Welcome to the future! In Moon Colony Bloodbath, the new game from Donald X. Vaccarino (the designer of Dominion), published by Rio Grande Games with gleaming 1950s art by Franz Vohwinkel, you are a pioneering scientist building a city on the Moon. Beautiful vistas! Amazing cities! Fabulous robots! Each turn you work your scientist’s wheel, farm, mine and research, and raise building after building full of happy colonists. But everyone shares the Progress deck, and it only gets worse: first the food runs short, then there are accidents, then the robots start to glitch… and the winner is simply whoever still has the most people standing at the end.
This soundtrack tells that story as a cardboard B-movie. Behind a marquee of chasing bulbs and a red velvet curtain, a little paper colony rises on a painted moon and then, chapter by chapter, falls apart. Seventy-five minutes of retro sci-fi, from the first hopeful fanfare to the last red robot eye glowing in the dark.
🎶 The Soundtrack — Eleven Chapters of Progress
A 1950s science-fiction film score with a big modern sound: theremin melodies, vibraphone and celesta, bright brass fanfares, soaring strings, organ, wordless choir and cinematic drums. It starts in sunny atomic-age optimism and ends in full B-movie horror, and there are two different pieces for every chapter, one for each half of the video, so nothing repeats in the whole 75 minutes.
- Welcome to the Future! — The curtain opens on the empty moon. A rocket comes down on its wires, a colonist climbs out and waves, and the first glass dome springs up through the stage. A bright brass fanfare and a soaring, hopeful theme over a marching snare.
- Amazing Cities! — Building day: a crane swings a crate across the sky while a factory, a second dome, a skyline and a radio mast pop up one after another. Brisk strings, pizzicato and clockwork percussion under a proud brass theme.
- The Kale Farm — A greenhouse glows under pink grow lamps, kale crates ride a little conveyor, and in the atomic-age kitchen a pink robot chef stirs the soup. Celesta, vibraphone and warm clarinet, tender and content.
- Fabulous Robots! — A robot parade: the helper with a box held high, the butler gliding on his single wheel, the kitchen robot waving its ladles. A bouncing bassoon-and-tuba march that grows into a proud brass parade.
- Moon Boom! — The colony at its peak: searchlights sweep the stars, a monorail glides past the MOON BOOM! billboard, tourists land, and the TV host and the tycoon put on a show. A swaggering, triumphant showpiece with punchy brass.
- A Few Hiccups — The lights stutter, the farm withers, a dome cracks, and a BUDGET CUTS sign comes down on its wires as the colonists drift away. The hopeful theme returns in a minor key over a wavering theremin and a ticking clock.
- Glitch — The robots come back doing what they were told, but wrong: walking backwards, spinning, shuddering, their eyes flickering from amber to red. An eerie electronic suspense of oscillating theremin, detuned vibraphone and a glitchy pulse.
- Revenge of the Kitchen Robot — Sirens, fleeing colonists, and a ladle raised high: the robot chef’s giant shadow looms over the kitchen. Creeping 1950s horror, low strings, a menacing tuba and a choir rising in dread.
- Attack of the Military Robots — A robot tank rolls in, its ray gun picks off the buildings one by one, paper flames spring up, and a giant rises behind the ruins. Driving sci-fi action with pounding drums and a desperate, heroic theme.
- Hello, Sentient AI — In a vast computer room the machine wakes, its green screen pulsing, and the robots line up and bow to it until its trace bends into a smile. Cold, hypnotic arpeggios over a dark organ drone.
- Bloodbath — The colony burns, a giant robot stomps through the ruins, and the last colonist makes a run for the rocket. A tragic, defiant finale for full orchestra and choir, and then a quiet, ambiguous ending: The End?
🎨 The Art — A Paper Toy Theatre
The game’s art looks like a 1950s magazine dreaming about tomorrow: bubble-helmet spacesuits, chrome robots and glass-domed cities, with “Bloodbath” splashed across it in dripping red. The video stages that world as an old paper toy theatre, built and lit in Blender. Every rocket, dome, colonist and robot is a die-cut cardboard piece with a cream border and real board thickness, painted in the same retro style. The pieces ride on rods along slots in the stage, hang from wires in the flies, spring up through trapdoors, and swing their arms on brass split pins.
Every chapter opens with its placard flown in front of the curtain and closes with the curtain drawn again. In between, painted drops fly in for interiors (a pastel kitchen, a television studio, a computer room), searchlights sweep the sky, and a low lamp throws a robot’s giant shadow across the scenery like a 1950s horror poster. A gentle film grain and flicker give it the feel of an old print, and the second half plays the whole show again as the black-and-white horror print.
🎬 Watch & Listen
Pack your bubble helmet. Trust the robots (for now). Let the soundtrack of Moon Colony Bloodbath play from the first rocket landing to the last flicker of the marquee while you build your colony, shuffle the Progress deck and hope that, for a venture like this, a few hiccups are all you get.