Prison City News

The notorious Doc Diver reigns over his security zone filled with mutated monsters! Eliminate him to end his ghastly experiments!


Get a glimpse at what to expect in the fight against Doc Diver!

[h3]1. Rising & Falling Water Levels[/h3]
Throughout the fight, the sewer water levels will fluctuate. If the water rises to the ceiling of the Warden room, Doc Diver will swim above the ground and drop bombs! Attack him while he's above you and destroy any bombs before they detonate! If the water level is low, Doc Diver will run across the room instead! And be aware of the bullet projectiles fired from his pistol; jump over these bullets and keep up the pressure on the Warden boss.


[h3]2. Brain Huggers Dropping In![/h3]
When the water levels reach the ceiling, sometimes Doc Diver will use the sewer tunnels to temporarily escape. Expect two Brain Huggers to jump out from two tunnels! Dispatch them and wait for Doc Diver to appear again.


[h3]3. Bubble Streams[/h3]
While Doc Diver is cowering away in the sewer tunnels, he'll pop out of a hole and activate a series of underwater jetstreams that'll force Hal upwards to the spiked ceiling! Keep away from these to avoid getting propelled vertically, and destroy any more Brain Huggers that may show up!


[h3]4. The Doc Returns[/h3]
When Doc Diver comes out of hiding, he'll repeat his attack cycle by swimming across the room, shooting bullet projectiles, and dropping bombs. Jump over or destroy the bombs he drops and take down the Warden!


You can face Doc Diver in the Sewers security zone in Prison City--available NOW!

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In the words of lead game developer Programancer: "Prison City is a game with a very retro ethos- It's really difficult, but once you start taking the time to learn enemy patterns and level layouts, you'll see it's consistent and pretty easy to navigate.


It's like seeing the Matrix code and knowing what to do intuitively- but who has the patience to figure that out?!

Sure, we have plenty of difficulty customization available to make it a big time baby game, and we absolutely believe the game is worth playing through on ANY difficulty at least once!"

Nominate Prison City as the "Best Game You Suck At" in the Steam Awards!


Be sure to follow Retroware's publisher page to stay up to date on all our games, news, and more!

https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/Retroware

Deep with in the Sewers security zone, the evil Doc Diver continues his nefarious experimentations! It's time to put a stop to his schemes and find out more about the truth behind Prison City! But to get to him, you'll have to navigate through a host of his deformed creatures and more Techno-Terrorists!



[h3]1. Mutated Monsters![/h3]

In the Sewers, you'll encounter a new type of enemy: Muties! These large, hideously deformed creatures of superhuman size and strength are FAR from being heroic. In fact, they're practically mindless from all the experimenting done on them! Now, they'll stop at nothing to prevent Hal from reaching Doc Diver's location!


You’ve seen them before, you’ll see them again! These rascals are rife down here in the Sewers, and you’ll even find some hatching from eggs! Brain Huggers typically hang out around sewage pipes, so you’ll want to check your six when sliding through them!


And like their previous encounters, Brain Huggers will keep on jumping at Hal–hoping to devour his brain! Eliminate these vile mutations as you press forward through the security zone!

[h3]2. Techno-Terrorist Grenaders and Gadgets[/h3]
As expected, the Techno-Terrorists have stationed several Grenaders and some mechanical obstacles down in the Sewers to protect the Warden. You'll find regular Grenaders, Buzz Drones, along with Security Eyes--leave no traces of them behind!




[h3]3. Eww! Sewer Water![/h3]
You'll have to go through multiple areas filled--either partially or completely--with sewer water. Just...don't ask us how Hal can remain standing and walking upright (as a certain contact in the zone will state, he's "a ripper legend!"). When jumping inside submerged sections, Hal will rise and fall at a much slower speed, so be mindful of any obstructions (or enemies) that might get in his way when landing!


You can infiltrate the Sewers security zone in Prison City--available NOW!

Be sure to follow Retroware's publisher page to stay up-to-date on all our games, news, and more!

https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/Retroware

[h3]Do you have a favorite track in the game?[/h3]

Matt: You know, if I had to pick, I tend to lean towards the ones that are just crazier or the ones that are faster or more chaotic, so I kind of like boss battles a lot in that regard. And, in fact, boss battles are my favorite tracks for writing games. So, "Combatants" is definitely one that I would say is up there--that's just the regular boss battle in the game.



[h3]Did you stay within chiptunes or did you feel like you had to expand past that for some parts of the music?[/h3]

Matt: When I got the call to write this game as a Game Jam, it was just pure NES music, but when I got the call to do the full score, I knew I wanted to do something that was bigger than just chiptunes. So what I did was I wrote the NES music to be the center of my mix. After that, I ported everything from my tracker projects into my actual digital audio workstation, so I could start applying some of this gear I have surrounding me to try and take it to another level.



So, what I wanted to do--the protocol I came up with for Prison City--was I wanted to make sure the drums sounded way bigger than on the NES, because the NES drums, while I love them, some random guy that hasn't heard NES music since he played Contra when he was a kid, or even some young kid today, is probably gonna be like, "It sounds a little flat," you know? It's not really--it's just happening, so you have to apply those enhancements very carefully because, if you go too hard with it, you ruin all that nostalgia that people have. And if you don't go hard enough, then the people who have the HD memory won't really gel with it.

