‘Synth Riders’ Celebrates Its 5-Year Anniversary
It’s been just about five years since Synth Riders launched (originally on the Rift Platform), taking the VR world for a ride on rails with its neon-infused dance-action take on the rhythm genre. And to celebrate, developer Kluge Interactive is debuting the Synthwave Essentials 3 music pack! It’s a 10-track party (five free songs, five paid DLC), and the crown jewel is a brand-new cover of New Order’s classic “Blue Monday,” created just for Synth Riders by legendary DJ Zardonic.
Check out the full track list 👇
- “Behemoth” (Perturbator Remix) by GoST
- “Blue Monday” (Synth Riders version) by Zardonic (feat. REEBZ)
- “Jason” by The Midnight (feat. Nikki Flores)
- “New Cydonia” by Starcadian (feat. Hayley)
- “Sunset” by The Midnight
- “Interstellar” by LeBrock
- “A Matter of Time” by Ollie Wride
- “Rendezvous” (VHS Dreams Remix) by Scandroid
- “Sledge” by Dance With The Dead
- “We Were Young” by PRIZM
The paid songs are available for $1.99 USD a pop or $7.99 USD for a bundle of all five.
Five years is an incredible milestone, but developer Kluge Interactive has actually been in business since 2007. They started out in the Los Angeles tech scene as a design studio, building websites, apps, and brand identities. Originally from Venezuela, Kluge Founder & CEO Arturo Perez reached out to his cousin for a referral for a website vendor in 2010—which is how he got hooked up with Abraham Aguero.
“I went to Venezuela for what was supposed to be a month and ended up staying eight months working out of Abraham’s office,” Perez says. “Long story short, he and a few people that worked with him then ended up at Kluge and are still here to this day. We became partners a few years later, along with our Managing Director Daniel Garcia and Cameron Wood, our COO.”
In 2017, the Kluge team decided to branch out and do something for themselves. Wanting to stay ahead of the curve, they gravitated toward VR, and Aguero, who’s now the company’s Creative Director, got to work.
“Abraham, he’s so creative, and he wanted to go with the medium that maximized his artistry—that’s when we started tinkering,” Perez explains.
Synth Riders began as one of three prototypes that Kluge shared with prospective clients to demonstrate the firm’s skills and abilities, but as Synth Riders got more and more attention, they found themselves at a crossroads.
“Our main client audience at the time was mid-market B2B companies, enterprise stuff,” says Perez. “Meanwhile, our labs are doing synthwave and games and special effects. At one point, it all felt very disparate and as the CEO, I didn’t know how to integrate that story.”
When one client in particular wanted a futuristic cyberpunk look and feel, Perez thought Synth Riders was the perfect fit. “But even as we’re showing him the game, just to show that we had the look that he wanted, he was like, ‘What are you guys doing? What is this for?’” he recalls. “Nobody could imagine that we could actually become a game studio—even ourselves. There was a moment of tension. Eventually one of them had to win, and fortunately for us, it was the games.”
“We kept the entire team and trained them to start doing VR stuff,” Aguero says. “No one resisted, and everyone was super excited actually.”
Fast forward five years, and Synth Riders has grown from a one-time tech demo to a vibrant game with a passionate community of modders, musicians, and more and a catalog of content including Bruno Mars, Muse, Gorillaz, Caravan Palace, and punk rock bands Bad Religion, The Offspring, and Rancid.
“I didn’t see that coming,” Aguero says of the game’s evolution. “I called the game Synth Riders because I was obsessed with synthwave music. When we started adding more music, I thought, with the word ‘synth’ in the name, what are we going to do? But nowadays I don’t think it’s a problem. I think the game’s versatility and ability to adapt any type of music genre are what make it really special.”
While the game’s going back to its roots with the Synthwave Essentials 3 music pack, fans can still expect a few fun surprises.
“The mapping is amazing—without our mappers, we couldn’t make music packs, and every time they push the boundaries,” notes Perez. “I think people will be pleasantly surprised there. We also collaborated a lot with a friend, Zardonic. He’s known for drum and bass, but we were like, ‘Hey, can you check out New Order and turn it into something more synthwave?’ He was a little bit hesitant at first, but as he started the process, he loved the song that he made. And it’s actually going to be part of his album. It’s the first song we made from within, so we’re very excited about that. We’re curious how the public perceives it.”
And the game has no signs of slowing down. In fact, with Meta Quest 3 on the horizon, Kluge plans to make the most of the new hardware and add mixed reality to Synth Riders.
“Even though we’re five years old today, we’re just as excited about the game as when it launched,” says Perez. “New updates are definitely coming, even beyond Quest 3. You can expect more music, improvements, and surprises. We’re still having fun with this game, and there’s nothing stopping or slowing us down.”
Beyond Synth Riders, the team at Kluge has been busy building games for Meta Horizon Worlds over the past two years and working on its follow-up title, Final Fury, a classic arcade fighting game launching in 2024.
“Synth Riders came from the community, and we’re starting Final Fury with a closed beta to embrace that same process,” Perez says. “We’re the kind of shop that, once we choose a game, we commit to it. So we’re all in on Final Fury. We want to hear the feedback, and we want to build it just as rooted in the community as Synth Riders has been.”
