Year: 1997
Type: Gamerip
Composer(s): James Hannigan
Number of tracks: 7

★★★★★

Intermezzo

Cross my heart: Would I list this soundtrack here if I hadn't played Beasts and Bumpkins back then? Most probably not. Am I still going to write an unnecessary review about the gamerip of this gem that nobody is interested in anyway? Absolutely! But what is it all about?

In short, B&B is a kind of god simulation in which we develop a small settlement in the style of The Settlers - although less like The Settlers and more like Banished. Because even if the style looks cute and the game doesn't take itself too seriously, the simulation is sometimes very difficult and confronted me with serious decisions as a child: Should I pay a visit to the graveyard with my little militia band to weaken the zombie waves? Or do I need more master builders to speed up the construction of my infrastructure? Who will take care of the dead lying in the streets and contaminating the other villagers with disease and pestilence?

All I really wanted to do was let the small settlement grow, watch the generations come and go and explore the map in the meantime - but that's not what Beasts and Bumpkins wanted. Beasts and Bumpkins wanted me to increase the population with sustainable growth, fulfill the mission objective and when that was finally achieved, it threw me into the next, more difficult scenario. Merciless and at times mercilessly difficult, the success of a mission was always preceded by a dance on the personnel volcano, where you had to decide who lived, who died, and who took care of the continuation of civilization.

That's right, there's shagging going on here. Unlike Ubisoft's cuddle buddy, this game hasn't skipped biology class, because it knows that a male and a female are necessary for the reproductive act. These announce their intentions at nightfall ('Time for a bit of rumpy-pumpy' - 'Yes Please!'), retire in their cozy nest, there is a plop sound and the next morning the child is looked at by mother in the cradle while father goes to work.

As I said, the game hardly takes itself seriously. The sound effects are almost comic-like and the voice lines, although not varied, are entertaining. Then there are the portraits of the villagers, which are wonderfully quirky and the common villager always reminded me of my friend Paul's father ... oh, childhood memories.

Incidentally, they don't come up when I hear the music by award-winning composer James Hannigan - because it doesn't exist. Well, it does, just not while playing. In fact, Beasts and Bumpkins relies entirely on the soundscape of the events on the screen: The sawing and stone-banging of the builders, the egg-laying of the chickens, the mooing of the cows and the eerie moaning of the zombies that creep up on our village at night.

Hannigan's talent, who also contributed the music for the last four Harry Potter-games and Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 , is only required for the briefing screens at the beginning of the various scenarios. The seven tracks of the Gamerip are correspondingly short (mostly only one minute) and, contrary to the actual game, less over the top, but quite stereotypical:

According to my little research, they are authentic songs from the Middle Ages that evoke an aristocratic court atmosphere with harps, lutes and flutes in the style of Knights & Merchants or Stronghold . At least I know that three of the pieces are historical works: The Three Ravens was an English folk song from 1611, Jack and Joan a poem by Thomas Campion from 1613, and Say loue if euer thou didst finde a work by the Renaissance composer John Dowland (1603).

Because there is singing in these pieces, I was at least able to google the lyrics. In Beasts and Bumpkins 2 , on the other hand, the opera singer only hums, and the tracks Beasts and Bumpkins 1, Beasts and Bumpkins 3 and Beasts and Bumpkins 7 are purely acoustic pieces. Does that bother me? Not in the slightest. For me, the tracks fit in very well with the game, even if they are marginal players and only appear on the interim screens.

Would the game have benefited from a proper soundtrack? I have no idea. The quotes probably wouldn't have been so engraved in my memory. Nevertheless, a little more entertainment of a similar quality probably wouldn't have hurt. So is the Gamerip to be recommended? For genre and history fans perhaps, but otherwise not so much.

No.	Title	Artist(s)	Ratings
01	Beasts and Bumpkins 1	James Hannigan	4
02	Beasts and Bumpkins 2	James Hannigan	3
03	Beasts and Bumpkins 3	James Hannigan	4
04	The Three Ravens	Thomas Ravenscroft	3
05	Jack and Joan	Thomas Campion	3
06	Say loue if euer thou didst finde	John Dowland	3
07	Beasts and Bumpkins 7	James Hannigan	4