Indie game developer Shedworks and publisher Raw Fury have announced that their video game Sable will come out on September 23rd for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC. What’s more, they got Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast to write an original soundtrack for it, and her song “Better the Mask” appears in the new trailer.
Sable is billed as an open-world adventure game ripe with creative locations and colorful creatures. “Embark on a unique and unforgettable journey and guide Sable through her Gliding,” reads a description for the game, “a rite of passage that will take her across vast deserts and mesmerizing landscapes, capped by the remains of spaceships and ancient wonders.”
In the game’s trailer, viewers can see the sun rise on hardworking farmers, sandy animals, and curious villagers. The masked protagonist runs about, gathers input, and eventually takes off in a small jet to explore other lands. The whole thing is scored by “Better the Mask”, a brand new Japanese Breakfast song that goes right for the heart thanks to a nostalgic, emotional piano part. It almost sounds like a Karen O. song, and it certainly bodes well for the Sable soundtrack.
In a recent interview with UPROXX, Zauner revealed that only three songs on the soundtrack include lyrics. The rest were written to match the “ambient sprawling” nature of the game. “You have to approach it from a place that’s not necessarily personal to you. It has to be this kind of universal feeling and it has to feel like it lives within the game,” explained Zauner. “I was doing these broad strokes of human feeling, like, what’s it like to feel uncertain about the future? Or coming of age, or discovering what path do you want to pursue? Instead of filling it with all these kind of little details, you have to sort of do these broad strokes but also make it compelling. So that was really fun for me.”
Check out the trailer for Sable with “Better the Mask” below.
It’s pretty astounding just how much Zauner has on her plate as of late. The indie pop star just recorded a version of “Be Sweet” in Simlish (!) for the new Sims 4 expansion pack Cottage Living, mere weeks after releasing her latest album, Jubilee. Plus, she also put out her debut memoir, Crying in H Mart, which has already been picked up for a major film adaptation in Hollywood. She spoke about all her recent activity on a recent episode of the Kyle Meredith With podcast.
