Creator Spotlight: Laura Shigihara

            Confession time.  I got the idea for the Creator Spotlight section of this blog almost entirely due to one person.  I rediscovered her work just a little while ago, and I'd been a huge fan for years before...not really sure how or why I forgot about it.  She reminded me of other great game creators that I respected...and I wanted to pay my dues to them.

Too often people get angry at developers and creators who don't deserve it.  I want to pay respects to people rather than getting angry at them.

            From the title, it ought to be obvious who I'm talking about, but let me just give a brief introduction.  A fantastic pianist and vocalist, capable of singing both in English and Japanese, and a member of the prestigious club of 3 composers who have actually made me break down and cry from playing a video game.  This is Laura Shigihara.

Talented to a fault, but also very humble, enthusiastic, and adorable, Laura Shigihara is one of a kind.

 

Laura on Youtube.  Check her out.  CHECK HER OUT NOW!!!

            While not nearly as obscure as Amon26, I don't believe Shigihara gets nearly enough credit.  True, she has had some mainstream recognition from her work on Plants Vs Zombies, Plants Vs Zombies 2, and thanks to Kotaku spotlighting her collaborations and covers of other video game music.  However, she's not a household name when...really, I believe she should be.  Shigihara may be relatively new to the composing scene compared to Uematsu, Mitsuda, Talarico, or Yamaoka, but that doesn't make her any less talented or worthy of praise.

Shigihara has also worked on this charity album with such great composers as Uematsu, Mitsuda,a nd Yamaoka...eerie, isn't it?

            There's something undeniably charming about Laura Shigihara that is apparent anytime she creates her music and talks to the audience.  She appears to be both humble and enthusiastic about her work, showing a true reverence and respect for gaming as a whole.  Her first soundtrack composition was for the small casual game Wobbly Bobbly, which she offered to do for free just because she was so excited to be working on a video game.  Such dedication shines through all her work and it has gained her employment on a number of games, including Minecraft, World of Warcraft, Basement Collection, and my personal favorite, To The Moon.

Wobbly Bobbly, the debut of a great composer.

            I first came across Shigihara's work when I played Plant's Vs Zombies.  She not only composed the entire sound track and was the sound designer on the game, but was also the vocalist, in English and Japanese, for the end theme, Zombie on your Lawn.  The song and music video were featured on Steam and the deciding factor in my purchase of the game.  However, I only really took notice of Laura Shigihara while playing the indie game, To The Moon.

            In To The Moon, Shigihara's music made for a fantastic emotional rollercoaster.  It could be quiet and somber, a little manic or silly for the lighter moments, or even bombastic in places.  What got me, though, was the song Everything's Alright.  This is sung at a key moment in To The Moon where love, true, unrequited love, is lost.  I first heard it when I was in a...less than stellar relationship.  I won't spoil the payoff, but it was beautiful, moving, and heartbreaking all in one.  For me, this piece was something sad, but also somewhat hopeful.  It was an anthem to me of love and became both the hope and the requiem of my own hopeless romance.  Even though my love is dead, I still listen to it frequently and never tire of the soft, thoughtful look at a flawed relationship that we want to work so well.

             I suppose that's what made me really sit up and pay attention.  You see, this song, and Shigihara's music as a whole, remind me of a saying from the game Soul Blazer.  The gist of it is that music is a funny kind of thing.  The same music we listen to can feel very triumphant or joyous when we are happy, or mournful and sad when we are depressed.  It spoke to me, I suppose you could say.  It made me feel.  Any game and any music that can do that, really make you feel something, is powerful.

Yeah...that's the moment.  The moment music begins to make you feel.

            Shigihara's music usually involves the piano as she is incredibly skilled as a pianist, but it doesn't have to.  Thanks to the advent of sound software and electronic keyboards, a piano can produce a much wider variety of sounds, which offer great variety to the music as a whole.  Which is quite good, as Shigihara's strength is in piano music and vocals.  She often collaborates with others when other instruments are needed, which have led to some fantastic renditions of classic video game music.

            Now, I am not an expert in music or composition by any means, so perhaps this is also pretty normal for those who can play.  However, Shigihara amazes me with her ability to play music by ear and compose her own original pieces.  Her original work can span any range, from being soft, quiet, and mournful, to being fast paced and energetic.  Cubeland, From the Ground Up, and Jump showcase this range and all her songs are immediately infectious and memorable.  I also can't forget when I saw her playing the Little Nemo themes by ear on her piano.  It sounded spot on and was a wonderful nostalgia trip for me.

