Hello Everyone!
Welcome back to a new blog about AI Vendetta, this time featuring the completion of our soundtrack! It has definitely been a long while since our previous blog but meanwhile a lot of things have happened: We’ve reached the game’s beta stage, a lot of the graphics got updated, many, MANY bugs were fixed and a lot of the levels were further polished. And now we are very pleased to announce that the soundtrack has also been finished and is available on YouTube and on our website for anyone to enjoy for free. In this blog we’ll be talking a little bit about music in games, the music in AI Vendetta and what inspired us to make it.
Of course, if you want to skip right to the music, you can find it here. And for those who haven’t yet, you can still sign up for beta testing. As soon as we take care of some technicalities we will start sending out keys which you can use to unlock the game on Steam (for free!). Be sure to tell your friends!
The sound of AI Vendetta
We’ve already covered this topic before and will therefore try to keep this blog concise. If you want you can read our full coverage about sounds and music in games and how we designed the music for AI Vendetta using this link.
The importance of sound and music
From a lot of experimenting and researching in the games industry we found that a good game experience and a sense of immersion comes from a unison of multiple factors. At the heart the design of the game; how it works, responds and transforms. Secondly the graphics, this is not just about the aesthetics of the game but also about conveying information, which should be clear and efficient. Finally there is music, but even more importantly: sound. As we mentioned before, try playing a game without music and notice how much sound ties everything together, even the things you cannot see. It generates a sense of awareness, danger, excitement and space. Try watching a horror movie without sound and suddenly it’s not so scary anymore. That is the power of sound.
Inspiration and music in AI Vendetta
For AI Vendetta we had a few themes in mind which had to be persistent throughout the game; it is a puzzle game featuring robots so we have the experimental and mechanical themes on one side, but the setting is also very moody and dark. These themes come together in the soundtrack as you’ll probably hear. One of our greatest inspirations was Portal, a game that lives and breathes the experimental, puzzle and robot themes with a post-apocalyptic twist.
Please feel free to discover the soundtrack here on our website or on YouTube.
Workflow
You may remember this from before, but we have a set workflow when it comes down to designing our audio. It all starts with the setting and story elements in the game. What kind of mood do we try to set? What is the feeling that you want the player to have? How can we improve the immersion of the player in the game and its environment?
The next thing we look for is how we can integrate our thematic choices into a song. What kind of pacing do we need to add? What the player is experiencing in the game? All of that while not overpowering the existing environmental sound(effects).
This eventually, after several iterations, leads to samples which we use to test out if it actually fits in with the game and only then do we expand them into a full sized song. In time we managed to create a soundtrack consisting of 12 songs which will hopefully empower and enrich your game experience.
The soundtrack
Without further ado, we present to you the soundtrack,
created with so much love and attention by our very own Rens van der Meijs:
We hope you enjoyed this blog as we’ll try to do more of these in the nearby future until the game officially launches. For those interested, you can subscribe for the beta using this google form. Selected candidates get the game completely free on Steam, but we do hope you’ll give us some feedback in return. ;) Please be sure to tell your friends about the game if you liked it or maybe if you just liked the music as well! Especially in this run up to the launch we can really use all the support we can get! So stay tuned for more!
To all a big thanks from the development team for sticking with us and have yourselves a good day!
~The Catbyte Team
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