How to Grow a Musical Garden in Mutazione, Out Soon on PS4

I’m Hannah Nicklin, Writer and Narrative Designer at Die Gute Fabrik. Earlier this year we were delighted to to you via our GDC Teaser Trailer. As we get closer to announcing our launch date, we wanted to give you an insight into one of the really special mechanics at the heart of Mutazione, as well as some exclusive new footage, right here:

Magical Musical Gardens

In the game you play as Kai as she travels to the strange and secretive community of Mutazione to visit her ailing Grandfather, Nonno. There’s lots you can do each day: run around the village, choose who you want to talk to, and explore your way through an in-game week of small-town drama and scenic hangout spots.

But as you nurse your grandfather back to health, you begin to unravel long-kept secrets, and come to discover that Nonno has had plans to pass on his strange shamanistic practices to you…

In Mutazione, you see, if you have the right training and aptitude, you can hear the plants grow.

Nonno will teach you how to speed up plant growth, and guide you through the process of understanding how to compose gardens in a way which will enable them to flourish.

Singing Seeds

There are dozens of plants you can collect seeds from, both in the wild and from characters. And a plant encyclopedia where you can read more about their qualities.

Every single plant in the game has its own ‘instrument’ – a specific set of sounds and melodies it plays when you plant it in a garden. As you compose a garden, you will also be able to customise your own generative ambient musical composition.

The musical gardens were composed and designed by Alessandro Coronas, who was primarily inspired by nature. The team also drew influence from ambient music, especially Brian Eno’s classic album Music For Airports. We wanted to make a story-driven adventure game where players would also be able to express themselves creatively.

The plants feature a mix of synthesized audio and recordings of real instruments (e.g. guitars, strings). Different plant families play in different harmonic keys, so you’ll experience a variety of moods, textures, and emotions, from melancholic orchestral instruments in a minor key, to tranquil acoustic guitars in a major key.

You can engage with the gardens as much or as little as you like, sometimes you might like to move on with the story, but you can always return to and adjust them, and if you want some background music while you take a break from the story in the game, just sit in ‘listen’ mode, and enjoy your unique ambient composition.

We can’t wait for you to play the game, and are looking forward to announcing our release date in the near future, when we will also introduce you to the ensemble cast of loveable mutants you’ll befriend as you play the game.

Look out for news leading up to launch, and if you’re at PAX West, check us out as part of the Indie MEGABooth, or at the Indie Forest and The MIX Seattle events.