Genre: Role-playing (RPG), Hack and slash/Beat 'em up
Superfuse
Patch 0.1.2 is live!
Hello Enforcers,
With this patch we want to provide some quality of life improvements, balancing, and small bug fixes before the weekend hits.
One of the larger changes in this patch is to make the starting experience smoother. We’re introducing a regional weight system to loot. This means you will only find fuses your character can learn, and items they can equip pre-Conduit 1. For example: When playing as the Berserker you will not find power gloves or Elementalist only fuses until reaching Conduit 1 after defeating Razor. This is a quick fix to address some of the community concerns we’ve heard, but we would of course love to hear your feedback.
Note: finding some fuses you can learn but never use is still possible and related to tag consistency (example: add poison damage on elementalist). Also: convert Physical Damage to an Element will add a Damage tag of that element to the skill, meaning you can dynamically alter what fuses your skill can have access to.
We’re currently looking at UI scaling, combat/input responsiveness, collision improvements, fuse variation, fuse tags consistency, and the booster charges. We’ll have more to share in the coming week; however, these changes require a bit more time.
Thanks, and please keep the feedback coming! The Stitch Heads Team
Fixes & Improvements
Tooltips
Skill tooltips now display all damage elements / types to clarify the damage an ability is doing
By default, item tooltips now display the base stat roll values
Fixed bug with Quick ID not always showing the Item Scanner uses remaining in your tooltip
Fuse tooltips now display all valid skills that can be fused - even if there is more than one
Show decimals in tooltips and skill summary below 10 damage instead of rounding to full numbers like we do when damage values are above 10.
Skills now show their correct stats in tooltips and summaries even when not equipped in action bar / set to active skill.
HUD & Input
While holding Left ALT - all dropped items on the screen force display their name tags, if persistent item name tags are toggled off. Toggle persistent item name tags with “Z”.
Fixed nametags of interactables showing persistently when the persistent outline is toggled
Can now use CTRL + ALT to toggle persistent outlines on interactables
Default Skill Slot 1 (Left Mouse Button) is now move only, you can still replace this with an active skill
Fix: While in the fuse menu / skill creator - using mouse scroll wheel will no longer zoom in or out on your character
Fixed “Move Only” tooltip not showing on the slot itself
Fixed interactable outline of shrines/chests/corpses still showing after being looted
Display message in chat when toggling:
Persistent Interactable highlights
Persistent Item name tags
Server Browser & Multiplayer
Display actual error on login failure instead of always displaying “failed to connect account”
Fixed levels of all players being displayed as 0 in server browser
Font for the create game and join private game section in the server browser changed to support capitalisation which hopefully avoids some confusion with capital sensitive server names and passwords
Fixed private games not being found sometimes due to only retrieving the first instance or a limited list
When searching for public games, you will now find more entries - the list was being cut off by invisible private entries so you would only find a handful of public game sessions
Items: Droprates
Trinkets: increased trinket drop rates, they will now drop more commonly in Conduit 1 and after
Kneepads: slightly buffed kneepad droprates throughout the game
Regional Drop Bias: loot will now be biased towards your class up until Conduit 1, meaning that before Conduit 1 you will only find fuses you can learn or loot that your character can equip
Note: there is no bias towards your current build or learned skills, playing as a Tornado Combat Berserker you will still find Power Punch (Brute Force Tree) fuses even if you do not have this skill.
Resistivity: removed lightning spell damage and now rolls with both fire and ice spell damage (8-12%).
