Here is a little announcement for a newly released game from Bombyx that now has an official soundtrack. The Secrets of Warden Keene is a novel based cooperative puzzle game based on the poems of Edgar Lee Masters. These poems are narrations of epitaphs of fictional characters to which the game revolves around. Players are reading from the journals of the previous warden, who has passed away. The journal contains notes connected to all those now residing in the cemetery. The players will then be spending 10-30 minutes per mystery, deducing from this information and the gravestones laid out before them to pinpoint a particular person there. Background ambience was requested to accompany the immersion for the players.
The sound effects for the cemetery came first and helped me balance the type of music I created. Having different times of the day, from dawn to dusk. Having this as a loop was the root to all other sound effects. Creating little moments for something to happen. Someone walking through this hallowed ground, something riding by on horseback, a flock of crows being scared by some activities that wardens would be doing. Their day to day job of keeping the cemetery tidy and respectable.
Mystery and the 1900’s were the key elements in creating this soundtrack. I wanted to make it slightly magical, as players will be unsure whether the journal they are reading is from this vale or another. I tried to stick to instruments from that time period, mainly classical strings. Focusing on cellos and violas to represent the tombstones. Flutes also made their way into my palate as they broke out from the strings, like bird songs found in a quiet cemetery. The living and the dead together. Melodies being neither sombre or joyous, probably more catchy than they should be, came quickly and struck a note with the publishers.
The soundtrack was created with ambience in mind. It is something that should be placed in the background, giving hints of the location and sensations that the players should be feeling. Making them feel like they are on the table, not sitting next to it. Music fading into the sound of trees rustling and the chirp of birds, fading back into music. And if you listen closely, you can still hear them underneath the melodies and the magic of the wind blowing through nature. All you have to do is push play, put it on loop at a low level and walk over to the table and play the game. You should then get lost in the dreamlike experience of solving mysteries at the table (barring if an advert blurts out from time to time).
Hopefully you enjoy listening to this soundtrack in the background while playing the game. Or even just in the background as you read the anthology of poems or other books.
Here is the full soundtrack on YouTube...
And you can stream it for free on all streaming platforms, like Deezer, Spotify, Itunes, Amazon Music, Apple Music, Pandora... Enjoy