Former Ubisoft developer Yoan Fanise and Grammy winning producer/performer Wyclef Jean have announced the first "musical narrative game" Lost in Harmony.
The game will feature a song "powered" by Jean, who has won two Grammys, and renowned video game composers. Described as "a revolution in musical gaming, it is telling a moving story only by music."
Players take on the role of Kaito, who moves about the world holding a girl called Aya on his skateboard. As you'd expect, the emphasis is heavy on the "highly emotional soundtrack" which is said to bring to together different genres of music from numerous cultures. The game is inspired by movies from Miyazaki and Kurosawa, and explores the troubles of being a teenager and what it's like to be faced with fears of life and death.
"The idea of Lost in Harmony came from my past experience of blending music into storytelling. Magic happens when you see how, without any word, without any language form, you can provoke feelings into a multicultural audience by playing the right melody.” Yoan Fanise, who's acting as creative director on the game, said. “I was frustrated not to find a musical game that brought this level of emotion, with characters you care about, with a story you want to follow, it was more or less always about rhythmic tapping, about squares and circles. By marrying my storytelling experience and the talent of world class composers, there is a chance that this game will touch people’s hearts.”
“To bring music to Kaito’s fantasy world was thrilling,” explains Wyclef Jean ”I wanted to write music that captured a moment in his journey that was both mystical and brave, and that could emotionally inspire the multi-national world that is video gaming and that Kaito lives in. And how cool do music for a game that uses music to communicate!”
Jean has sold more than 49 million records worldwide while Fanise worked on Beyond Good & Evil and Assassin's Creed 3 at Ubisoft.
