Independent game developers Bit Barons release Astroslugs remix album

The indie game scene is a magical place of friendly collaboration and unrestricted creativity. While this sounds like a big-time cliché, it is more often true than not. Take for example the story of german independent game development studio Bit Barons. They are currently working on Astroslugs – their first commercial release scheduled for release January 27th for both PC and Mac. The game’s whole soundtrack was composed and recorded by Filippo Beck Peccoz, a Munich-based and Italy-born freelance composer who graduated from Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachussets.

“We have a lot of friends in both the indie game and freelance composer scene. So one day I decided to get them all on board and finally create something special together,” says Beck Peccoz, “You don’t really have that many chances to cooperate with other composers when doing indie game music.” He then called up his former fellow students, indie composers from all over Germany and the local munich audio scene. They were all provisioned with the Astroslugs theme song and only one request: “Please take this piece of music and make something great out of it that reflects your music style.”

And so they did: The album entitled “Astroslugs & Friends – Theme and Variations” currently consists of nine tracks by seven different composers. All songs have their roots in the Astroslugs theme song but each of them sounds very different. There’s a “Progressive Trance Mix” by Bit Barons game designer Alexander Widl, a Speed Metal cover by independent composer Bastian Kieslinger, a solo piano version, a jazz arrangement and many more. More releases are already in the works, including a chiptunes remix and a Ukulele cover.

Here’s the deal: If you’re fast, you can get the album for free from the Bit Baron’s Bandcamp Account. The first 200 downloads will be completely free of charge. Afterwards there’ll be a pay-what-you want sale where you can download the album for a donation of “whatever you think our work is worth.” All proceeds of this project are going to be split equally amongst the participating composers. So move quick and get this great piece of game audio now.

About Bit Barons

Bit Barons GmbH is an emerging development studio for digital games. The company is based in Munich (Germany) and consists of Sergej Klementinovski (Development Director), Alexander Widl (Lead Designer) and Alexander Zacherl (Managing Director). The core team is currently working on its first title Astroslugs which will be released for Windows PC and Mac OSX in Q1 2011 and subsequently on mobile devices. This project is being backed by the EXIST support program of the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) which is co-financed by funding of the European Social Fund (ESF).