Mr Records Hands-On Preview: A Trip Down Musical Memory Lane

Indie music games are in a good place, with Rift of the Necrodancer and Unbeatable existing with their own brand of gameplay and genre plays. So what’s one more, especially a new title that looks like the platforming minigames of Nintendo wunderkind Rhythm Heaven?

Meet Mr Records, the brainchild of indie group Glee Cheese Studio. Part 2D platformer, part narrative game, all cozy and whatnot, you play as vinyl shop owner George as he uncovers different new vinyl records to sell. These music-slash-dream sequences, clearly inspired by George Dunning and Heinz Eldemann’s classic works, are presented in 2D jumping platforming form. You control an ever-moving George (like Bit.Trip Runner) and jump according to the beat and bass of the song. These tracks are usually of the prog rock and classic pop variety influenced from the likes of Rush and The Beatles, but through the musical chops of Glee Cheese (since they’re actual musicians).

While the first three stages are easy enough, the training wheels come off during some of the rock-heavy portions of the dream sequences. You have to make sure George’s jump and direction-switching is on-point lest you lose all your health and have to start over. These tougher songs are also slightly longer than the earlier ones, so you really want to pay attention to the beat and crescendoes as you replay them over and over.

By day, George interacts with the few customers he has, finding out their taste in music and then pawning records onto them based on their preferences. What little storytelling is there in the SGF Play Days demo is all cozily written so far; you have a customer who wants to impress a girl with music, and an elderly customer who wants to listen to the bygone days of 70s Brit Pop.

With an eclectic mix of a story to lean onto and some psychedelic platforming-and-rhythm gameplay, it seems like Glee Cheese made this game for a specific type of audience who love music from a bygone era and simple rhythm games not unlike Rhythm Heaven. I’m clearly that target audience, and I am digging Mr Records so far even with the short playtime I had. Here’s hoping its method of emotion-unlocking-within-its-playthrough pays off in the final version of the title; we clearly need more musical indie titles in our lives.

Mr Records has no release date yet, but I do know it’s slated for PC (Steam, GOG, Epic).