May 154 min read

this is what adulting sounds like

Now that we had the levels nearly done, we were able to send a playthrough video of The House and The City to my brother, Liam so that he could use it as reference to create the soundtrack. He sent us these videos of his progress where he had the videos playing in his DAW to work with as he composed.

For the jewellery box music, Liam downloaded an actual music box plugin that would sound more authentic than ones we've used in the past. He then used it to play 'can you promise i'll never end' - the final song off our EP, filling in the spaces (which he argues is the best song on it). We discussed the possibility of having the jewellery box music completely take over the level's background music or having it add on to play at the same time. However, we figured this would cause the sound to be too crowded as you collected more keys and subsequently, more tracks. Therefore, we decided it would be best to have it set as a proximity sound attached to the music box, that you would hear when you enter the room and fade as you leave it but continuously play so it would still be there if you reentered.

He also sent us this video where you can hear an overarching background track. According to him, "This is what adulting sounds like" - a spacey, synth track using the chords from our song, 'are you sure you're awake,' the 4th song on the EP (and my personal favourite).

In terms of making the soundtrack out of arrangements of songs from the EP the title references, 'are you sure you're awake' and 'can you promise i'll never end' were written in the same key as they were designed to be played in succession. They are also the most representative of the album's themes and the feelings we had felt at the time we wrote and produced it. For example, the album's title comes from the lyric in are you sure you're awake: "don't fill in the spaces that lie in between, when there's still times when you forget to breathe." The other tracks are also a lot more upbeat in comparison, which doesn't as much fit the melancholic nostalgic atmosphere the game has. For these reasons, I think these two tracks would be the easiest to adapt for the game.

VOICEOVER

The final levels were built around my voiceover with the stars level especially designed based on what I was saying. I had to rerecord a part of the longer monologue in the stars level where the audio peaked ("I'd have ALL the insight in the world") which proved difficult since I recorded it in the forum rooms and needed to replicate the environment so it would blend seamlessly with the rest. Fortunately, security were kind enough to unlock one of the rooms for me to use from 8:45pm - 9pm after I spent an hour failing to get audio recorded in Pod 1 to match.

ALL VOICEOVER FILES

Meadow

0:00

Stars

0:00

TRAILER DRAFT 1

limited gameplay clips
'adulting' soundtrack makes atmosphere ominous

TRAILER DRAFT 2

added sfx to create a more nostalgic atmosphere upon Roy's suggestion

TRAILER DRAFT 3

new music Liam produced specifically for the trailer
extended with new gameplay clips

Wednesday 8th May

10pm - 3am BST

Turns out Liam was easily able to produce the entirety of the soundtrack in a few hours once he finally had a free moment to sit down and focus on it. This meant that we no longer needed to compromise on which songs from the Filling in the Spaces EP would be adapted for the video game soundtrack as Liam was able to replicate all of them. His DAW crashed from the intensity of the project but nevertheless we had a completed soundtrack ready to be added to finalise the game. He also produced the sound effects for the character switch in both the House and the City (and the Meadow even though there was no switching in it but just in case), as well as the safe opening, guitar notes, and family tree puzzle completion.

We gave him a 40 minute timer to finish. He did it in 30.

Liam syncing credit song to the stars level:

By the time I left the library, birds were chirping. By the time I woke up, it was 8:45am and Stanley was still in the EMS working with absolutely no sleep but the project was done.