I always try to intertwine music with mechanics as much as possible in every game we make, and this case wasn’t an exception. Instead of just making functional music, I wanted to reflect the looping mechanics with that music, in order to give the player more information about the duration of the loops in an indirect way.

The main problem with this idea was every level had different recording times, so every loop would last a different amount depending on the level.

My first approach was to make a specific music for every level whose rhythm fit the loop timing but as soon as I started I realised it was too much work for a jam (there are 12 levels), and the game designer told me he was still working on getting the times right, meaning they could change at any time and I would have had to redo the music. I had to discard that idea.

Finally, I found the solution; split the melody into chords and play them as the loop repeated. In other words, everytime the player loops, the next chord of the piece plays. I had to make it very percussive and minimalist since the timings were very different, so I couldn’t use rhythm-based elements like delays.

https://youtu.be/U2eWwXaz1Es

I also splitted the first loop (i.e. the recording time) into four spaces, so I could play an equidistant four notes melody, in order to give the player a sense of the loop duration.

The music has a very slightly noticeable build up through the levels that I would have loved to develop further, but time was running out and I had to work on sound effects and record some foley, so I ended up with a simple execution of the idea.

Nonetheless, I’m more satisfied with this execution than with just a typical functional background music. If you haven’t played Re-Slash yet, or in case you already played and want to revisit the sound in our game, you can do it below. Thanks for reading!

Play Re-Slash here