Omnipotent Music Wizard
Introduction
When it comes to music in DOOMBLADE, the most important thing we wanted was to bring the music to the foreground. We didn’t want the music to just be a supportive element in the back, instead we wanted to have the music take the player’s hand and lead them on an adventure. And for this, we found the perfect man for the job: veteran music producer and composer Brian Skeel.
Brian's Style
Brian has been making sounds and music for DOOMBLADE from very early stages of development. We are quite thankful that he has been able to be a part of this journey for such a long time. While Brian is a total omnipotent music wizard in our eyes, he is particularly skilled in creating heavy sounds of rock and metal. This isn’t to say that the game’s soundtrack is a constant mosh fest, but when the gameplay gets heavy, so does the music.
Across Oceans
It’s pretty amazing that technology is at a point that allows the kind of remote collaboration we have with Brian. As we are based in Finland and Brian in the US, we have never physically met (hoping that will happen one day though!). But this hasn’t stopped us from efficiently working together. Of course it would have been more convenient at some point for us to physically hop on to Brian’s computer whenever there was a problem with version control or something, but these kinds of issues are pretty easy to take on via video call as well.
We used FMOD as our sound engine and it was a great tool for connecting the work Brian was doing to the game itself. Brian is much more well versed with FMOD than us, so we’ve hardly had to touch anything in the FMOD editor ourselves. Within the editor, Brian was able to set up logic for the music he created. Our different biomes for instance each have an adventure music loop from which we can seamlessly transition into the biome’s fight music loop once the logic is done in FMOD. All we have to do on our end of the actual game logic is to ask FMOD to kindly start the transition once needed. Easy as pie!
The Soundtrack
Now that all the music is done, we couldn’t be happier with the game's soundtrack. There are so many wonderful songs it’s hard to pick favorites. There’s a certain track that always hits us right in the feels, but we can’t really name names here because it might spoil things. But you’ll know what we’re talking about once you get to the track in the game. The Power Sector biome’s adventure music is another great one. It really has the mood we were looking for: it perfectly invites the player to explore the biome deeper and deeper while at the same time keeping up tension and danger. And the soundscape of the track is perfect for the biome as well so that the gameplay, visuals, and music all combine in a beautiful harmony.
We’ve been rocking to the soundtrack for far too long just amongst ourselves. We are STOKED to be so close to releasing the game and the soundtrack along with it!
Wishlist DOOMBLADE on Steam and give this blog a thumps up if you liked it, and if you have any questions you would like to see answered in later blogs leave us a comment below.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/922050/DOOMBLADE/
And if you are interested in Doomblade's soundtrack, check out the page for it here🎵:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2380260/DOOMBLADE_Soundtrack/
Stay tuned for next week for the surprise final blog before release! 😉
DOOMBLADE
Iceberg Interactive