How Super Space Club Beautifully Pairs Hectic Arcade Gameplay with Pure Chill-Hop Jazzy Vibes
Originally posted on Xbox Wire
Hey! Graham here, the Jamaican solo indie dev behind your next favorite space shooter, Super Space Club. I’m a big fan of the shoot-em-up genre, and I also have a ton of respect for classic arcade shooters. I’ve always wanted to make my own arcade-inspired shooter, while also making it my own — visually, sonically, and mechanically driven by my interests and my background. That’s how Super Space Club came to exist, and I’m not sure there’s anything that’s beat-for-beat akin to it.
Your mission is to defend the galaxy by taking control of one of the five skilled anthropomorphic misfits known as the titular Super Space Club. Enemies are seemingly endless, profusely coming at you wave after wave, each wave increasing in difficulty and variety. You must skillfully dance around the sea of incoming attacks while launching your own, use your selected character’s ability to level the playing field, and if your ship runs out of energy, barely escape death by initiating your hyperdrive. This is the core loop of the game, and my homage to the arcade era of games where you could pick up and play a round or ten at any given point and thoroughly enjoy your time with it.
From there, I brought it to the modern era of gaming with the art direction, certain gameplay mechanics, and most importantly, the music. I didn’t want to add to the seemingly infinite list of space-themed games set in a realistic dark and moody universe with intense electronic music as a backdrop to raise your blood pressure. Instead, Super Space Club takes the hectic moment-to-moment gameplay and pairs it with a funky, visually striking color palette and chill music with vocals to groove to.
The heart and soul of Super Space Club is in fact the music. Thanks to the Missouri-based duo Fat Bard, the game truly sounds and feels one-of-a-kind. The soundtrack pulls from lo-fi, hip-hop, jazz, and reggae, and fuses them to make auditory butter. Laid on top of the tracks are vocals from African-American hip-hop artists, a Jamaican reggae artist, and a French hip-hop artist and singer, all of whom further elevate the music beyond your average “video game music.” It’s not just you, the player, that is listening to the tracks, however. The music is actually a part of the game as the characters themselves are jamming to it. When your ship takes damage, the track skips a beat. When you’re low on energy, the music becomes muffled so that you both can focus on surviving just one more wave. If you slow time, the music gets chopped and screwed.
Utilizing color in the way I did allowed me to keep the game’s visuals minimal yet extremely readable and strikingly pleasant to look at for hours on end. Space should be a colorful place! Adding characters to the mix allowed me to have fun creating abilities that matched the animals’ personalities, and it allows you to find one that resonates with you both as a player and as a person. Each character has their own ability, look, and personality, and you’re sure to find your favorite of the bunch.
Having various characters, weapons, and ships to unlock as you progress throughout the game, you’ll ultimately have over a hundred different loadout combinations at your disposal, each giving the game its own unique flavor — each combo changing how you play the game. Will you pair a slow yet sturdy ship, a character with a shield, and a low-speed, high-impact weapon to create a tank-like build? Or, will you pick a low-energy, speedy ship and combine it with homing missiles and a character who tosses out homing mines for a fragile chaotic run? There are so many combinations for you to try out and find which one suits your playstyle the most.
Whether you decide to play Super Space Club as a zen wind-down experience, or as something to quickly dive into to try and get a new high score, I truly hope that you enjoy outlasting your enemies and vibing to the rhythm of the stars.
