Intro & Title)

In my Creative Christmas series, I have mentioned the Essence of Lime & Lime of Seasons albums. I seriously can’t get enough of these tracks.

When I found this album and heard the first track and heard that they added various sound effects from the games, I was sold right away.

For those who don’t know, this whole album is created by Hyrule Lemon and a team of various artists to remix the soundtrack of the amazing Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons. Seriously, this music is so well made! I hope the remix other soundtracks as well since the talent behind this album is just amazing. They made an album using the music I’m so nostalgic about. Thank you for these guys and girls! Thanks.

Pascal Michael Stiefel x OC Remix (VGR) – A Hat In Time Main Theme (Remix: A Hat In Time Main Theme)

This album just came out a few days ago. And it’s amazing. OC Remix is an amazing website where various artists come together to show off their remixes of video game music.

Indie dev team Gears for Breakfast teamed up with them to create a new album called “B-Side Soundtrack”. And, it’s amazing.

Now, I recently gave A Hat In Time a perfect score. I even said it was my favorite game of 2017. Now, when this track pulled my emotional string right around the 1:20 mark, it just blew me away and I bought this soundtrack on Steam. This soundtrack is only 5€ for 85 amazing music tracks. Again, only FIVE euro! That’s a steal! Seriously, if you enjoy this one, go and buy it on Steam.

Dunderpatrullen – Mega Man (Remix: Mega Man 2 Dr. Wily’s Castle)

Now, I have never really played Megaman 2 so I don’t know the soundtrack that much. I still do recognize Megaman tunes here and there.

Why am I telling you this? Well, when I discovered Dunderpatrullen, I was looking around for more music that they created and I found this track they preformed live on a DreamHack event.

If you never heard about Dunderpatrullen and you enjoy chiptune, electronic music; please fix that. Give their music a try. Let me throw in as a bonus this video game medley to enjoy. While I know I mentioned this in one of my Creative Christmas articles, I still wanted to give the spotlight to these artists since I think they are amazing and I really hope they create some new music in the near future!

The GAG Quartet – 8-bit Anthem Medley (Remix: various ones)

Something I have a real soft spot for is medleys and nostalgia. This is one that combines both.

I think that a lot of my fellow bloggers will enjoy this track, since you have Mega Man, Pokémon, Monkey Island, Zelda amongst various others.

The visuals in this video made my nostalgia go in overload. It’s very well made and this was actually the track that made me subscribe to their stuff. I simply can’t wait to see more music created by these guys. Also, if you are interested, they also created a medley with various internet memes from the past couple of years. So, give that a listen if you are interested.

Spooky’s Jump Scare Mansion Song (1000 Doors)- The Living Tombstone -feat. BSlick & Crusher-P

I have no clue why I bought this game. I hate jump scares in horror games. Yet, I enjoy playing this game. It’s very well put together and it’s pretty challenging.

Now, The Living Tombstone, some remixes from this artist I dislike and others I really like. This is one I really like. Maybe, the fact that Crusher-P helped with this track since I like his stuff as well. On the other hand, I really like the Living Tombstone’s original track “Cut the Cord“.

So, talking about the game; I still have to play a bit more before I can actually review the game. Maybe this Halloween if no other game distracts me? If you would ask me, really give Spooky’s Jump Scare Mansion a chance, it’s an enjoyable game and I can’t recommend it enough to horror fans who want a “light” horror experience.

Final words

So, that’s everything for today. If you guys & girls ever find an amazing remixed track of a game you enjoyed playing, don’t hesitate to leave it in the comments.

I’m really curious to hear your opinion on the tracks I chose to feature in this article. Do you hear about them or are these the first time you heard about them? In any case, I hope you enjoyed listing to them and maybe discovered some new artists.

Thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

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Publishing: The future of the TCG genre

Since the inception of the genre, when Richard Garfield created Magic: the Gathering in 1993, a large number of trading card games have been created, each with its own themes and mechanics. However, if we look at the TCG landscape today, few of them remain standing. So many of them have just disappeared without a trace, but why? Can a new TCG be successful today?

What is nature of TCG?

