In the fall of 2019 I was part of a team that researched rhythm games and their design. Throughout the project we researched a number of existing rhythm games, and compiled that research into design documents as well as some of our own prototypes. While there were discoveries to be had for every discipline, one of my personal audio discoveries came in the beginning as we were creating our first prototype, Gang Beats. Turns out, composing soundtracks for rhythm games is not the same for more standard kind of game. Let me explain:
The “battle music” of most games lets you know there are enemies around, but doesn’t necessarily tell you where they are or how to defeat them
Musical soundtracks in most games act as an extension of the story, the environment, or the character at that point in time. Listening to a cutscene as Link explores a new area helps enforce a sense of awe. Battle music in Skyrim let’s the player know that there are enemies near by. An edgy soundtrack helps Need for Speed racers feel more “in the game”. However, due to this passive or reactive function, “standard” game soundtracks are rarely at the forefront of promoting a kind of action for a player.
This “promotion of action” is key for rhythm games.
Throughout our research, we found that rhythm games are games in which an understanding of rhythm, and being able to act accordingly, is necessary to succeed. You can’t react accordingly to a melody or rhythm if those elements are not the leading gameplay element.
Street Fighter 5, a quintessential fighting game, and one of the more “rock focused” soundtracks
Our first game was a multiplayer fighting experience where you could only attack on a particular beat. When I was researching typical soundtracks of fighting games, I found a lot of them were very fast paced with with some driving percussion and melodies to keep the action going. I figured composing a rock melody with claps at the attack cue points would fit perfectly. Seemed simple enough, right?
Our first playtest went horribly. Our playtesters had no idea where the attack points were, despite our instructions and demos. Simply adding claps on a particular beat of music was not enough information to promote an action from our players, especially those who have very little understanding of music and rhythm.
So how could we fix things?
Note the distinct repetitive nature of the soundtrack, and how sound effects are a rhythmically related component.
In a rhythm game, action and cue points need to be extraordinarily emphasized, so the accompanying soundtracks and sound effects need to be created to work together accordingly. This is evident if you listen to the minigame soundtracks of Rhythm Heaven. The music for those games much is sparser than standard “accompanying” soundtracks, and is very intertwined with the sound design of the game. Any extraneous notes or “interesting” flourishes could be misinterpreted and could break player concentration. Also, rhythm game soundtracks are highly repetitive. Humans like repetition, and having a repetitive rhythm and melody helps increase a player’s confidence level as they begin to anticipate when their action needs to take place. These key elements are not usually considered when designing more standard soundtracks.
An Example in practice:
So, let’s take listen to the evolution of one of the loops we used. In the example above, you’ll hear the a loop that asks the player to act in a “boom boom PAP (BBP)” rhythm. (You’ll hear Old, New, Old New versions). The old version has the rhythm guitar mimicking the BBP Cue throughout. I had thought that having the music follow the same rhythm would help the players understand the rhythm, however that just made the Cue get lost. In the new version, you can hear the guitar playing individual chords, allowed them to “lead up” to the cue. Additionally, you may notice that the drum line is also less complicated in the new version. Initially, I had thought that using a crash cymbal regularly would help keep tempo, but players were mistaking it for the Cue (that being said, those crash cymbals were brought back in to keep time during the more complex rhythm sections, but only because we’ve built up enough trust with the player in the simpler sections). Also, you should notice the much brighter BBP Cue. A change in instrumentation and some additional effects brightened the claps in the Cue to allow them to “pop” more against the “darker” leaner background music, allowing for clarity of action to the players. These are just some of the tweaks that we needed to make during our overhaul of the soundtrack for this particular prototype.
A short excerpt of Gang Beats, featuring the final revision of the soundtrack encompassing the different “rhythm game" specific” elements we mentioned.
Taking the findings above, in addition to a more predictable repeating structure, allowed the later sonic iterations of Gang Beats to give our playtesters much greater instances of comfort and mastery of the prototype. In turn, those playtesters were more motivated to try the experience again to beat their opponents or the high scores.