Unrailed!
Original Music & Sound Design (together with Mathilde Hoffmann)
The Sound Palette
Unrailed! is a chaotic co-op multiplayer railroad construction game.At the beginning of our work, Mathilde and I created a template full of sounds that we liked for the game. This included quirky orchestral sounds, some electronic and acoustic plucky sounds and a small selection of our own recorded sample instruments, like percussions, mandolin and banjo plucks.In the game you stack a lot of ressources and tracks and build up your route piece by piece, so we also thought about composing the music in a very pattern-based way. In other words, small rhythmic motifs that gradually expand with chords and melodies to full arrangements.
From Desert To Space
As Unrailed! is a fun game, we took the liberty of using all sorts of clichés to give each different biome its own character. For example we recorded some rock guitars for a “Route 66” like track for the desert. Or we composed an epic orchestral track with whistling and choir in the style of the great Ennio Morricone.The most special biome was certainly space. For that, we muted almost all sound effects, leaving only those audible that would be transmitted by physical contact, like dashing or gathering ressources. To emphasize the silence even more, the music only starts after a long beautiful ambience and consists largely of previously unheard sounds like brass swells and synthesizer melodies.
Rain and Night
As there are not only different biomes, but also different biome “states”, such as rain, night or earthquakes, we of course also wanted these to change the music.When it rains, for example, the music crossfades to a version that reminds of rain drops and is slightly washed out with effects like reverb. At night, our exclusively sampled Mathilde and Felix a capella choir has been used. And during the earthquake, the entire music is "shifted" with distortion and pitch effects.Watch the game teaser to get a better impression of the project:
Links and further information:
Watch Mathilde's presentation about our work:
You’ll find the game on Steam or in almost all other stores, except mobile.