Fuses
Introduced more icons for fuses so you can differentiate between them better
Pierce: now has a 10% damage reduction applied when used
Freezer: set the requirement to Ice Damage instead of Damaging
Burner: set the requirement to Fire Damage instead of Damaging
Shocker: set the requirement to Lightning Damage instead of Damaging
Poisoner: set the requirement to Poison Damage instead of Damaging
Brawler: set the requirement to Physical Damage instead of Damaging
Enabled some fuses for use on minions / physical. Set the required tag to Physical instead of Weapon skill and removed the Berserker requirement of:
Fuse that increases the maximum amount of minions for Buzzjaw, Lazerbeak, Construct
Fuse gives -10% all damage to minions
Scrapstorm: will no longer show up in Leon's shop
Ferrokinesis: will no longer scaling with skill effectiveness per level stat - which was leading to overpowered results of quadruple damage on Ferrokinesis
Buzzsaw: no longer reduces Buzzjaw count
BigBoy: Fixed the minion not properly using its melee attack animation
Added an icon for the collidable tag
Audio
Fixed player level up audio voice lines playing for all characters in multiplayer
Other
Fixed lightbridges in Edge of Space and Eros Docks to not show up when Shadow Quality was set to low
Fix Foreman not having correct relation to players on clients, causing attack targeting to not behave as expected
Balancing & Hero Changes
Elementalist
Fireball Skill
Fireball now has the Area of Effect tag
Torch Skill
Torch now has the Area of Effect tag
Berserker
Slam Skill
Slam can now hit both with its initial Area of Effect and its consecutive ground crack projectile on the same target
Increased range of the ground crack projectile from 350 units to 450
Technomancer
Fixed a cause for minions sometimes not attacking enemies
Buzzjaw Skill
Delay between attacks reduced from 1.8 seconds to 1 second
Damage scaling per level has been increased
Now caps at 4 minions from leveling the base skill instead of 10
You can now add additional minion through fuses (See the fuse section above)
Lazerbeak Skill
Base damage reduced from 16-24 to 6-12
Damage scaling per level increased
Now caps at 4 minions from leveling the base skill instead of 10
You can now add additional minion through fuses (See the fuse section above)
Impale Skill
Resolved a bug where Impale was floating in the center of the collision sphere, it is now correctly attached to the ground
Letter from the Devs
Hey Everyone,
My name is Tim, and I am one of the founders and the Creative Director at Stitch Heads. I wanted to reach out to you personally now that launch day is over and share some thoughts and my gratitude for the community response so far.
Superfuse is a love letter to Diablo 2. It is our homage to the ARPGs that came before us because we fell in love with that genre and wanted to be a part of it.
I want you to be right there with us as we’re actively looking at your feedback while the team rolls out regular updates that improve the game. We are right at the beginning of this journey, and while our launch into early access was rockier than we would like, we want to shed some light and outline the fixes and changes we are making, over the coming weeks, in an act of transparency so that you know where we are and how the game will change.
Right now, we are all hands on deck and actively working on addressing any issues as fast as possible.
Later today, we will be posting a patch that will address the permanent slowdown that enemies and debuffs sometimes cause and will add in some new fuses, and so much more. The full patch notes can be found here, which detail all the changes: Patch Notes
Coming up, we are working on addressing the following issues:
Improving the booster and consumable feature.
Reducing the amount of drops items and fuses you cannot use or equip
Improving tooltip clarity and stats on items, fuses and skills
Issues with responsiveness and targeting of skills, movement and buffs.
Issues with pathing, obstacle avoidance and general movement.
Increasing variety in fuses and fixing issues with fuses.
Missing settings for FOV and UI scaling.
Issues with stash and inventory use
Lack of loot-sharing options besides FFA
Partial translations missing
Some passives not functioning properly
Variety of bugs with quests and dialogue
Issues connecting to private servers of other players
Crashes in the solar map
Zooming and scrolling overlay map
On top of all of this, part of our team is working on future content updates, and we will have more news about that in the future.
I am also investigating the following requests, and more news will come on that once we have finished addressing everything mentioned above; I have listed some of them below, and please let us know in the comments if you have further suggestions going forward.
Controller Support
Finalising skill trees of each class
Improving end-game content
Improving variety in environments and enemies
Trading systems
Thank you so much for reading this, and I appreciate your continued patience. We are really passionate about the game we are creating, and your continued feedback and bug reports are greatly appreciated.
Stay tuned for more news; we have lots coming to be excited about, and thank you again for being here and playing Superfuse.
Tim
Patch 0.1.1
Hello Enforcers,
It’s been a little over a day since we went live with Superfuse, and yesterday we already pushed out a small fix that was related to the server issue that a lot of people were encountering the first couple of hours post-release.
Today’s patch (which is coming in later this evening)is a bit larger as we take a first stab at fixing, improving, and balancing aspects of the game based on the initial feedback and bugs you reported.
Some of the more notable ones include addressing the permanent slowdown that enemies and debuffs sometimes cause and we will add in some new fuses
This is only the beginning and we will continue to shape and tweak the game alongside you. We really look forward to embarking on this journey with you.
