Early Access Authorized: Save a jetpack wearing Corgi in outer space with Cosmic DJ

Welcome to Early Access Authorized, a place for us to showcase various games that are still a part of Steam Early Access, meaning they're still not quite ready for release, and the devs are still adding a bunch of features to them. In our debut Early Access column, I want to tell you about Cosmic DJ, and why I'm having a ton of fun with it despite its entirely simplistic nature.

I won't get much into the plot of Cosmic DJ. Yeah, that's right, a music sequencer with a plot. Just know, you're in space, and you have the ability to make some sweet music.

In the example above, I played through one of the first four initial stages of the game, which happens to center on a Corgi head floating in space, needing to be rebuilt with its body and attached to a jetpack, in order to right the wrongs in the universe. Each of the key plot elements is associated with an 8-beat sequence that you can fill out yourself using the instruments provided. I could have chosen to either place squares onto a constantly moving grid to produce tones, or tap them out using ZXCV keys. Opting to be a little more hands-on, I chose to tap them all out.

Once all the parts of the song are sequenced, the game then compiles these parts and mixes them into a single song that you can listen to and even export to your hard drive.

The above video pretty much goes through the entire process from start to finish, playing through all four Corgi story parts, and then mixing down the song and designing the cover art.

I'm digging the quirkiness of the whole package. It's a music sequencer that doesn't take making music that seriously, making it an awesome stepping stone for aspiring musicians with very little background in music production. On the flipside, me being a musician, I did wish there were a few more options open to me, or at the very least some settings to mess around with to further customize my songs.

It's still too early to know where the devs are going with the final build. However, my initial time spent with the game was fun. After all, this is the first time I can say I played around with a music sequencer that has narrative.