I spent a few months earlier this year composing music for a point-and-click game demo, Eerie Blue. The demo was released back in June, and can be played for free here. The game is a mystery puzzle game that follows a female detective investigating a house in which a crime has happened. As the game progresses the main character will go through different levels of stress, and this is emphasised by changes to the music. The game is made with the Adventure Game Studio (AGS) engine, which has only 8 sound channels. This meant I didn't get that many channels for music, so the music is based around two layers: The main loop and the stress layer. When the character is not stressed, the main loop is playing on it's own. This music is mainly ambient, and has very few melodic and rhythmic elements, as to make it seem less repetitive. The music is somewhat based around the note E, but it doesn't have any clear major or minor tonality, and doesn't follow any clearly discernible chord progressions. When the main loop is playing on its own, there are also a number of shorter stingers that will play at random from time to time.
As the stress levels increase, the Stress music layer starts to fade in and increase in volume. There are three levels of stress, and the volume increases a bit each time the stress level changes. The Stress music layer is more rhythmic and repetitive in nature. The aim, of course, is to make the player feel more stressed out, but also perhaps to give the player a greater sense of urgency, or having to hurry up a bit more that previously, as there is a certain danger element present that might suggest the character should try to get out of the house as quickly as possible. The game is only a short demo thus far, but hopefully we will continue working on the full game soon. - Kristin
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