Music is a topic that is long overdue here on the blog. We have hinted at it in the past when we introduced the Kelp Forest and the Deep Sea Cave, but never actually talking about where the musical inspiration truly came from.

That changes today!

For all of the music in the game I am working in FL Studio. I have been using FL Studio for just over 7 years now. I find that it best suits my workflow: it is quick and easy for me to get an idea from my head to something audible for others to hear.

Inspiring Music

I took a lot of inspiration from 3 main games:

Star Fox 64

In coming up with references to the songs that we wanted Star Fox 64 was the very first one we all agreed upon. The “Ready for Action” tone of the soundtrack is what we fixated on when we were recalling soundtracks of our yesteryears. That tone really fit what we wanted out of Fingeance.

Bomberman 64

THIS SOUNDTRACK IS SO AWESOME!…

Ok… Fanboying aside, the entire soundtrack to this game is one that we have referenced more often than any other soundtrack. The range of tone the entire soundtrack has is what we strive to have for Fingeance. From intense showdowns to happy-go-lucky tunes this soundtrack is where I go to when I am talking to the others on the team that don’t know as much musical terms as I do.

Bomberman Hero

https://youtu.be/qutUyQqhjdM?list=PL54D6882B076D3531

Here is the soundtrack that you will hear the most similarities to. The instrumentation of Bomberman Hero is found ALL OVER Fingeance. Most notably the breakbeats with the intense hi hats are on all of the biome songs.

Different Tones for Different Biomes

Each biome in the game has a distinct visual appeal, Kelp Forest is overgrown with vegetation while the Deep Sea Cave is a closed in, mysterious, and dark experience. I wanted to have each of those themes reflected into the music as well.

The Kelp Forest has lush chords that drive the song with lots of low end sounds.

While the Deep Sea Cave has reverb heavy melodies with a dark percussion backing

Hopefully I was able to give you a little more insight as to where the music inspiration came from and why things sound the way they do.

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Phew… We did it. We released our alpha demo of Fingeance. Thanks everyone for your support we truly do appreciate it! Thank you so much.

This past week has been pretty intense making sure that we were ready for release before this past Monday, I had to finish the alpha music. I had to finish up 4 different songs in a very short time. Now I have already talked about how hard it was to write the first song so making 4 more was a daunting task to say the least.

Remixing Old Concepts

The way that I approached 2 of the songs were to do variations on the level song that I have been working on for the past few weeks. The boss theme is a more intense version of the original song, while the main menu song is a more subdued version. Here is a sample of the main menu song:

We were planning to have the song add layers to it as you moved from the splash screen to the main menu to the character selection. But we hit a problem with getting the tracks to line up 100% of the time.

Brand New Alpha Music

The other alpha music that I made were completely new themes. The results screen track actually started out as a main menu/main theme idea. But the more and more that I added and worked on the song, the more it sounded like a results screen. So in the end I embraced that and dove fully into making a results song.

The shop song on the other hand took me the least amount of work to actually “make” the song, but the most work to come up with the idea. The idea is the song is coming through small speakers, like a radio or speakers you would find in a supermarket. The style of music is also what you would find in a supermarket, very laid back “jazzy” sounds. Check out a same to see what I mean:

That’s a breakdown of all of the alpha music in the demo it was a bit stressful to make sure that each one sounded good and fit in the same universe. Hopefully you think I pulled it off, I think I did. That being said it is still alpha music, the music isn’t final so things might change in the future, but for now the alpha music in the game seems to work.

But let me know what you think! Go check out the game hear the songs in context and leave a comment saying what you think about the songs, art, gameplay, anything really! Now we even have a page dedicated to Fingeance on the website. You can find the most up to date version of the game on that page. If you want the latest news be sure to check out our Twitter account as we will let you know when we update the builds as soon as it goes live!

Thanks again for all of the support, hope you enjoy the game!

Over the past week I have been working on a variety of things, but the biggest thing I was able to do was make some musical strides for Fingeance. As I have mentioned before in a previous post, I didn’t have much of an idea for the type of music that Fingeance should have. Trying to figure out what best fit Fingeance was tough, we wanted something that sounded like it was from the ocean or underwater. But we didn’t want the players to fall asleep while playing the game, largely due to “underwater” music is on the other end of the spectrum from “intense/battle” music. In the many soundtracks that I looked to for inspiration, the underwater level theme was a lot more relaxed compared to the other themes.

So it was tough to figure out the right balance between both sounds. But I think I figured something out, have a listen:

As you can see it is still reminiscent of the previous version that I posted, but there are some key differences. Besides the fact that I spent more time making the song sound “good” as a mix than I did with the previous one, I changed up the drums to fit more with tone of all of the other instruments. One of the biggest things that really helped keep the song diving was adding in the hi-hats. Those are probably the single most important change that I added in from last time. The other major change is adding in a chiptune melody to the song. I thought that the song was missing something and I wanted to try and blend some chiptune in the song I think that it turned out great.

Of course the song is still a work in progress, but it is getting closer and closer to what I feel the tone of the music should be. I also am going to being working on making the main theme (not just the in level song) of the game. It is a bit weird for me to work on the level theme first, but I felt like I had more ideas for that than the overarching theme. We’ll see how it all goes in the end.

And you will be able to experience both songs and more on June 1st as our demo is being released then! Remember to check back often for more updates on the demo and mark your calendars for June 1st!

The music theme for Fingeance has been an extremely tricky proposition. Normally when I am coming up with music that is for something, I get a feel for what I need to do pretty quickly. I could look at what I was making music for or it be described to me and I could get a basic idea of where I want to go with it.

Fingeance on the other hand…

I looked at the game mechanics, the art style, the setting, the characters, etc. I looked at all of these things and I couldn’t come up with anything.

Not a single thing.

I couldn’t think of the tone that I wanted everything to fit under. This has been going since late last year. I had been struggling to find any semblance of a song. I turned Lane and Stephen and asked what they thought they wanted in the game, but that was fruitless and as GlitchCon grew closer I eventually just recycled older tracks from my collection.

Getting Our Groove Back

We didn’t really find our muse until after GlitchCon where I tasked everyone to come up with a list of songs that they felt would work with a multiplayer shoot ‘em up with roguelike elements. Eventually, after much discussion, trials, and tribulations, here is a sample of what I came up with:

Again, this is a very early version of the song (in fact, those who use FL Studio can probably spot the standard loop in the song) it really is there to help me get a sense of where to go with the song in terms of tone and instrumentation. I was looking to create an underwater vibe to the song, but the stereotypical song for those are “chill” type beats. I needed to pump the player up for adventure. That is where the DnB beat hits and hopefully that will help out energizing the player.

What do you think? I really am curious to hear your thoughts on if I am on the right track or not. Leave a comment and tell me what you think!