Interview with Jammer’s guest musician, SpaceBoat, and more juicy info!

Hello and welcome to a special edition of Jammer’s Devlog. Today we have a very special guest, the guest musician who made the tracks for the game Jammer, SpaceBoat! He’s here to provide us with some insight on what inspired him to make the music and how it all got started. Before we start, I (Shadow Fox) would like to share a fun fact: we graduated from college together and even tried starting an indie studio a long time ago! Now, many years later, and knowing how great SpaceBoat can be with music, I reached out for another collaboration and asked him to be a guest musician on the first project from Fox God Games, the retro-inspired Jammer. To our delight he agreed, and we received some of the coolest tracks that helped us flesh out the full style and feel for the game. Check the full interview below.

Can you share a bit about your musical background and journey to where you are now? What or who have been your biggest influences as a musician?

Sure! I grew up in a musical household and was lucky to be exposed to all kinds of crazy records as a kid. My folks had a very broad range of music tastes.  My dad played guitar and I got into the cello as an elementary school kid. In HS and college, I ended up picking up various instruments like the didgeridoo and eventually got into digital music production via Fruity Loops then Reason. Been hooked ever since.

How did you first get involved in this project? What attracted you to it?

Making music for indie projects sounded awesome. Always happy when an opportunity arises for some creative motivation. Art feeds art and collaboration is extremely important to me. The moment I saw the Jammer logo, I was pumped, It didn’t take much to motivate me beyond that, the logo itself was blasting my brain with sonic inspiration.

How did you approach the creation process? What were your thoughts during the process?

I used to jam with buddies a LOT so I love just diving into a project and messing around for a while before really forcing myself to get into a production mindset. Once I figure out the instruments I like, or have a melody in mind, I begin building. In terms of equipment, I am a gear nerd and have a collection of analog synths but work equally as much with my midi controller and digital instruments. Most of my workflow revolves around Propellerhead’s Reason and plugging various stuff into my Yamaha mixer to record. Honestly it is all over the place. I also really love experimenting with generators, modular racks, AI sequencing, etc. Music and tech go really well together and we have SO much power in the home studio now.

What was the main vision or goal for the music for Jammer?

I had fun jamming on Jammer tracks and I wanted to make sure the music pumped you up and got you into the right mindset. The intro music needed to be energetic but mellow while the main track needed to keep you focused and hyped. I feel like it worked out alright!

What does this project mean to you personally? How does it fit into your broader musical journey or any other aspirations?

This was the first time I jumped back into game dev for a LONG time so It was awesome. It means a lot that I was approached to help out and it was really fun to make music for the project. Making some tracks helped me feel better about what I am capable of and opened up my eyes to different avenues and techniques for future stuff!

Is there anything you’d like to add, say, or name-drop for our players and readers?

Just thanks to Fox God Games for hitting me up! It has been a pleasure and I am looking forward to more collaborations. A ton of fun and Fox God Games makes awesome stuff. I am terrible at finishing personal projects but I do have some finalized stuff under a few of my aliases “SpaceBoat”,” Machine Gods Rise” and “Undefined Harmonics” which are available on all platforms. One of these days I’ll force myself to finish mixing and mastering some more tracks but lately I have really enjoyed just making music for music’s sake versus forcing a “finished” product. It’s taken a long time, but I feel like I finally accept that its totally fine for art and music to be ephemeral.

Thanks again to SpaceBoat for providing us with some great answers and insight on how music for Jammer came to be. Before we leave, we would like to announce that the collaboration with SpaceBoat has been so extremely positive that we have decided to work even closer together and officially refer to him as the third active member of the Fox God Games team! Welcome SpaceBoat/Machine Gods Rise, and it’s an absolute honor to have you working alongside us!

Then lastly, one final reveal, he did indeed make the music (and created the logo!) for our newest release, Death Orchestra. Check it out and see how the amazing collaboration came together to create an amazing style and feel for the newest Survivors-inspired game from Fox God Games.

Check back soon for  more updates on Jammer and Fox God Games!