Drawing significant influence from manga and anime, it comes as no surprise that colour and music are important to the developers of Daemon X Machina, the mech-shooter coming to the Nintendo Switch.
Kenichiro Tsukuda, the game’s Producer, caught up with us at Gamescom and spoke of their uses of colour and music in the game. Inspired by the mixture of colour palettes often found in the pages of Japanese manga, where some pages are full colour and others are black and white, Daemon X Machina’s colour palette changes between moments in the game. In certain scenes, “it starts in full colour yet every now and again it’ll go to monochrome to work with the thunder and lightning,” said Tsukuda, “we chose this kind of colour palette [for this mission] to express a sense of foreboding and tension.”
“What we showed at E3, it was the red colour palette and that was to express a sense of danger. Throughout the game the theme and the use of colour in the levels have all been very specifically chosen and carefully thought about [in order] to make that connection for the player and how they feel as they’re playing the game.”
Likewise, sound works to compliment the game’s story. Many of the Daemon X Machina’s sound effects are created with musical instruments. Tsukuda admits to being a big music fan who enjoys going to shows and watching bands and has embedded this passion for music in the game.
Characters have their own musical motifs which vary greatly. Some are rap or hip-hop based, whilst others are more classical. However, music is not just tied to the story, but the gameplay too.
“…we wanted to create this sense for the player that when you’re playing and you’re fighting and you’re shooting weapons the sound they’re making is almost musical, and that it merges and blends with the music of the game. So that’s an extra layer of enjoyment as you get into the rhythm of the gameplay.”
Daemon X Machina is due to launch on the Nintendo Switch in early 2019.
