Music can fundamentally change a gameplay experience, especially with a title like Celeste. With this charity album dedicated to female characters in gaming, GameGrooves will be contributing its profits to Girls Make Games, an organization that assists women in the games industry.
Launching on September 25, Her Theme: A Tribute to Women in Gaming is a collaboration album from 12 different artists. It will feature 11 tracks from games like Celeste, the Final Fantasy series, and Bastion with three original songs thrown in. Two covers of the Celeste soundtrack will be included. It will be available on all major streaming services this week.
Some of the people involved with the project include a singer and songwriter for the Watch Dogs and Beyond Good & Evil series Julia Handschin, JRPG cover artist Lacey Johnson, and orchestral reworker The Noble Demon.
Girls Make Games, if you haven't heard of their work before, is an organization that teaches girls how to design, code, and create video games during summer camps, workshops, and game jams. Since its launch in 2014, it has helped over 20,000 girls across the globe.
Hopefully, with the efforts of Girls Make Games, we can see the industry blossom into a more equal workforce. And for consumers, that's a win because first, there will be more representation, and second, there will be more diverse stories to tell by people with different perspectives.
We have seen a rise of strong female characters within the last generation of gaming. Ellie is an incredibly strong female protagonist who's tough and proud to be lesbian. On the side of that, Tracer is an exceptionally cheerful personality in the first-person shooter Overwatch, who's the face of the game on the front cover. Madeline from Celeste was written with extreme care and attention as the game tackles depression and anxiety in a deeply powerful way.
While the Final Fantasy series has recently declined in female representation, with an all-male cast for Final Fantasy XV and few women to be seen in the Final Fantasy XVI trailer, the album could definitely showcase Tifa and Aerith from Final Fantasy VII Remake or Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII. It would be great to get a rendition of any of their themes.