Let the games begin
Last Friday 7th July I was approached by Ruby an amazing games designer to come onboard with a project she had been working on called Mirage. I was given a little bit of a brief there and then later over the weekend I received a great mood board that was unbelievable helpful.
Goals
The simple brief was road trip, ambient/melancholy music with simple repetitive beats. Three minutes plus long with the ability to repeat endlessly. The game screenshots looked great.
The Hurdle
Unfortunately there was a little miscommunication on my end at our initial meeting I was under the impression the game was due Friday 21st July and I had plenty of time. I organised a production meeting for Wednesday 12th July and discovered it was due Today and the music needed to be done by Friday.
Ruby was amazing she answered all my questions and clarified exactly what was needed in our meeting. Needless to say I jumped straight on the motorbike and got straight to work.
Inspiration
Inspiration for the drum beat hit me on the way home and a melancholy (as required by the brief) lead line was forming in my head. Once I got home I was straight on the tools and rocking.
I thought a nice poppy live sounding bass guitar with a groovy melody wood make the song road trippy. A melancholy lead line would fill that side of the brief and lots of time based effects would add interest.
Wow
As soon as I got the drum beat down I hit my stride and all of a sudden I had a pretty solid loop. Which I bounced down and sent off to ruby:
The feedback received was:
"Hey, sounding good so far, I like the repetition and sound of the notes, only note would be to try slowing down the tempo a bit, I feel like that might fit more with the desert" Ruby
So I adjusted some of the time based effects and it sounded like this:
To which i received:
"Yep I'm happy with this version 😊 Thank you!" - Ruby
Arrangement
Now that Ruby was happy with the loop I set about arranging it out to my 3 minute plus brief. The hard part I found was making it so the looping didn't seem out of place. Here is the first copy of the arrange I sent Ruby.
And the DAW session:
Delivery
After a few late nights working on automation and some sound design I was finally happy and delivered the final product in .wav and .mp3 format. I even managed to whip up an engine noise for the car incase she needed one however it was not required. Today I received the link to the game and here is a wee video teaser of the final product.
Mirage
The project turned out great and I'm rather proud of what I was able to achieve under such a short time frame. If you'd like to pay the game for yourself follow the link below to get your free copy or play online. It was an absolute pleasure to work with Ruby she gave clear and concise wording for here brief, an excellent mood board and most of all feedback was given in an honest and timely fashion. I really enjoyed this project and hope to do some more work in the games arena.