For the past ten years, virtual band and gaming sensation The Living Tombstone has created original tracks with odes to many video game favorites. Founder Yoav Landau began the venture, with main vocalist Sam Haft joining soon after to create the duo they are today. While they’ve been making musical tributes for years now, it wasn’t until recently they took the plunge into game development. “It’s always been this world that we were involved in or adjacent to,” Haft says. “And then, when we got this opportunity to come up with our own game concept, we had this really cool moment where we got to say, ‘Well, what does a game look like? What is something that represents The Living Tombstone?’”
That’s when the brainstorming started. Haft - joined by his partner on the project, lead developer Mike Arkin from Big Boat Interactive - set out to create something that captures the spirit of The Living Tombstone and its dedicated community. “We had two options,” Haft says. “If it was going to be a musical game, it either needs to be turn-based and strategic, or a rhythm game. At the time, Yaov was playing some auto chess games, and I had sunk a ton of time into a team battler game from EA called Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes. And I was like, ‘Man, I’m playing so much of this, you’re playing so much of that. I wonder if there’s some way to do a strategic team building game where it’s a battle of the bands and the bands are actually doing the battling.’”
That’s how the idea of intertwining music and combat was born. AudioClash isn’t a rhythm game, despite what may come to mind when trying to imagine what a musical gaming experience looks like. The game is a free-to-play melodious showdown where you’ll recruit your own team of musicians, all with unique powers and personalities designed to sync up with traditional RPG roles like tanks, healers, and damage dealers.
“I think the easiest way to explain where our heads were at conceptually is like, Scott Pilgrim [meets] Pokemon,” Haft begins. “I love the Pokemon comparison in terms of turn-based team battle gameplay, in that you’re picking your moves. There’s this phase just for that, and then there’s a sequence where your band does those moves, and then [the enemy’s] moves are done in sequence towards your band.” AudioClash also assigns each move its own unique melody, so whatever attack you choose will ultimately determine how your battle of the bands sounds. You’re essentially fighting with your own arrangements.
Arkin is also excited about how the musical component turns AudioClash into something that goes far beyond your typical auto-battler. When he describes its musical mix and match components, you can tell it’s his favorite part “[In the beginning] you choose a manager,” Arkin says. ”There are three atmospheres, which are like super genres of music. So whatever atmosphere your manager lives in, like Dynamo, which is a certain kind of music, you can then only pick the band members in that atmosphere. You can’t have a heavy metal guitarist and a reggae drummer, it just doesn’t fit together. But, within your band, you can pick a heavy metal guitarist, a punk vocalist, a hard rock guitarist - you can mix and match. But the song you pick is being played by those characters in their genres.” The team is so confident about this aspect of the game that they hope to one day have ways for players to save and export their own songs or music videos based on their compositions.
AudioClash’s Pokemon comparisons don’t end with its turn-based battle system, either. Both Haft and Arkin are eager to discuss the game’s roster, an ever-growing cast of musicians players can collect. Much like you do with beloved ‘mons, you’ll find your favorite bandmates to recruit. They tell me about bizarre characters like Ed Koch - named after former New York city mayor Ed Koch - who is also a cat. He’s a “bodega cat,” much like the felines that sleep in those small supermarkets synonymous with the Big Apple, and also has a big, psychic brain. As Arkin and Haft describe the lineup, it’s easy to see how beloved series like Pokemon and Scott Pilgrim influence the roster’s creativity.
“I think a big part of [Pokemon] is that people really care about the characters and they care about the Pokemon,” Haft begins. “I capture a Clefairy, and I am emotionally attached to that Clefairy. And I really wanted to create not only humans, but also anthropomorphic band members that could have a sense of story to them - a sense of worldbuilding to them.” Haft himself isn’t super into the nitty-gritty numbers game of Pokemon, he’s more drawn to designs and how they make him feel. “That’s much less important to me than the unscientific term vibes, so sometimes, I’ll see a Pokemon, and I’ll be like, I really like that Pokemon’s vibe. That Pokemon is going to be on my team.
“And I’m just trying - this sounds very douchey - [to] be a curator of good vibes. As far as putting together a set of band members who are all like, just interesting enough that someone might look at that band member and say, ‘I want that one on my team.’”
Haft wants to create characters that players care about with small details and bios that illustrate “there’s a story here.” The Living Tombstone is also known for its animated shorts, and Haft sees tapping into that as a way to extend the AudioClash universe. For now, the roster is full of short blurbs that may occasionally connect, but Haft says their signature videos could be “a great venue with which to build relationships” between characters.
Both Haft and Arkin are deeply invested in creating characters the community will fall in love with. Before we part, they both describe their favorites that you’ll also be able to collect, like Chad, a goofy yacht rocker himbo, or Bella Vamp, a tall goth girl with big broody vampire energy. “You know, I’m constantly saying, what can we add next? Let’s come up with something cool,” Arkin says. “ And I can’t wait for like a year from now, when we’ll have another 100 characters, and we still have so many ideas. We’re never gonna run out.”
AudioClash launches August 17, 2021, on Steam Early Access for PC. You can check out our exclusive reveal of characters like Lumenosity, a vibrant non-binary popstar; Bella Vamp, the gothic bass-playing stunner; and Nozomi, a J-rock guitarist inspired by Arkin’s daughter.