Over the past few days, Mr. Records has started turning heads. Not just because its lead character is a bespectacled old boy with a splendidly friendly moustache, but because it's an unlikely mash-up of rhythm game, platformer and record shop sim. Yeah, put like that it sounds odd, and that's precisely why the game has managed to carve out a bit of coverage for itself (let's keep things in perspective, mind) during an especially packed period. Behind the project sits Glee-Cheese Studio, a small French indie outfit specialising in music games. Charles Bardin is its director and co-founder, and he's been building sonic worlds for indie games for over 10 years.
In Mr. Records, you play as George, an elderly gent who finally decides to live out a long-held dream by opening his own record shop. But for him, listening to an album isn't just a case of dropping a vinyl onto a turntable and settling in to enjoy the music. The moment he puts a track on, George is literally plunged into his own imagination. The song then becomes a level to work through, with obstacles to dodge, enemies to take out and, of course, sequences to pull off in time with the beat. If you fancy getting a better feel for the concept, a free playable demo of Mr. Records is already available on Steam.
The vinyl is the level
During the musical sequences in Mr. Records, George moves forward automatically through various environments, but you have to clear the obstacles in time with the track. That means jumping, sliding, swerving bits of scenery and taking out enemies, all while trying to stay locked to the music. Each song has its own visual world, its own tempo and its own mechanics, with a gentle, accessible difficulty curve. More than 40 hand-crafted levels are promised (as in, no AI involved), and each one can be replayed in a tougher version to give the experience a bit of replay value.
Difficulty does seem to be baked right into Mr. Records, with a 'Hard' version demanding far more precision, especially once the obstacles start coming thick and fast. Certain performances even unlock a Deluxe version of a record, which can then be sold at a higher price in the shop. So a track isn't merely a level you finish before moving on to the next one, it's also an item George can flog in his shop later.
Being a good salesman, too
This is where the concept of Mr. Records veers off the beaten track, because the French team at Glee-Cheese Studio haven't simply bolted a rhythm game onto a shop sim. The two are directly connected. When a customer walks in looking for an album, George needs to be able to point them to the right record, but to properly advise them he has to have listened to it and understood it first. You therefore bounce from one activity to the other, which means that when a new record lands in the collection, George has to play it, get whisked away into its musical world, and only once the level is done can the vinyl go into the shop's racks. Sales then bring in new records and keep that loop turning as the adventure unfolds. The shop management side is deliberately light, serving mainly to push the story along rather than turning Mr. Records into a full-blown business sim.
Mr. Records has another string to its bow: a punchy soundtrack, since every track in the game was composed by the developers themselves. There's even a video dedicated to how they made it. The music is wonderfully eclectic too, skipping from funk to prog rock, from hip-hop to electro, not forgetting a dash of eighties flavour and various styles of world music.
Mr. Records is due on PC, PS5, Xbox Series and Nintendo Switch 2, and the Steam demo already lets you work out whether its offbeat concept is your cup of tea. Give it a go, it's free.
