A game’s soundtrack can completely change its atmosphere. Don’t believe me? Imagine this--you live in a desolate town that has had no access to the outside world after a sudden Reaper invasion. Now imagine there is happy circus music playing. Doesn’t fit at all right? We need a melody that reflects the state of the world. That’s where music composers come in.

As I watched Sylvie create the first town in Arrow of Light, I noticed that the town seemed pretty sad. I imagined it was very windy so I recorded myself blowing into a microphone to the beat of a metronome. Then I added some cute but morose tuned percussion.

The tuned percussion came from the machine labeled 2 in the image. It was $28.88 at a Goodwill. It has a lot of really good sounds on it! I kept adding more and more sounds together until eventually a song was created.

The melancholy feeling of the town came to life with the sweet and sad music. It created a quiet atmosphere that reflects the lonely lives of the town residents. I hope you took time to explore the town and listen to the song.

I also sent Sylvie a lot of sound effects I thought the game would need, which made the various interactions more interesting and satisfying. Most of them I made by speaking into a microphone and manipulating the waveform a lot. Can you hear my voice in any of the sound effects?

When I checked back in with Sylvie, she had started working on a cute new area with a lot of grass. She recommended that the music should have an adventurous vibe. “Hmmm,” I thought.

I remembered that my coworker Tulio had loaned me his homemade synthesizer. He likes the Sega Genesis a lot, so the synthesizer uses the same chips as the Sega Genesis! The synthesizer is labeled “1” in the image above. The synthesizer even has a feature where you can extract the instruments from popular games such as Sonic the Hedgehog! Tulio’s synthesizer costs $900 so I will be giving it back soon!

Anyhow, I used some instruments from Green Hill Zone to make the grass music. I thought of a really cute melody in my head and repeated it on the keyboard. All of the instruments for all of the songs were played in real time because I think it is more fun to play with audio directly instead of MIDI data.

Some of the songs I’ve made for Sylvie’s games in the past have contained lyrics. I didn’t think she would want full lyrics for the songs for this game, so I thought it would be cute to say “1, 2, 3, 4!” for the music in the areas outside of the sad, sad town. This is how the mascot of the game, counting to four, was born.

Next it was time to create the music for the dangerous lava area.

I was thinking about the music from the fire area in An Untitled Story a lot, but I don’t think you can tell that from the end result. I picked out some wacky key signature and put down the bass line. It was getting really late at night, so I thought of a silly melody to play over the bass line before I went to bed. When I woke up I continued on the song right away. I think it turned out pretty good! The instruments remind me of Yoshi’s Story.

And what happened next… well that’s spoilers! I will say that I created the ending music and then based the title screen music off of that, though.

If you want to listen to the songs, check out the Arrow of Light Ost on Band Camp.

And don’t forget to check out the Arrow of Light game itself, playable in browsers or as a Windows download!

And after you’ve played (or before if you want) don’t forget to read the Arrow of Light postmortem!