            Shigihara is an amazing composer in her own right, however she has also dabbled in game design.  While work began on an RPG called Melolune, it never made it past the demo phase.  However a 3 hour demo is quite impressive, nonetheless and Shigihara has stated she is only on break from this game.  At the moment, she is working on a title called Rakuen, which focuses on a mother and son's relationship, and how stories told to the hospital bound boy are able to help him cope with his illness.  Along the way, the boy starts to learn about the patients in the hospital and tries to complete his own sets of challenges to meet the guardian of the forest from his stories, the mysterious Morizora.  Having heard some of the soundtrack for Rakuen, I can say it looks to be charming and playful, yet also a little somber, mysterious, and possibly even tragic.  In short, it sounds like an emotional journey that I can't wait to try.

Fantasy and reality mixing to create a journey of emotions.  Also, I want that kids hat.

            While I have many famous composers I admire, including Nobuo Uematsu, Akira Yamaoka, and Yasunori Mitsuda, I'd say Laura Shigihara deserves a place among the best of them.  Her music is hauntingly beautiful, memorable, and something that everyone, not just video gamers, should listen to.

Laura is also very vocal about her love of gaming.  She defends the works of others and is a voice of reason in the vitriol fueled games media machine.

            For more information on Shigihara's game, Rakuen, check here.  For all Shigihara's music, which you can purchase for a nominal fee, check here for her bandcamp page.  If you want to show some support, then check out her blog or her facebook pages, but above all else, look at her Youtube channel.  It features some beautiful covers of music, from Miyazaki and Megaman to Frozen and Final Fantasy.  And, just to cover all bases, for the EXCELLENT To The Moon, and other great emotional journeys, check here.

            We don't get composers like her everyday.  No matter what the future brings, we're all anxiously waiting to see what you come up with, Laura.  Keep on playing, keep on singing, keep on having fun.

Keep on making that wonderful music, you beautiful person.

Creator Spotlight: Amon26

            Okay...so, in an attempt to provide more content in less time, as well as a chance to branch out and try to discuss things not as terribly depressing as the state of the games industry, I want to talk about creators.  Game developers, composers, programmers, what have you, who I think need more exposure.  I don't know who reads my blog or who even cares, but...this is me paying my respects.

            I had originally planned to start with a fantastic composer, one of the only ones to ever make me cry, but instead I want to talk about horror.  Delicious, fun, soul chilling horror.  Believe me, this is going to be good.  This is Amon26.

Pretty amazing developer overall.  I have no idea why more people don't know him.

            I can tell you that I've never met Amon26 or even had contact with him, yet his work has been one of the most brilliant I've ever seen in the medium of Flash.  Amon26 typically works in flash games, but they...they have more polish, beauty, and mad genius than many AAA titles.

            For those who only play console games or only play games on Steam, there is a world of free games on Newgrounds, Kongregate, or any other number of flash game websites.  People create and share, for no other reason than to get experience, get their name out there, or to make others happy.  This is how Amon26 introduced himself to the gaming world at large.  He may have begun tinkering in game design around 2009, but Amon26 got his first major hit, and well deserved recognition, with Gyossait on Newgrounds in 2011.

Prepare for a beautiful nightmare.

            Gyossait is a game that is...difficult to describe at the best of times.  It has very little exposition and while Amon26 did give a cheat sheet on the story after many requests, it's best played first without it, then with it...because the experience is different each time.  Basically, the player appears, bled out of the skull of a fallen god, and begins a journey.  However something or someone is haunting him.  Trees full of blades, with flowers of blood are your waypoints and as you die, you are rebirthed to suffer, again and again until you persevere.  This is not mercy.  This is torture.  The one hounding you wishes to peel of your skin and wear it as a mantle to keep them warm at night.  All this, in the first minute or two of the game, told through only a few lines of text and the games visuals and playstyle.

Are you afraid yet?  ...you should be.

            This is why I wanted to spotlight Amon26.  His games are a perfect marriage of aesthetics and gameplay to create organic storytelling.  True, there are cryptic snippets of text that appear on the screen, but they do not exposit.  They are more like conversations half finished...things that you need to know, but you have no context for.  The true story is told through the world and how you interact with it.  At the start, you cannot kill.  You only have a shield and your wits to overcome enemies and puzzles.  However, one puzzle inadvertently kills someone...and from then on, you are allowed to kill.  You are given a gun, but never told to use it.  You can, at points, return to only your shield.  How you play with this affects both the ending and your experience.  Are you a destroyer, who will take the easy way out, or have you learned the value of life through your mistake?  These deep ideas are what a little organic storytelling can create.

This is about all the exposition you're gonna get before Gyossait starts.

This is about all the exposition you'll get in game.  Tell me that's not unsettling.  I dare you.