Trading card games, also known as collectible card games, by their nature require players to buy booster packs and trade cards with their friends in order to build decks and start playing. This can be quite an investment: booster packs cost money and you need a sizeable collection of cards to start trading and building decks from, which requires quite an investment. The randomness within booster packs, along with the different rarities of cards makes the collection process quite costly, long and difficult. This usually means that an average TCG player can’t realistically get into more than one or two trading card games at the same time. This, as you can expect, means that when a new TCG is released, the target audience is already well invested into other games, and is hesitant to pay that much more money on a brand-new game which still has a small following. The success of a TCG is directly related to the size of its player base. Even smaller TCGs require a stable player base in order to stay in business. If a TCG player doesn’t have any friends who play the same game, he or she is more likely to abandon it for a more popular TCG. This leads to the bigger TCGs staying healthy and gaining more players, while the smaller ones disappear.

How does TCG market look like?

By now, the paper TCG market is dominated by only three games: Magic: the Gathering, Pokèmon, and Yu-Gi-Oh. Smaller TCGs still exist, but they are usually based on pre-existing franchises and piggy-back off their success. However, TCGs aren’t just limited to paper. With the advent of the internet, many online TCGs have started appearing and getting more popular despite the problems their paper cousins faced. Why is that? For starters, it’s much easier to find people online to play the game with. In fact, the game itself will find an opponent for you to play against. This means that as long as there is even a small, but stable, amount of people playing an online TCG, the game will still be able to stay alive and organize tournaments. Another advantage online TCGs have over paper TCGs is that they can be free to play, meaning that anybody can try out the game, without hesitation and fear of having to spend a lot of money. Not only that, but online TCGs have many more ways of distributing their cards to their players than just by selling booster packs, decks, or single cards. They can implement systems that allow players to unlock cards just by playing the game, or by accomplishing certain goals in the game. Games like Hearthstone and Hex have had great success with these strategies, and upcoming games like Multiverse: Cosmic Conquest will do so as well.

What about paper TCG’s?

But what about physical cards? Is there no hope for new paper TCGs? What about the players who enjoy TCGs not only for the gameplay but also the interaction with people, the fun times they have with their friends at home or in the game store? Well, while the TCG model is unlikely to work for new titles, this doesn’t mean that new games played with customizable decks are doomed to fail. Fantasy Flight Games coined the term LCG, which stands for Living Card Game. An LCG is a game in which, much like in a TCG, players build their own deck out of the vast collection available. The difference comes in the way the game is sold. LCGs are sold like board games, in that the entire game (or expansion) is sold in a single box, like a board game. There is no element of chance when buying an LCG, you know exactly what will be in the box before you buy it. This approach, while it defeats Richard Garfield’s idea of a game that’s “bigger than the box”, gives certainty to new players. It tells them exactly how much money they will need to invest in a game to be able to enjoy it to the fullest. Games like Lord of the Rings LCG, Android: Netrunner, the Star Wars card game and much more are sold in this manner. The LCG model makes these games much friendlier towards board game players, which also broadens the traditional TCG player base. Multiverse: Cosmic Conquest promises to be released as an LCG if its Kickstarter campaign reaches a certain stretch-goal. So, while you may not enjoy the feeling of cracking a booster pack of a future TCG, you can still do so online, or play it like a board game with your friends.

About the author

Leandro Tokarevski was born on September 26th, 1993. At the age of 6, he started learning the violin. He was always interested in games and drawing, and in 2004, at the age of 11, he moved to St. Petersburg, Russia, where he started to attend an evening art school, as well as continued his music studies in an evening music school. In 2009 he graduated the music school and since then he’s continued to play in various bands and ensembles both on the violin and on the keyboard. In 2010 he graduated art school as well as high school, and entered the St. Petersburg Academy of arts, where he studied architecture. This is where he started to get involved in game design and development. In 2014 he started working on the card game Multiverse: Cosmic Conquest and in April of 2016 he self-published his first full game: Rebels Unite, for which he was both the game designer and artist. In July of 2016 he graduated the Academy of arts, moved back to Rome and started working full-time on game development. Currently he’s working as a pixel artist for the 2D RPG Towards the Pantheon, while continuing to develop Multiverse: Cosmic Conquest. For more information about Multiverse: Cosmic Conquest, please visit a website: https://tokartsmedia.com/