Musical themes

After talking about graphics and programming, we are going to tackle a third facet which is: music!

Most of the musics that I'm composing for the game are ambient musics, they are relatively discreet and their goal is to provide a background sound that is neither boring nor annoying (since it loops), and that is not a distraction for the player either (the goal is to solve puzzles). Nevertheless, I still had fun composing big musical “themes”, especially specific themes for the characters. These themes will likely be used during cutscenes and transition sequences.

The main theme

You may have heard some of it already in the trailer (French only, sorry about that). This is a very heroic theme, inspired by the compositions of John Williams (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Superman, Jurassic Park, etc.). In this sense, it is a very “at face value” theme: you have to hear it as the music that Harpagon / Superfluous has in mind when he wears his costume. He's a clown who thinks he's a superhero, so he has a superheroic theme!

You can download the score. Well, I would like to point out that I am in no way a professional musician and that I have never written a score for an orchestra. I wrote it being guided by the sound produced, it is possible that there are some weird things depending on the instruments. Technical point: I write the scores with MuseScore, and I use the MuseScore audio rendering engine to produce the audio files that are used in the game.

For the other themes, I only have the main melody written, the arrangement for orchestra are still pending, so I offer you very short versions (just the melody and the harmony) for piano.

Harpagon's theme

A theme that I thus separate from the Superfluous theme: this one is the “realistic” theme of Harpagon, which represents how the character is seen by others (and not how he sees himself). It is therefore a very ironic theme, very quirky, quite silly. It's a riff that I've been playing on my guitar for quite a few years, and it seemed to fit the character perfectly ...

Sophie's theme

Sophie's theme is a light, optimistic theme but with a little dramatic note: the character is an altruistic young woman (a personal care assistant in the story) but who becomes embroiled in spite of herself in the superheroic delusions of a rich stupid billionaire (that's her drama).

Superficial's theme

For the Superficial theme, I needed a super villain theme. But because Superficial is, like Superfluous, a ridiculous character, I didn't write an imposing tyrant theme (in the style of the Imperial March in Star Wars). His theme is jazzy and rather evokes a treacherous villain, who stabs you in the back. This theme is thus more in the spirit of the theme of Oogie Boogie in The Nightmare Before Christmas, for example.

These are the main themes. Again, they will undoubtedly appear only episodically in the game. For me, they are as much the soundtrack of the comic as a working basis for the soundtrack of the game 🙂

One of these days, I may tell you about the background music which will be the heart of the sound environment of the video game.