I started adding an extra layer on top of the NES music, so I wanted that NES music to stay in the middle, stay thick, stay nostalgic, and then start adding some extra layers so that people could really gel with the track--no matter the system they're listening on.



[h3]What advice or insight can you give composers who may be just starting their career creating gaming soundtracks, or just scoring in general?[/h3]

Matt: If they're already writing music, they're already ahead of the curve. It's like a muscle--you have to keep working it out. You gotta get pumped; you gotta get jacked, so never ever stop writing, even if you're writing 30-second tracks. You know what a good technique for young composers is: Just try and finish that track, even if it's 30 seconds long. Just give it an ending or try and have it fade out. Like, try and just work that muscle out like finishing a track and the more you get used to doing that, the more you can have all these little bits and pieces that you can use later on, too. If you're just writing music on your own, especially if it has an ending, it's way harder to go back and write an ending into a track like, "Oh, I've moved computers, and I have a new operating system now." So, practice finishing your tracks, even if they're little bits there.



As for getting into the game industry, I think it was a bit of luck and a bit of just pure, raw, deranged perseverance. If you're that type of musician, it'll happen for you. The industry changes every week, and you have to actually watch and learn as much as you can about what developers are going through, and what the game industry is going through. As a composer, you need to be networking with absolutely everyone; network with streamers, network with developers. I would say create a spreadsheet right now of all the people that you could potentially contact, so that you can see it, because you need to start visualizing what that networking looks like and not just keep it in your head and be like, "I think it'll all work out." And one thing for sure that I learned is to have a social media presence and always be putting out content, even if it's not music. Then, make video content, as well.

I know that sounds very counterproductive, but if you're good at creating a thumbnail, that's one leg in the door, so you need to become kind of a jack-of-all-trades if you want to start promoting yourself and getting into this industry. For young composers, the good news is it's always changing and if you're young right now, you probably know more than I do. It's a struggle for me to figure out what the hell are people doing now on the internet. It's the price we must constantly pay.



Wanna listen to Prison City's soundtrack for yourself? Both the game AND soundtrack are available NOW!

Follow Retroware's publisher page to stay up-to-date on all our games, news, and more!

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Get an insight into how Prison City's soundtrack came to be and how its composer came across the project!

[h3]1. Tell us who you are, how long you've been in the industry, and what work you've done in the past.[/h3]

Matt: Hi, I'm Matt Creamer, I've been in this industry for about 12 years now. I think I started in 2012 with Retro City Rampage. It was actually the first game I ever worked on. Believe it or not, I was making chiptunes, which are like NES Nintendo-flavored music just as a hobby for a long time, and I got a little bit of a following on the internet for it. And it was actually on my MySpace page that the developer for Retro City Rampage contacted me and said, "You know, we're wondering if you'd like to work on this game," which was like an NES homage to Grand Theft Auto.



From there, it's moved to absolutely everything! I didn't realize I wanted to write other types of music until Mass Effect I came out, and I'm like, "That is it for me. I love synth music. I love--I want to make stuff that's not just chiptunes." And that was right around the time while I was at school I got the contact to do Retro City Rampage.



[h3]2. How did you get involved with scoring Prison City?[/h3]

Matt: So, I actually went through this big phase where I was on Twitter, and I would scroll down and look at any project that I thought looked cool. I would make a big spreadsheet of what their contact was, what their Twitter was, what their webpage was, and I actually just cold called dozens and dozens of developers for projects that I thought looked cool. And so Programancer was definitely one. It wasn't until many years later that he was working on a Game Jam for Prison City, and he asked me if I wanted to work on it. So I worked on this Game Jam for him; it was only like a day's worth of work or something, but it was a whole day written off, and I wrote as much as I could. So, I ended up giving him a lot of tunes for it and some of them actually made it in the official game, as well.



But yeah, something about it--I liked the way it looked, obviously. Prison City looked so cool. It's like Shatterhand and Power Blade, and Ninja Gaiden even. It's like all my favorite NES games and I was like, "I got to work on this because I've worked on NES before," and a lot of people sometimes describe my music as like Capcom meets Konami, but this was a game where I'm like, "I know what this game should sound like. I know it should sound like this," so it was not hard for me to dive all the way in on this one.



[h3]3. How did you find the sound of Prison City? Were there any specific influences?[/h3]

Matt: At this point, I've been listening to video game music more than I've listened to real music. All of those influences just come in and sometimes, as a creative, you have a little tool kit that you kind of dip into whenever you're in a jam. So, as a person that just listens to so much video game music, all of my toolkits are based on, like, this Freddy Krueger-style amalgamation of all the little tips I've learned now. I'll write a lick in a game, and then I'll think, "Oh, that's totally ripping off, you know, Mega Man 3 or something," and then when I go back and listen to Mega Man 3, I'm like, "It was nothing like it. It truly has taken on a life of its own."



We'll be continuing our sit-down with Matt next week!

You can listen to Prison City's soundtrack both separately and in the game--both available NOW!

Follow Retroware's publisher page to stay up-to-date on all our games, news, and more!

https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/retroware