            However, let's talk about the visuals for a second.  Amon26, in an interview with Indiegamemag.com, spoke of how he had nightmares, vivid dreams of creatures half formed, believing themselves to be human, or perhaps jealous of our own humanity, and wishing to take it by force.  Monsters birthed not from some unspeakable Lovecraftian pit, but from the human mind...and these nightmares are the source for much of Amon26's visuals.  Gyossait is a ruined world, on the verge of collapse.  Monsters roam the streets, the bleakness is like a nightmare made manifest, and the first time you meet your "host," after she kills you only to taunt you and revive you for more suffering, you will understand horror.  It is not an adrenaline rush from a quick jump scare.  It is the knowledge that your life is in another's hands...they hate you...but they don't want you to die...they want you to suffer.  The world hates you and this hate is heaped upon you like a leaden net to weigh you down.  It is this atmosphere that makes playing Gyossait distinctly uncomfortable, but also engrossing.  Because you're not alone and being hunted.  You are in a living, breathing world that is apathetic at best and at its worst, cruel to a fault.

Nightmare fuel.  Delicious, beautiful nightmare fuel.

            I don't intend to spoil Gyossait's plot or endings, but this game is how I was introduced to Amon26.  His previous titles, All of Our Friends are Dead, a shooting game that had no story, but piled on the unsettling atmosphere in such a way that it felt like a nightmarish fever dream, and Au Sable, following a girl in a red hood, journeying into a deep dark forest, in search of her sister and finding the remnants of what once was human hunting, taunting, and crying, are equally unsettling.  Amon26 has a talent for creating stories that only need a little exposition before allowing the game design and visuals to take you on a journey.  I'd even go so far as to call him video gaming's Edgar Allen Poe.  Not widely appreciated in his time, but amazing in what he has done with so little.

All of Our Friends Are Dead.  True terror lies not in graphics, gore, or music, but in the unsettling nightmares we make for ourselves.  If a developer gives you the pen, you know you've got good horror.

          Ironically, Amon26's games aren't all grim or bleak.  His current project, Shomia Teaf, focuses on a fairy in a colorful world and seems far more lighthearted...however, there is an undertone of something being very wrong, as the violence in the game suggests.  Let's Win Forever is another game that is bright and colorful, but...feels distinctly off.  I can't even describe this thing.

Let's Win Forever.  I don't even know, but something seems...off.

            Amon26 is a one man development group and despite numerous setbacks, continues working towards not wealth, but some semblance of happiness.  He enjoys what he does and believes in himself, but...for all that I've sold him as some dark, brooding, angsty, tosser, he's actually much more like Justin Carmical than you'd think.  Amon26 does suffer from some personal demons.  Don't we all.  However, despite that, he tends to focus on the positive.  In his interviews, he always encourages people to follow their own path.  If they don't know what they want to do, strike out and do anything.  Don't let others dictate who or what you should be and don't ever think you're not worth something.  Amon26 is an odd character whom I've never met, but would someday like to.  His games show more intelligent design than dozens of AAA titles I've ever played with their sole issue being their brevity.  Gyossait and Au Sable each are likely beatable in under an hour.  However, I don't want that to discourage people.  They are games I feel everyone should experience, both for their own nightmare fuel, but also because they really are fascinating looks at how a story is formed not necessarily by exposition, but by the actions of the player in an unusual situation.

Au Sable.  You go into the woods looking for Harmonia and find something inhuman...or perhaps too human.

            Here's where things get a little odd, though.  Yes, just here.  Shut up.  Amon26 is what many on the internet might call, a digital wayfarer or vagrant.  His only wiki is on the independent games wiki, which does not have links for many of his games and even though it gives links to websites or what have you, most are abandoned or reverted to their regular domain name owners.  The man is hard to pin down.  The best way to look into him, however, is probably through his twitter and his tumblr, both becoming outlets for personal discussion on his journey through life and on his games.  Amon26, though still a relative unknown in the game development community, is a person worth watching.  He hasn't published games to any widely known platforms however he continues to develop because it is what he loves.

            I would encourage everyone to at least give Amon26 and his games, particularly Gyossait, a look.  Support him if you can.  Spread word of his games.  Follow him on twitter or tumblr.  Look into his youtube account.  Check out his music on bandcamp.  If you wish to donate, he's given instructions here.  More than anything though, try his games, many of which even I haven't tried...yet...anyway, they all have his signature style.  So give them a look.  And, while still free on Newgrounds, Amon26 has assembled a deluxe edition of Gyossait for sale, including bonus content in the form of mp3s, Au Sable, All of Our Friends Are Dead, and a prequel to Au Sable, The Hunt, where you take on his imagined horrors in a first person, Doom-style, shooter.  You can purchase that here.

The Gyossait Deluxe Pack has tons of extra...the Hunt is a prequel to Au Sable and it's just as terrifying.

            In spite of my plugging, this is meant not as a publicity tool, but a sign of heartfelt respect for Amon26, as someone who likes a certain brand of horror...his brand.  The kind that doesn't beat you over the head with musical stings or overwrought exposition, but which is quiet, cerebral, tense, and unsettling.

            Wherever you are, Amon26, you've got at least one fan here.