i remember being really really really excited for epic mickey when it first came out on the wii, and wouldn't you believe it im excited once again for the paint mouse game, and im gonna talk about the music in the game because im normal about adaptive music.
I'll try and keep it as spoiler free as possible for those of you who haven't experienced this gem of a game and are planning to pick it up
The loop of the game involves you running around a sort of shadow version of disneyland armed with a magic paintbrush. You use that brush to fill in or thin out objects in the world. The game assigns a sort of "Goodness" to paint and an "Evilness" to thinner, so depending on how much of each you use in the world, that determines the mouse's goodness or darkness.
When you use mostly paint, your form is pretty clean and solid, but if you rely more on thinner then mickey has drips of dark goop trailing off of him. I love this sort of stuff so much. sure it's awfully barebones for a morality system, but aesthetically it's really really neat and i like it a lot.
But I wanna talk specifically about the music. The game has several different variations of tracks that play depending on what level of good or evil you're currently at.
Here's the Neutral Layer for Mean Street, the hub world for the other areas in the game:
I love how well it shows off the vibe of the setting, a dark and scary place that's really friendly and well meaning once you look past the surface. There's a mix of sadness and hopefulness to it that I really like.
Here's the variant for when you're trending more towards good than evil:
This one is a lil more perky, which brighter instruments. It doesn't have quite as much oomf, but it's a bit more chipper than the neutral layer.
Now, here's the Full Good version:
this one is so weird, it fully loses the oomf of the regular theme. It sounds so hollow and empty. Weird, right?? it feels like the action is Somewhere else. I'll get to why i think this is so cool in a bit, but here are the neutral evil and full evil versions:
darker strings, discordant bells, it feels dirty, messy!, but it still has that pep and life to it. It feels upbeat, but just kinda awkward.
I actually really like this one a lot compared to the full good layer. It still has that sort of hollowness to it from missing so many of the other instruments.
Overall the neutral and neutral variant layers are the ones that feel the most Complete to me, and I think that's sort of a way for the game to encourage you to mix things up. You shouldn't be only good or only evil, you're complicated! Have a little of both! help folks out and get a lil rowdy! The music reinforces how boring it is to just paint or just thin everything all the time. The music is more exciting when it's varied, when there's contrast to your actions, and consequently the game is a lot more fun! I dont know if that's intentional or not but it's how i read into it and it stuck with me.
I dont know if that's a good conclusion to end this on, i just wanted to talk about music from a game i played a lot as a kid and share what it means to me, and I hope you enjoyed it and that you'll give it a try if you get the chance!
thanks for reading this <3
PS: I dont have any opinions on epic mickey 2 because i never played that one despite somehow owning two copies of it, so i dont know if the music does cool stuff in that one, but I'd love to know if it does