The Stitch Heads Team
Fixes & Improvements
Item Tooltips
Item type names are now showing on the item tooltips
The Blood Drinker unique should now properly display its main stat
HUD Item Name Tags
Persistent Name Tag is now toggled on Z by default
Persistent Interactables is now toggled on Left Alt by default
Inventory
Items in your inventory for which you do not meet requirements for will now be clearly displayed with a cross (incorrect class) or a lock (not meeting stat requirements)
Incompatible fuses for your current Enforcer will now be clearly displayed with a cross in your inventory
The space visualiser will now correctly display the slot players are attempting to place items onto in their inventory or storage
Fixed bugs with moving items in inventory not being accurate
Fixed general inventory interaction bugs
Fixed bugs with placing items in storage only being top left available location
Fixed bug with swapping item in inventory not going in other item’s location
You can now quick ID items by clicking Shift and Right Mouse Button whilst hovering over an unidentified item and having Item Scanners in your inventory
Items
Your speed and armour boosters will now be applied correctly
The weapon damage caused by “Directed Mania” unique will now be scaled to your character level
Skills
The default slot of a newly unlocked skill has been changed
“Move only” will no longer be unequipped when you unlock skills
All skills will automatically first unlock on AbilitySlot2 (default: RMB keybind) with the exception of skills tied to buffs, debuffs, walls, shields and minions which instead unlock to AbilitySlot3 (by default Q) and subsequent Ability Slots.
To avoid causing motion sickness, we’ve reduced the intensity of the camera shake when Crush is used
Fuses
We’ve added Scorch, Contaminate, Flash and Freeze to the fuse roster to increase the variety applied to melee skills and general element based skills
Audio
Audio counts should no longer be overlapping to such a degree that they cause performance drops and audio quality issues
Other
Slow bug: Chill ailment enemies put on you will no longer permanently apply.
Balancing
Items
Reduced Sight range values on Sight range affixes
Stat: Sight Range affixes now rolls in steps of 5 instead of 10
Stat: Movement Speed affixes now roll in steps of 5% instead of 1%
ːsfelementalistː
Elementalist
Fire Passive Tree
Added 1 reflex to the fire mastery node
Ignite Radius: increased from +5% to +10% burn radius and reduced max tiers (8 to 3)
Boil: increased from 5% to 10% energy per level per tier and reduced max tiers (8 to 3)
Recover: increased from 5% to 10% energy restore on miss per tier and reduced max tiers (5 to 3)
Overheat: increased from 3% to 5% fire penetration per tier and reduced max tiers (5 to 3)
Fire Boost: reduced max tiers (8 to 5)
Fire Wall Skill
Turned down death impulse / moon physics on firewall
Combust Skill
Base damage increased to 8.25 - 12
Damage scaling per level increased
Blaze Skill
Blaze damage scaling per level increased
Ice Passive Tree
Added 1 reflex to the mastery node
Ice tree mastery strength per level reduced from 2 to 1
Ice tree mastery energy per level increased from 1 to 2
Ice tree mastery power per level increased from +1 to +3
Ice tree master armor increased from .5% per level to 1%
Draining cold: reduced max tiers (5 to 3)
Sleet: cast speed bonus increased from 4% to 5%
Quick freeze: cooldown reduction while using two handed staves increased from 4% to 5%
Deep freeze: max tiers reduced (was incorrectly set to 0/20 and is now its proper 5)
Cool headed: set to +5% damage per level flat (logarithmic removed) and reduced max tiers (8 to 5)
Frost Blades Skill
Base damage increased to 2.25 - 2.75
Damage scaling per level increased
Mana cost scaling per level reduced to .25 per level
Ice shard Skill
Base damage increased from 6-12 to 12-21 base
Modified the damage scaling to reach similar values by level 30 (10% damage increased by level 30)
Reduced the projectile speed from 3500 to 3000
ːsfberserkerː
Berserker
Lightning Tree
Guided lightning: description now correctly says critical hit damage and critical hit damage increased from 5% to 10%
Electric discharge: energy recharge speed bonus increased from 4% to 5%
Nimbus: cast speed bonus increased from 4% to 5%
High voltage: lightning penetration increased from 3% to 5% and reduced max tiers (5 to 3)
Taser: chance to shock increased from 2% to 5%
Deep strike: max tiers increased (3 to 5)
Brain power: max tiers reduced (6 to 5)
Weather front: changed to +10 flat per level (logarithmic scaling removed) and max tiers reduced (8 to 5)
