The year is 2009, and Alex Roe (or RoeTaka as he’s known on OverClocked ReMix) is working with a small team on Chrono Ark, a fan-made sequal to Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross. As the years move on, the team grew too busy to complete the project, but RoeTaka had already completed a substantial amount of the soundtrack. How much of the soundtrack was completed? 100 tracks worth. You read that right: he completed 100 tracks, over 4 hours of music, before calling it quits. Having now moved on, he’s released the full soundtrack on Bandcamp.
Chrono Ark was a fan game being made by a small team of people that was going to be a sequel to Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross. Unfortunately the team including myself have discontinued working on it for various reasons, mostly because we are all too busy with our lives and new work prospects. Now that we have moved on I can release the soundtrack I was making for it. I finished most of the soundtrack in 2009 and was adding to it here and there as time went on. Although I wasn’t able to finish it, it is pretty much done and enough was completed for me to release it.
Chrono Ark had planned to follow a new cast of characters separated between time periods looking for a way to get back together. Many familiar characters where to show up along the way and the soundtrack offers familiar themes and motifs throughout. While the game will, unfortunately, never see the light of day, at least part of it will live on. RoeTaka is staying pretty positive about the whole thing:
I wish I could reveal more about what happened and what the game was about but it is not my decision to do so, The team wanted me to release my work which I’m really thankful for. To help understand more about the game each track has its use or general use in brackets and hopefully with the music you’ll get a feel of where things were going. Our concept artist has agreed to include some of his newer art pieces and I included some of his older ones so you could see what some of the other characters looked like as well. He is also working on an art book which I will surely link when it is ready. And the sprite artist has let me show a little of her work too.
The Chrono Ark soundtrack is available as a pay-what-you-want album on Bandcamp, with a direct link coming soon!