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Affordable Space Adventures is, in this writer's opinion, one of the finest download-only titles on the Wii U eShop. It's a rare example in which the GamePad is used brilliantly, and as it's part of the current Humble Friends of Nintendo Bundle there's no excuse for Wii U owners not to try it.

Beyond its clever and involving gameplay it also has terrific sound design. That's hardly surprising when Game Director Nicklas Nygren is involved (http://nifflas.ni2.se/ - @nifflas on Twitter), but the soundtrack itself also has contributions from D Fast (www.dfastmusic.net – @dfast on Twitter) and Sidsel Marie Hermansen (www.sidselhermansen.net - @SsLHrmnsN on Twitter). The music is atmospheric and swings from cheerful to moody depending on the situation, and at some points is driven primarily by sound effects, such as the engine of the player's ship.

The pleasing news is that the soundtrack is now available as a free download, and we've had a pleasant time listening to it. Nygren - known to many as Nifflas - co-developed the game with KnapNok Games, and he gave us the track list and spoke a little about the soundtrack.

  1. Award-winning seats
  2. You Can Be a Professional Space Explorer
  3. Spectaculon – Outtake
  4. What Do You Mean NOT Spectaculon
  5. Endless Caves
  6. If You Do However Encounter an Artifact, Don't Panic
  7. Poot Poot
  8. My Name is Alex
  9. The Beat is Coming
  10. The Robot Factory
  11. What Did I Do
  12. Origin Story
  13. This Game Has Too Long Loading Times
  14. The Core
  15. The Ship Was Not Designed for This
  16. Concern Pod – Downtempo
  17. Concern Pod – Ambient
  18. Concern Pod – Beach Waves
  19. Concern Pod - Outtake

Affordable Space Adventures isn't a game with tons of "songs", but the sound effects were designed to be in a musical key. Some tunes in the soundtrack (e.g. Poot Poot, which consists entirely of the sounds the space ship makes) are for that reason actually pretty musical.

Speaking of Poot Poot - apart from being a tune in the soundtrack, it is also the canonical name of the game's spaceship, in honour of the adorable "Two People Playing Games" who makes awesome LPs ( on YouTube / @2peepeeG). Many of the Affordable Space Adventures developers ended up watching their playthrough of our game.

The song "This Game Has Too Long Loading Times" is named after the main complaint we got about the game, and consists of all sound effects that plays during loading (there's a lot of it). We unfortunately couldn't optimize the loading times further unless we did realtime streaming of the levels, which is highly complicated and would have taken time from developing aspects of the game we considered far more important. Instead, we made sure the loading screens had unique sounds and visuals, for example the spaceship's manual, which ties into the game's fiction.

If you want to download the soundtrack you can use the following link, though bear in mind that clicking on it will auto-download a zip file - Affordable Space Adventures soundtrack

Nygren will also be uploading the soundtrack to his official website soon.

Check it out and let us know what you think - you've picked up Affordable Space Adventures for the Wii U already, right?