Combat Tree
Enraged: reworked to grant +20% attack speed per level, reduced max tiers (5 to 3)
Unwavering: reworked to trigger below 30% life instead of below 15%, provides +15% damage reduction base and +15% per level and reduced max tiers (5 to 3)
Weapon efficiency: description is fixed to properly display that the attack speed bonus is being applied to one handed weapons and the damage bonus increase is being applied to two handed weapons. Attack speed bonus increased to 5%
Pace: changed to +5% movement speed per level (logarithmic removed)
Precise Strikes: accuracy bonus increased from +4% to +5%
Duellist: critical strike chance bonus with one handed weapons increased from +2% to +3%
Lasting Damage: chance to apply bleed increased from 2% to 5%
Viciousness: critical strike damage bonus with two handed weapons increased from +10% to +15%
Footwork: evasion bonus increased from +4% to +5%
Second wind: trigger value reduced from below 50% health to below 30% health, second wind +50% armor and +50% all resistance bonuses reduced to +30%
Brute Force Tree
Superhuman strength: max tiers reduced (8 to 5)
Leaded fists: physical penetration bonus increased from 3% to 5% and max tiers reduced (5 to 3)
Peak performance: max tiers increased (4 to 5)
Heavy hitter: chance to cause trauma increased from 2% to 5%
Thick skin: max tiers reduced (8 to 5)
Brawn: reduced to +.1% physical spell damage per point in strength from 1%
Provoke Skill
Provoke: duration per level scaling increased to .5 per level instead of a diminishing return scaling
Slam Skill
Base damage weapon modifier increased from 140 to 155%
Weapon modifier damage per level bonus increased from 8% to 10%
ːsftechnomancerː
Technomancer
Metal Tree
Coating: physical penetration increased from 3% to 5% and max tiers reduced (5 to 3)
Gear lock: max tiers reduced (8 to 5)
Battery pack: max tiers reduced (5 to 3 and 8 to 3)
Artillery: max tiers reduced (5 to 3)
Well oiled machine: max tiers reduced (8 to 5)
Solidify: max tiers reduced (8 to 5)
Decoy Skill
Increased base radius of Decoy taunt
Fixed an issue where the collision of Decoy’s taunt was only 180 degrees front facing, it is now a full spherical radius
Tekhead Skill
Increased the base damage
Damage scaling per level increased
Now gains +50 life per level
Fuses
Crush: drops now roll within a range of 40-50% damage of skill.
Torrent: Fixed an issue where the Torrent Fuse would be one hexagon in size and difficult to unequip.
Split: Max range reduced from 16 to 3 degrees
Homing: reduced the detection ranged from 2000 units to 300 and tweaked the detection angle, range and rotation speeds of the projectile
Thank you, and a note on some incoming fixes
It’s been an intense couple of hours since Superfuse entered Early Access, and we wanted to thank you for all for your patience as we iron out those day-one bumps.
About an hour ago, we pushed out a fix that hopefully solves the server issues that some of you have experienced when attempting to do online co-op. If you are still encountering these issues, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us on our Steam Forum, on our official Discord, or through our support, and we will try to assist you as soon as possible.
If you are experiencing localization issues, please know that we are working on a fix that will be incoming as soon as it is sorted.
Rest assured, we are reading all of your feedback and looking into potential fixes for any issues you might encounter. Please keep letting us know about any bugs you encounter. With all this said, we hope you enjoy Superfuse, and we look forward to the journey ahead.
Superstream is Live
Hi everyone,
We are going live for our first Superstream in Early Access right now! Join us, meet the devs, and enjoy the ride!
It's the minion-filled moment you've ALL been waiting for…
Superfuse is OUT NOW as an Early Access title!
So what's in this release you might ask? Here's the full report on what you need to know.
- Enjoy hours of both Single Player Mode and Co-Op Mode for up to 4 players, and dive deeper into the mystery and lore surrounding Superfuse... -Choose from a selection of 3 classes including the Berserker, the Elementalist, and the newly announced Technomancer with their 3 mighty minions! - Take on monstrous mini-bosses Avalanche and the much-loved (or hated) Razor from our Beta Sneak Peek, as well as our fabled boss the Foreman... - Explore immersive game areas including the Outer Rim, the Conduit, the Edge of Space, and more… - Experience Endgame content including the Solar Map and the Contracts system!
