Proposed Project

Our collaborative project will be a short interactive story with dynamically changing music. For the project, I will be working with visual artist & video editor Alexx Pym, with us collaborating on the story. The project will be aesthetically grounded in UK culture and society, with the music covering multiple genres of contemporary dance music. Different choices will be presented to the reader through the story, in the style of a visual novel, and the reader’s decisions will shape how the soundtrack develops – matching and complimenting the tone and themes of the story, while giving each reader a unique experience.

Goals

Our main aim is to create a piece of art that offers a unique experience and perspective for the reader. We aim to create an immersive atmospheric experience through the game, giving the reader a window into the main character’s world. The project will be used to bolster our own creative careers, as we both work in largely freelance fields – a more substantial and artistic project like this would be suitable for our respective portfolios, demonstrating a wide variety of skills. In addition, I believe that the modular, evolving nature of the soundtrack will expand my approach to music production, requiring a more open-ended and flexible approach to songwriting.

Key Influences

Milk outside of a bag outside of a bag of milk

Cruelty Squad

Machine Girl

Lauren Bousfield

H.P Lovecraft

Mark Fisher

Initial planning

We created a collaborative playlist on youtube, selecting animations, short films, and music videos that could be used as inspiration for the project. This allowed us to construct a bedrock for starting the project, finding specific ideas we would like to focus on, and gives us an easy place to look back to if we need inspiration.

Due to both of our history and experience in the rave scene, we knew from the start that the soundtrack should take elements of dance music – particularly breakbeat drums, synth pads, and heavy sampling. Contemporary artists such as Machine Girl and Femtanyl have seen commercial success blending these elements of dance music with dark atmosphere and other genres, such as metal. The soundtrack will employ sampling to match the hauntological elements present in the story.

The Russian experimental visual novel “Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk” has been a direct influence on this project. It’s small scope, surreal atmosphere, and focused direction are features that we wish to emulate within the project.

The Story

The story will be a collaboration, with me doing most of the writing, and Alexx adding suggestions and input along the way. The scenario for the game revolves around the main character going to the shops. The story is divided into 3 parts, beginning in the main character’s house, then walking to the shops, and then returning home. The small scope is an important part of the project, as it ensures we can stay focused on the key aspects of the project – namely, the atmosphere and aesthetic design. I plan to have the writing grounded very heavily in her internal monologue, with the player’s choices being representative of the character’s personality or distinct insecurities. For example, when on the street, some different options may appear for what the character’s focus is drawn to.

The player’s choice here will result in a different scene, and will bring a different part of the soundtrack to the forefront. Choosing to focus on the streetlights might introduce some pads, or the cars could increase in tempo and the introduction of some industrial percussion. The way the soundtrack develops will emphasise and compliment the story’s tone.

Dynamic Soundtrack/Mechanical Details

Mechanically, the project will be created in the Godot game engine. With Godot being an open-source project, we can reduce both cost of development, and the required level of programming expertise needed. Others have already created frameworks for visual novels and similar types of interactive narrative games within the engine, allowing us to build atop the code bases they have published online. It gives us much more freedom than more restrictive and simple engines that are often used for these types of games, such as Ren’Py or Suika2. The only bespoke aspect of the project’s code will be the evolving soundtrack, which does present some unique challenges in the design. The text-based nature of the game means that the user will advance through it at their own pace, varying depending on their reading speed. With the player’s inputs and pace directly affecting the soundtrack, this could result in audio becoming unsynchronised, both in terms of song structure and potentially even the individual beats.

My initial idea was to have an internal metronome running within the game, keeping track of the beats and having the music respond to that. However, when discussing this problem with Alexx, he suggested an easier and more effective solution. By exporting all the stems for the project seperately, and loading them into the game, we can have them begin playing in tandem with eachother, staying synchronised at all times. By having them muted by default, I can then adjust the volume level within the game in response to the player’s choices. This approach will allow me to mix the track in-engine, giving the soundtrack the desired responsiveness and dynamism.

It was important to figure out how the dynamic soundtrack would work early on, as the mechanics of the system will directly affect how I compose the music. I intend to create 3 or 4 different songs for the game, designed to compliment each specific scene, with several variants to each track. Some elements, such as FX and chord progression, will stay consistent for each song. Below is a screenshot of a track for the game that I have been working on in FL studio.

As shown, the different rows on the timeline contain different elements of the track. Listening to all channels at the same time creates an unmixed, chaotic mess – but by selectively muting certain channels, I can switch out certain elements on the fly to change the tone and genre of the track. By exporting each row individually, I can load them all into the game engine concurrently, and achieve the desired effect.
Each track will have a standard structure, and be around 3 minutes long. Within the game, we intend to set specific loop points to the tracks, preventing any jarring disruptions to the music that could draw the reader out of the atmosphere.

Timeline

Below is a rough timeline for the project, showing our priorities, and an estimate of the time that will be allocated to each aspect of development.

1 ) The rough draft of the story was developed in advance, giving us a solid foundational point to work from. It was important to outline the general themes and focal elements of the story before we continued on to development proper.

2) The concept art was developed by Alexx over a number of weeks, outlining general motifs and ideas for the project. He has decided to construct the backgrounds through a retro 3D model style, later adding textures and manipulating the images within Photoshop. This approach is useful, as it drastically reduces the amount of time that would need to be spent drawing each background, while still giving ample room to develop a unique and thematically suitable visual style.

3) The full story will be written over the course of 2 months, giving time to write multiple drafts and share them for feedback/improvement.

4) The character design & drawing will be completed early on, as this is not contingent on the rest of the project.

5) Backgrounds will be 3D modeled and textured over a few weeks. The project’s small scale, and the low-poly aesthetic of the backgrounds, keeps the amount of required work relatively small – with just 3 or 4 different backgrounds, details can be a high focus.

6) ‘Animation’ refers broadly here to a number of potential ways Alexx can utilise his skills with video editing in the project. Cutscenes, animated backgrounds, etc. Essentially, adding some visual flair to the project.

7) The engine development will not take too long, due to the open-source nature of the Godot engine, with the primary focus being on getting the dynamic soundtrack working.

8) Soundtrack development will take place over the course of a number of months, and spans most of the project. This allows me to adjust my composition as the game is developed, ensuring the tonal consistency of the project.

9) “Final editing” is a sort of grace period at the end of the project, allowing any last-minute adjustments and tweaks to be made before the deadline.

10) The video evidence will be recorded throughout, and compiled into a presentation before the deadline.

This Gantt chart is designed to be a rough estimate of development time. The deadlines are intentionally loose and forgiving, allowing some room for unexpected difficulties to arise, and giving us enough time to create a high quality product while also focusing on our other obligations.