On the 19th of September of 2019, we published developer Die Gute Fabrik’s Mutazione. Mutazione follows a week in the life of a close-knit community brought together by adversity and shared trauma. The game features an eclectic cast of characters, and offers players a mystery to unravel via a ‘magical musical gardening’ mechanic, which allows you to build beautiful procedural musical compositions through planting seeds you find as you explore.
Since launch, the game has won several awards for storytelling, audio design, and its overall innovation. It’s also become an outstandingly positively reviewed title on Steam, and – we’re delighted to say – we’ve seen a community of players grow up around the game’s careful storytelling, and seed-sharing garden mechanic, which allows players to share rare and hard-to-find seeds with one another.
Three years later (well, almost!) and we’re delighted to share with you all a final content update* to Mutazione – a set of 11 new seeds and sounds to fill out your seedboxes and flourishing compositions!
You may remember a past feature on one of our community members who set out to complete their seedbox – I have to say, it was tough to keep quiet about this update back then, and we’re now doubly delighted to release these seeds, completing the audio-organic landscape of Mutazione. Do come join us on the Akupara Discord to chat about your new discoveries, compositions, and to trade seeds, common or rare.
* Akupara Games will still continue to support the game with any additional updates to address QA and platform update issues where appropriate.
Previous Updates – A Recap
In case you missed some of Mutazione’s previous content updates, here’s a recap:
- Content Update #1 (2020): Garden Mode
- The fully-fledged Garden Mode was released a few months after the launch of the game. Featuring a brand new garden – ‘Cloud Garden’ – this musical-toy-like experience allows you to explore your generative musical compositions totally aside from the main ‘Story Mode’ of the game.
- Content Update #2 (2020): 7 Gardens
- The second major update introduced all of the 7 Story Mode gardens to the standalone Garden Mode. Since this update, the gardens you discover as you play the story unlock the same gardens in Garden Mode. Each with their own environment, local visitors, and beautiful vistas, you are able to experiment with their particular conditions to simply concentrate on composing different musical compositions to your heart’s content.
- Content Update #3 (2021): Penpal Mode
- Finally, just last year, we were delighted to share a small epilogue to Mutazione’s main story. Penpal Mode allowed players to send and receive postcards from Mutazione’s colourful cast of characters, 2 years after the events of the main game. It was a small, quiet, and durational way to catch up on the events of the past two years in the community of loveable mutants we get to know by playing the award-winning Mutazione.
Our Journey
One of the most nerve-wracking parts of being a publisher is standing alongside our excellent developers just before release and wondering just how players are going to respond to the years of hard work a company like Die Gute Fabrik have poured into a game.
Of course we ourselves were already in love with the cast of characters, the rich worldbuilding, and the intriguing musical mechanics – but you never know how a game is going to be received until it’s out! Thankfully, we were not disappointed.
We were delighted to see the game win several awards – including Excellence in Audio at the Independent Game Festival, Best Narrative prize in Die Gute Fabrik’s native Denmark at Spilprisen, and the extraordinary honour of the Grand Jury Award at IndieCade. But more than that, we were overjoyed to find that players themselves welcomed the game into their hearts. And also to see new players join us every time we’re able to bring it to new platforms! The game is now available on almost all major platforms; Apple Arcade, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, as well as PC.
What’s more – as a game about community during dark times, and with careful and complicated themes around grief and loss – players of the game have also often written to us to express how useful the game has been for them during these past few years. Something we weren’t expecting, but are deeply grateful to hear.
We’re also delighted to see fans of the game being inspired to create writing, art, and even recipes in response! As well as those continuing to dedicate time to seed sharing and Garden Mode in our Discord community.
Thank You
All that’s left, then, is for us to say thank you, on behalf of both Die Gute Fabrik, and Akupara Games.
As this particular chapter of Mutazione comes to a close, we want to thank everyone who has been a part of the incredible journey so far! If you are joining us now for the first time, then welcome aboard! And if you’ve been with us since the beginning, thanks for the company.
Be sure to follow Die Gute Fabrik on Twitter to stay up to date on any new projects they are working on, and join us on the Akupara Games Discord to meet fellow Mutazione gardeners and mutant soap opera lovers!
Thank you.