Exciting stuff, what else is there?
What, all that not enough for ya?! Then enjoy brand new fuses, loot drop items including Uniques, additional in-game music from our EPIC OST (see more below) AND more of that sweet Superfuse artstyle too!
But what comes after Early Access?
Easy there, Enforcer. We'll have a lot to share on this in the coming weeks, including a roadmap that will answer many of your questions!
Wait, what if I need to contact the Support Station?
Well you're in luck! We have a fully manned station here, where you can leave feedback, submit bug reports, and gain technical support. Praise the Gods! How can I join in the celebrations?
By attending our developer-led Superstream from today at 6:30pm CET on Twitch! We'll also be celebrating on Discord and shouting about our release on Twitter too at @SuperfuseGame, so BYOS (bring your own Salt)!
Okay I'm ready! How can I play?
By heading over to our Steam store page of course! There you can purchase the game at €24.99/$24.99/£20.99, download, and step through our portal.
You can also enjoy seperately:
- Our blessed OST by award-winning composer Michael McCann, with 16 killer tracks. - Our Digital Items Pack - Our Supporter Edition with base game, OST and digital items included, now 10% off!
So step through our Steam portal and experience Superfuse now!
Welcome to the second Dev Diary for Superfuse! This time we’re breaking down the various enemies you’ll encounter in our game.
Common Enemies
Common Enemies help fulfill the role of a power fantasy. While all combat should be a challenge, we want players to feel like a superhero by having moments where they can quickly decimate a group of enemies.
We designed common enemies in different classes, and named each class after the enemy's main behavior or function, like Swarmers and Rangers. This allowed us to create consistent bases for enemy designs. With these, we could define rules for what classes can appear together, and in which quantities, to make encounters that are balanced and dynamic.
Where it gets a bit more complicated is with higher ranking enemies, which should provide extra excitement and challenge for players. These enemies are also the prime source of higher-rarity loot.
Elites
The first higher ranking enemy are Elites. These are based on common enemies and come in three different types with increased stats compared to their common version.
First off, we have the “Super Elite”. These come with a telltale blue color, and have a single Elite Modifier, which is generally more stat driven, and they come in packs of two-to-four.
The second type is the “Rare Elite” (yellow). Unlike the blue elites, their packs comprise one Rare Elite and three-to-five minions. They also roll two modifiers, instead of one, and roll from a different pool than the Super Elites. To make them even more distinctive, we filled this pool of stats with more passive effects, like sparking and auras.
“Named Elites” (purple) are the final variation. In contrast to the other two Elite types, these are custom designed and have unique names. They appear at fixed locations in the story, and they can appear in the endgame too.
Villains & Bosses
Our final, and highest ranking enemies, are Villains and Bosses.
Very early in the project, Villains leapt forward instantly from the superhero theme. These enemies are a natural counterpoint to Enforcers (our superheroes and player-characters). Villains give us ways to gate players, challenge them, and offer rewards for their defeat. With special abilities and powerful attacks, Villains offer unique and satisfying combat encounters.
Bosses fill a similar role, but are a little more traditional. Bosses fill a similar role, but are a little more traditional. We've made signature, large-scale fights with greater loot at the end and paired it with major story beats, bringing the Superfuse universe to life.
Until next time…
We hope you enjoyed this peek into the various enemies you’ll face in Superfuse. Come back soon for another Stitch Heads Dev Diary!
Enemy Spotlight - The Foreman
The Foreman
Mutated beyond recognition, the Foreman was once one of the highest-ranking workers on Eros. What now remains is a hulking monstrosity, triggered by an event that remains a mystery. All the Enforcers know is that he is dangerous, he knows something, and he needs to be taken down. The question is, are you strong enough to survive the encounter?
Join us on Discord to discuss Foreman and to count down to Early Access! Stay alert on the latest from Eros too by following us on Twitter.
Leading up to our Early Access release we, the Superfuse devs, wanted to highlight a few features we have in store.
Today we are going to be talking about our Endgame system, called the Solar Map, which we are releasing with Early Access. This is our solution for replayability, because it's an expandable system that lets us easily add new areas and new monsters.
