Toy Soldiers

Toy Soldiers
August 17, 2015 Sally House

You never know what’s going to come out of the toy box next!

Mix GI Joe, Assassin’s Creed, Cobra Commander, and Masters of the Universe with Stoopid Buddy Stoodios and The Hit House’s music for commercials and you get? Toy Soldiers: War Chest!

 

Toy Soldiers: War Chest is the exhilarating genre mixing Xbox and PlayStation 4 game of action gameplay and tower defense which brings forth from the imagination of players the toy and action figure battles of their youth. Toy Soldiers: War Chest is the 3rd game in the franchise and the most ambitious yet with twice the number of armies from Toy Soldiers: Cold War.

In many ways Toy Soldiers: War Chest is modeled after earlier games where players had to build and upgrade turrets to keep enemy units from assaulting the toybox. Now in War Chest, players can upgrade armor, firing rates, and damage in separate ways to improve the turrets. AI of the enemy has also improved. If a bridge is now destroyed the AI will reroute ground units to attack the toybox through a different path. The focus of healing of units and destroying turrets is dispersed amongst specific individual units. Much like our music for commercials the new units have the ability to customize and focus their missions based upon the need of the field.

To keep the new edition in synch with the past, units and barrages from Toy Soldiers: Cold War will reappear, albeit with a few changes. No longer can killstreaks be earned or specific units targeted, but rather a bar will fill up as enemy units are dispatched. After the bar fills to a specific level, special abilities can be accessed and hero units such as zeppelins for bombing runs or other barrages can be activated. Adding levels of excitement and intensity, just as our music for commercials, Toy Soldiers is a game not to be underestimated. Appearing in the Hall of Fame Edition will be eight armies including key characters of and from GI Joe (Duke, Cobra Commander), Assassin’s Creed (Ezio Auditore da Firenze), Masters of the Universe (He-Man, Battle Cat, Eternian Warriors), Kaiser, Starbright (Buddy Bears, Pixies, Ponies), Phantom, and Dark Lord.

Developed by the industry veteran Signal Studios based out of Kirkland, Washington and published by the French multinational video game developer Ubisoft, Toy Soldiers: War Chest chose the Vibe Creative ad agency from Los Angeles to handle the strategic marketing of Toy Soldiers. Jon Menefee of Head of Games Creative Director for Vibe Creative needed just the right music for commercials for Toy Soldiers and chose The Hit House team to fulfill his vision.

Said Jon of The Hit House:

“Masterful musical knowledge and skill, flawless compositions and execution – but most of all, organic music that feels like it was created from a place of passion.

Of course, I’m speaking about The Hit House.

For our piece, the launch trailer for Toy Soldiers: War Chest, the Hit House was tasked with creating a track reminiscent of classic action figures from the 80’s – GI JOE and COBRA COMMANDER. The track they specially crafted wove the pieces of our story together perfectly, especially since our actor was tasked with singing a small portion of it.

Beyond that, we dug into their expansive library to find two other tracks that elevated the rest of our piece. In doing so, we discovered two perfect additions that round out our trailer and make it feel complete. The 3 main tracks featured are all Hit House originals – the Joe/Cobra track being a custom – and I can say without a doubt, that Hit House is now at the top of my list of go-to places for my music needs moving forward.”

After working closely with Vibe Creative to learn the tone of the commercial and viewing the footage for the Toy Soldiers spot we created an original song “Cobra Down” written by Scott Miller. Jon Menefee and his team at Vibe combined elements from our songs “Iron” (from our Elementary Re:Action album, available here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/elementary-re-action/id839118395) and “Tectonic” (from our Re:Action Earth album, available here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/re-action-earth/id616201450) to enhance the action in the video.

Please watch the Toy Soldiers trailer below, then go play the game!