Interactive Music in a Video Game

I’ve been working on music for a few games by the development team “QuestYard“. One of the games is called “BeeFense”, which is a tower defense game, protecting the bees from a slew of predators.

Even though the game involves blasting enemies with all manner of weapons, the team wants upbeat, happy music throughout the game. Also, there are two more requirements for the music:

1. The music must be loopable. We do not know ahead of time how long a play will spend on a single level. Since the music is finite in duration, the music track must be able to loop seamlessly. The player might not even recognize when the music track restarts.

2. The music must be adaptive. In each level of the game, more and more waves of enemies approach. The additional waves increase the game’s difficulty, so the music should reflect this with increased intensity.

The video below shows a sample gameplay. The music has not yet been hooked into the game; I just added the music, showing how different levels of intensity can seamlessly change, from level 1 up to level 3. When the player’s “health” degrades, I also add a level 4. The music level is annoying, giving the player notice that his health is in danger, and he may die if corrective action isn’t taken.

I used a number of instrument libraries for this music track; Aaron Venture’s Infinite Woodwinds (for piccolo, flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon and contrabassoon) and Infinite Brass (for trumpet with a harmon mute, horn, trombone, euphonium and tuba). I used Sonuscore’s The Orchestra Complete 3 for a number of ostinatos. I used George Strezov’s Afflatus Strings for a couple of string patches. I used Zero-G’s “Ethera Gold 2.5” and Zero-G’s “Elements: Modern Scoring Synth” for the synths in level 4.

Enjoy!