The Solar Map
The Solar Map will be unlocked at the end of the Early Access story. This allows you to continue your playthrough without interruption. The current Solar Map we've put in place is a lighter version which we hope to expand later down the line, but right now you'll already be able to take your spaceship to other asteroids and pick up Contracts.
Contracts
Contracts come in various difficulties and forms, and can include killing Elites or a Boss. We are planning to add more variety, with objective-based contracts. To give players the chance to weigh risk vs reward, each Contract's fights can have stat modifiers applied to both you and your enemies. Depending on how you play, these modifiers could be positive or negative.
Heightened chance for more loot and credits
Lowered armor for the player
Higher max health and attack speed for the enemies
Scaling
Currently, Contracts work by scaling to the player level instead of being a fixed level. This is the form that we will release in Early Access, but we are eager to have your opinion on scaling vs. fixed level in our Discord! Funny side note; one of our developers took the effort to have the Solar Map use the real numbers for the angles and relative rotation speed for all celestial bodies.
Music is an integral part of building up the world of games, and we are beyond excited to announce that the soundtrack and music for Superfuse will be provided by none other than Michael McCann.
For those of you who don’t recognize the name, he is a BAFTA-nominated composer for a bunch of games including Borderlands 3, Deux Ex: Human Revolution & Mankind Divided, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, and XCOM: Enemy Unknown & Enemy Within. We sat down with him and had a quick chat about what has inspired him for Superfuse.
How did you get involved with Superfuse?
This is an interesting story, as it informs a bit about the sound of the soundtrack. I started talking to Raw Fury right in the middle of my move over to Asia from Canada in late 2021. I had a very small mobile rig for music, as I had planned at least a year to get settled and continue work on a personal project – eventually shipping my studio gear from Canada once Covid restrictions made things a bit easier.
The gear I had with me was good enough to do some light composition / producing work, but nothing for full scale production. Essentially a small mobile rig with a tiny synth, laptop, iPad, headphone amp, small audio interface and a couple of other pieces of gear. Everything fit in a carry-on hard case and small backpack!
When Raw Fury reached out, I was very skeptical that I could pull off a score like this with the gear I had. And because I was constantly moving around from city to city, it made setting up even a temporary studio difficult. Also – there were still heavy lockdown restrictions across Asia, and Visa / entry / exit requirements were constantly changing, so I had to stay totally mobile. I fully explained my situation to Raw Fury, and we agreed that I’d do some demo tracks (which will be on the soundtrack), to see what I could produce with the resources I had - working out of hotels, Airbnb’s, airport terminals, etc.
The demo tracks went better than expected! My laptop was constantly overheating, and I had to completely eliminate most of my favorite software instruments & effects, and only use stuff that was fairly lightweight. It felt like going back to being a teenager with a few pieces of gear.
90% of the soundtrack was produced this way – without any instruments, entirely “in the box”, working out of hotels and temporary spaces, on headphones. For any gearheads, the primary gear was a set of Sony MDR-7520 headphones, a Dell XPS 9500, a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 (eventually a Audient ID14), a PreSonus Faderport, an iPad running Metagrid & Duet for a 2nd screen, a cheap headphone amp and a bunch of external hard drives / USB hubs. I also had a Zoom H4N portable recorder with me, which was used for some source recording.
I hear a lot of talk from composers / producers about working with less – usually they’re talking in front of a couple million dollars in gear. This is always funny to me. But working on this setup was about as minimal as I’ve ever worked – and a major challenge for some tracks. Not sure I’d ever do this again! But props to Raw Fury for taking the risk and allowing me to work this way!
Tell us about the music from Superfuse
Superfuse is my first indie title – and that’s not an accident. I was specifically looking for indie projects after my last AAA games, since I’ve been noticing better soundtrack work being done at the indie level and was very curious why that was. Superfuse was a perfect introduction – great team, working with much less resources than I’m used to on larger productions, and I noticed immediately how much better of a creative environment this can be compared to larger productions. And as a shout out - the audio department for the last 6 months has been 1 guy – Josh Reece! This guy is a machine.
