Yeah, let's go with that.
Since we last saw it, Starbound, indie group Chucklefish's upcoming 2D sci-fi sandbox title, made leaps and bounds in development. And being a good, feature-rich sandbox, the game will have, alongside the usual spelunking, exploring, mining, and building, a full-scale music system. Here's Chucklefish:
You’ll be able to craft musical instruments including a trumpet, violin, guitar, piano and drum. Once you’ve got one of these instruments you’ll be able to hit various keyboard keys to play different notes. But more interestingly the instruments are able to read ABC notation.
Essentially you’ll be able to share tunes with each other as regular text. Copy and paste them into your Starbound directory and your player will use his instrument to play the song in game. You’ll be able to play songs in multiplayer and even synchronize different instruments with each other to form a band.
The above video, which is a charming guitar-and-flute rendition of GLaDOS' "Still Alive" from Portal, is actually the second demonstration of the game's music system—there being an earlier, more simple rendition of Beethoven's "Für Elise" among the developer's videos. It's quite amazing how far the system has come in just one week.
Starbound is slated to be released on PC this year, and can be pre-ordered from Chucklefish's website. If what you read above didn't whet your appetite, maybe the screenshots below will.
7th of July Progress [Starbound]
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