‘Adventures of Poco Eco’ Creates a Beautiful Marriage of Game, Music and Exploration

If you’ve watched House of Cards, you know Frank Underwood has a propensity for video games. Namely, this latest season focused on Monument Valley, a puzzle game made by Ustwo that features beautifully designed, geometric, M. C. Escher-like environments. Now imagine that, but focused on music. That’s Adventures of Poco Eco, a fantastic adventure game surrounding Hungarian artist IAMYANK’s latest album, Lost Sounds.

“I wanted my fans, and anyone who played the game, to really feel what I felt when I wrote these songs.”

In collaboration with Possible Games, IAMYANK’s adventure game chronicles a member of a geometric tribe of music listeners on a quest to bring sound back to his land and his people. As you navigate the beautifully designed world of the game, you free parts of IAMYANK’s songs and rebuild full-length tracks.

On your journey, you encounter magically crafted environments and ancient structures that hide the key to bringing music to life.

As dually a musical wonderland and adventure game, Poco Eco combines exploration, puzzles and beautiful visual representations to create a true marriage of game, music and adventure.

We sat down with IAMYANK to talked about his awesome game and why he made it.

What made you think to make a game around your album?
I’ve always been interested in cutting-edge ideas, but in the summer of 2014, Krisztian Toth (CEO of Possible Cee) and I started to talk about some kind of an “out-of-the-box” promotion for my new album. He’s got a really talented, successful and fresh team who I actually personally know from when I was working for the company as a developer, back in the day. Krisztian came up with the idea of making a game in conjunction with the release, and I was immediately super, super excited.

I bet, man! Most artists don’t have those kinds of connections.
That’s true! It was especially exciting because I have my reputation in Hungary, but I didn’t see a good way to break out from the borders of my country. Making an adventurous mobile game based on my music sounded like a great opportunity to reach potential fans from all around the world.

“In the future, I sense that there will be a lot of collaboration between different art forms and musicians. And I think someday that fusion will create new forms of media.”

Tell me about the relationship your album and the game have. Had you completely written the album before the game was done?
At the beginning, I only had rough musical ideas. After the first couple of design sketches were made, I decided to let myself get inspired by the visual elements. I really loved all of them. The workflow of both the game and the album continuously interwove with each other; new graphical elements came with new musical elements, and vice versa. It was a very exciting way to work.

Visually speaking, what kind of world did you want to create in your game to match the sound and feel of your music?
Since my music has a sort of dreamy, good-for-travel, lonely mood, it was obvious we needed a magical, story-driven game with a single main character. This kind of world I thought would help my music and the game to connect, as well as with the players.

What elements specifically helped make that happen?
The goal for the main character, Poco Eco, is to bring the music back to his world and its creatures to make them happy again. As you travel through the game, you find many interactive objects that play a special sound if you hit them. Going further, while solving challenges, a song begins to build up, level by level, but if you get stuck on a level you only hear a loop. Every solved challenge triggers a new part of the song. For example: At a certain point, the lead melody or the chords join in, and the song becomes more complete. So there is much more than a loop of a song playing in the background alone. Also, you’ll meet four different God characters that lend a really cool vibe and whose voices were generated from my own.

That’s awesome! I think it definitely gives listeners and players a special relationship to the music and you.
Definitely. I was trying to create a special mood for both my music and the game, in order to give my listeners something truly unique. I wanted my fans, and anyone who played the game, to really feel what I felt when I wrote these songs. There are hardly any lyrics in my songs, so maybe in this way, it’s usually a bit harder for people to connect with them. But I thought maybe my music could be more understandable with a visual support. And I think this decision was actually quite successful. Classic music videos are a bit boring to me now, and I hope the possibility of interaction between artists and their fans will be something that happens more.

Where do you think games and music—or in more general terms, interactive media and music—should head in the future?
It’s getting harder and harder to attract the attention of people. Asking someone to listen to a single track, even for a couple of minutes, is a big thing; but if you can provide some extra experience than just listening to a song, it’s a lot more entertaining. For musicians like me, who are making music that isn’t really radio-friendly, the only way to success is to attach something to the music itself that can be supportive.

As mainstream media and mainstream artists watch and cherry-pick the best ideas outside of their circles and use them for promotion, I think a lot of these strategies will grow, and hopefully everything will get more exciting for every level of art. So, in the future I sense that there will be a lot of collaboration between different art forms and musicians. And I think someday that fusion will create new forms of media experiences that have never existed before. It’s truly an exciting time.

Adventures of Poco Eco is available on iOS and Android.

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