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In Return to Bird World, players are brought rearward to the floating kingdom of Bird World tons of years afterwhile the exercises of the prevenient game to find the once-brilliant island has planar into ruin. While the darker ambience is simply a embarkation from the prevenient Bird World, the new game still has one key unhealthfulness in common: it doesn't admittedly exist. Except its soundtrack does.

Return to Bird World comes from musician as well as Twitter personality Leon Chang, who's been releasing video game-inspired albums for the proficient few years. His first big project, 2017's Bird World, was evidently the soundtrack to an SNES-era game eccentrically a tiny bird embarking on an adventure. Metrical admitting you'll never play it, the soundtrack offered an idea of what the nonexistent game might be about. You'd odyssey foregoing a prank island, information out society of a small village, as well as ultimately incomer a world-changing disharmonize afore saying goodbye to all the quirky characters you met rotating the way.

Chang said the idea for presiding a fake soundtrack came out of the music to which he was once autograph as well as listening. "I like to address music that sounds like it comes from a video game, so why not make an registry that's based circa a fake video game?" he told The Verge.

For the sequel, Bird World has jumped to a new generation. The registry has PlayStation-esque artwork as well as a sprawling lengthiness -- an hour as well as a half -- to match the expansive soundtracks that'd signification games like Final Fantasy and Chrono Cross. It's moreover more versicolor as well as less relentlessly chirpy than the original. "The Overfeed God" seems to characterize a melancholy deity whose moorland has planar to ruin; "Sesame City" is fit for a expressive boondocks with a ill-at-ease edge; as well as "A World Descends Into Chaos" pretty numerous sounds like the name implies.

Chang said he started planning a Bird World sequel eccentrically as soon as the prevenient came out (he teased a follow-up as far rearward as November 2017). Heeding on the prevenient was gratifying enumerated to warrant the sequel, he said, except there was moreover requiescence more he capital to do. While autograph the first album, Chang found that he had idolization for more songs that, as an fledgling musician, he was still figuring out how to admittedly create.

"On Bird World, I wish I could listen washed more orchestral being as well as more soundtrack-y blazon of stuff, as well as now I listen the ableness to do that," Chang said. "This next registry just feels like demography all of that into as big of a toot as I can do."

The registry came together with the information of a "long-running Google Doc" where Chang sketched out the plot, characters, as well as settings of Return to Bird World. While you won't get to read the accomplished thing, you can get some of the details from a 28-page game chiral that accompanies the physical release of the registry -- a double-barreled CD package that's additionally meant to emulate those dummy PlayStation RPGs.

game chiral teaser:

table of contents~

tracklist details~

mastered by me
mixed by me
engineered by me
recorded at my house
saxophone on "a world descends into chaos" by steve pardo pic.twitter.com/yz3Mdd85jp

-- leon (@leyawn) November 21, 2020

Listeners won't know the accomplished transmigration by the time they're finished, except Chang examined the registry so that there's a retold sedulous from budding to end. "I'm mercenary persons can get some of [the plot] out of the tracks," he said, "but a lot is leftward to the imagination still."

Some unfolding were created specifically to signification locations or exercises Chang had in mind, while others started as songs that he later worked into the plot. Chang hired artists to emblematize the album's aviary as well as the game chiral illustrations (Aliana Wong as well as Titas Antanas Vilkaitis), as well as he wrote the dummy himself. "I put all the dummy as well as erecting together, as well as that took me infinitely to do," Chang said.

The result is another registry that superintendency to leave you adulatory you could play the game to which it belongs. The registry comes out today on Bandcamp as well as will be misogamist on other streaming platforms starting Saturday.

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