For those of you who aren’t familiar with Mushroom Men: Spore Wars, it’s a quirky little platformer coming out in the Wii next month. After a meteor crashes on Earth, four tribes of Mushroom Men gain consciousness and fight against each other (and other plants come to life) for the right to survive.

What’s cool about this game is that Les Claypool, bassist of Primus, had a heavy hand in both contributing to and influencing the game’s music. Working with audio company GL33k founded by Matt Piersall, a truly unique audio experience was born. You see, the noises and sound effects in Mushroom Men aren’t merely ambient sounds–all of the outdoor noises follow the same beat!

Matt and his team at Gl33k seem to have gone above and beyond the call of duty to put together the sounds for this game. To start off, all of the sounds in the game are set to the same BPM of 120. After getting 5 tracks composed by Les Claypool, they drew from his music the inspiration for the rest of the game’s varied soundtrack.

This wasn’t their only inspiration though. Some members of the team actually went camping to collect samples of genuine “outdoors” noises. These sounds were then given their own tempo and then placed in specific locations within the game. This means that the background noises and music of the game will differ depending on where you’re standing. An ever-changing soundtrack is a refreshing change from the more standard looped tracks in most other games.

Piersall had a lot to say about the music:

The music was a tough beast to tackle. We had Les Claypool create five tracks for the game. The tracks included four tracks for the races and one title track. His music was really cool and really helped drive a lot of interest in the project. He delivered his tracks as well as multi-tracked sessions (individual elements) that we used as world sounds, pickup sounds, and base elements for other tracks. Bob Arlauskas and myself composed a good majority of the music. The whole game has somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 tracks because constant looping music is one of my biggest pet peeves. For our approach we wanted to go with a sort of weirdo psychedelic dub feel. There is a slight reggae feel and Jimi Barkers original basslines gave us a cohesive palette from which to work.

I remember when I was able to play the demo I thought there was something different about the background noises. I guess it got kind of stowed in the back of my mind, since I was a bit busy gleefully smacking glowing rat carcasses with a stick.

Unfortunately it looks like the date for this one, along with Mushroom Men: Rise of the Fungi, has been pushed back a bit to December 2nd. Not a terribly long time to wait, and seeing how much work on the audio alone gives me hope that the rest of the game got just as much attention.

Mushroom Men: Spore Wars is one of the few Wii games on the horizon that caught my eye when I was at PAX. In my hands-on time with the game it seemed like a pretty solid platformer with a good sense of humor.

What I have for you readers today is a closer look at the boss battles in this game. Like the title of this blog reads, simply bopping these guys on the head isn’t gonna cut it. Different puzzle and strategy elements are necessary to make it to the next level.

In the press release I received, there were three different types of boss battles outlined:

Bosses as Mechanic Reinforcement

Several of the bosses and mini-bosses reinforce a specific mechanic, such as the Telekinesis-Throw (whereby Pax uses his Telekinesis ability on an object and tosses it back at the enemy). Players have the option to use this ability during the game to get the upper hand on an opponent, or could let Player 2 perform this to help them out in the midst of battle, but it is never enforced (didn’t want to force the player if they didn’t want to).

However, Red Fly used the bosses as a chance to make a puzzle and encourage players to use different Spore Powers. Several of the bosses require this Telekinesis-Throw attack to beat. One of the mini-bosses actually acts as a tutorial for the Spore Punisher maneuver, flying out of the player’s reach until they can successfully execute it.

Boss as Action/Puzzle

Red Fly created action/puzzle battles with some stand-alone boss encounters. For example, the player will need to use the environment components and specific game mechanics to take out bosses they can’t reach directly or might just be too strong. This frames these specific boss fights as puzzles to be solved, not simply a skill exercise (although there is some of that, too!).

Bosses as the Level

In the Parking Lot, the player will face not one but FIVE bosses. The entire area is centered on these encounters and each of the bosses use their environment in interesting and unique ways closely tied to them.

Looks like the company is trying to mix it up a bit with the bosses. Puzzles and “mechanics reinforcement” aren’t exactly the newest of techniques, but the idea of “Bosses as the Level” intrigues me a bit. It is also reassuring to know that each boss will be a different experience. I’m looking forward to seeing what this quirky little platformer has to offer this coming November.

Today, publisher SouthPeak Games announced that it has acquired Austin-based Gamecock Media Group. SouthPeak, the company behind Two Worlds and Dream Pinball 3D, certainly seems to be adding some good games to its repertoire with the addition of Gamecock’s Velvet Assassin and Legendary.

From the press release:

Melanie Mroz, CEO of SouthPeak, stated, “Gamecock brings us a solid slate of upcoming titles, including Legendary, Mushroom Men and Velvet Assassin and supports our strategy of working with independent developers. We are excited to give the Gamecock titles a bigger platform to succeed.”

“We are thrilled to be joining forces with SouthPeak to continue to bring great original titles from independent developers to market with a stronger sales and distribution reach,” said Mike Wilson, CEO of Gamecock. “We have followed each other’s progress closely over the last two years, and combining our team with theirs results in a very strong and well-rounded force in the market.”

SouthPeak Games, already one of the fastest growing videogame publishers, should be on the rise even more after the Gamecock acquisition, and the publisher said it expects to ship both Legendary and Mushroom Men in the current quarter.

Gamecock gets faulted a lot for their outlandish publicity stunts, but after receiving a fresh new batch of screenshots from the unstoppable publisher we’re actually rather impressed by the scope and variety of their upcoming games.

Look at these screens– you have a downloadable Pirates vs Ninjas Dodgeball game (with Zombies and Aliens, too!), a first person shooter called Legendary with crazy werewolves and griffins, and a trippy Wii platformer called Mushroom Men. Hardly a bald space marine in sight!

So here is your credit where credit is due, Gamecock– thanks for the original ideas. Some of these haven’t proven to be entirely successful in the past, like Fury and Dementium, but we really can’t fault them for trying.

Somewhere in this pack of new games there’s bound to be something for everyone. Check out the screens in the gallery below and let us know what you think. Platforms and release dates are as follows:

Pirates vs Ninja Dodgeball, XBLA, available Sept 3.

Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars, Wii, available Nov 11.

12►