As for the music. I’ll admit I struggled with the style of music for top-down action gameplay. I have mostly scored first-person games where you are completely immersed in the character’s line of sight. XCOM: Enemy Unknown was an exception to this – but that score wasn’t dynamic, and it was turn based, so not fluid action where the music adapted in real time. When you have this god-like view looking down, it feels much less intimate, not in a bad way, but more like a continuous tracking shot of a war scene in a movie. The player can see everything around the character, 360 degrees (with some limitations on distance), which means you are reacting to the whole world at once, and not just what’s directly in your line of sight. This is a wildly different psychology than FPS, where the limited perspective can imply all kinds of things that aren’t on screen, meaning you can also be more subtle / minimal. This shift in perspective took me a long time to get used to – but I think the music integration work of Josh Reece helped a lot. The music system is split into 4 pieces: 1) Ambient exploration themes. 2) Suspense themes for when you’re nearing danger 3) Low & high combat for lighter and heavier action gameplay respectively. The music breathes and reacts dynamically, sometimes implying what’s to come, sometimes telling you what level of the threat you’re facing, sometimes just providing ambience for exploration. It’s been a long process of getting this right.
The style of music covers a few genres – since the story and environments cover a lot of territory – from heroic to horror to sci-fi, cyberpunk, industrial. This is a game built around superheroes. But there’s a very dark / sinister element that absolutely requires ultra-aggression and a dark treatment at times. So any lighter heroic themes are always balanced out…especially the in-game music - with darker / aggressive styles. There’s also an implied epic scale to the maps, since you can see deep below the play area, and the never-ending distance of space is seen (or implied) throughout Outer Rim (the focus of the Early Access gameplay). I really tried to give the music some size to convey that cavernous space and overarching story. My laptop hated this – reverbs consume tremendous amount of CPU and there is so much reverb on this score! And I wanted a lot of guitar for aggression to contrast the wider soundscapes - unfortunately….no guitar, so had to use virtual guitars….and no decent guitar amp simulations as they killed my laptop. Fun! The music ranges from symphonic / electronic hybrid pieces like the character selection area (“Enforcers” on OST), which is also one of the first themes you hear in the game, to lush ambient themes, to heavy dark-electronic action cues. There are hints of world music scattered throughout, which is something I usually incorporate in all my scores, but there are Aztec / Mayan influences in the game that are hinted at in the music.
If players are interested in the progression of styles during the production – Cold Cargo was the first section I scored (“Frozen” and “Avalanche” on OST) – largely based off a track I did in early tests - along with the Intro Cinematic (“Prologue” on OST). The Edge of Space section (“Edge of Space” and “Blockade” on OST) is where I perhaps hit the style more clearly, since it has a more evolved mix of dark electronic, spacey vibes, world music, and heavy action / aggression for the action themes. The “Enforcers” theme was also done a bit later, and I think it’s better at contrasting the darker in-game music with the heroic sides of the story. And there are 2 bonus tracks on the OST (tracks 15 & 16) that are early brainstorms / tests of my mobile setup. I thought some might find it interesting to hear what the early tests sounded like.
Where do you draw your inspiration from as a composer?
This has changed substantially over time – and travelling around a new continent the last 14-months has already shifted inspiration. Music wise and with soundtrack work specifically, I’m mostly inspired by world music, hip-hop, dark electronic and choral / opera. Somehow these all go together! But being over in Asia is already introducing me to tons of new music. There’s an explosion of creativity all across this continent that is hugely inspiring. Great pop, electronic and hip-hop out of Cambodia, South Korea, Thailand and on and on. It’s no surprise you’re seeing music, tv series and films from the East hit critical mass in the West. There’s an incredible uncynical artistic energy over here - and often a very different way of looking at things - which is what I wanted to experience.
Anything else you'd like to share about your work on Superfuse?
All I’ll say is that I will no longer be working on a laptop after Early Access! It was a fun experiment, but the laptop studio needs to go. I can’t even express how excited I am to finally be working on a slightly better setup – kind of a middle ground between my previous setup back in Canada and the mobile setup. But I am really happy with the music on this Early Access edition. I thought I would make all kinds of excuses, but instead it made me realize that you can do fairly ambitious music production while travelling around with a carry-on-airplane studio. I say I would never do this again, but it was actually a great experience that I’ll probably miss when going back to the locked-in room studio life!
The 16-track Early Access soundtrack for Superfuse are available digitally on almost all music platforms (Spotify, Apple Music,Youtube, Amazon, Tidal, etc.). Just follow Michael McCann on any of these platforms for updates, or follow Raw Fury & Superfuse on social media for more info.
