Allan Zax has contributed almost all of the soundtrack for Super Space Galaxy. He made the music for the galaxy map, solar systems, combat, the cities, ice planets, and lava planets. Now, the end is in sight because he’s made music for the Islands planets as well!
The graphics for Super Space Galaxy come from Tyrian, and the ‘Islands’ planets are based on the ‘Savara’ levels in that game.
I showed Allan some of the music from those levels but it was only a small part of the inspiration.
The process we went through was very similar to the Desert music, going through three stages to get to the final music that conveyed all we wanted. My initial idea was that the music would have a ‘holiday’ feel, with steel drums and a more casual atmosphere than other planets. Of course, I knew this might be difficult to pull off. The exploration in Super Space Galaxy is fast-paced and there’s the threat of being attacked by enemies wherever you go, which doesn’t mesh easily with a relaxing ‘holiday’ theme. Even so, the fact that we’d already pulled off something similarly complex with the Desert theme gave me confidence.
This track went through the most drastic transformations yet. The first version sounded like a dance track and I felt that it didn’t communicate much of the ‘Islands’ scenery. Once I showed him music from Monkey Island 3, Allan overhauled it into a second version that had a lot of steel drums, which became the basis for the final version. What the track needed now was a final dash of inspiration…
That night, I used my phone in bed to listen to any music I could find that was associated with the beach. I ended up listening to quite a lot of Bossa Nova, but the biggest discovery was the steel guitar. This is the sound they tend to use in movies when a character is thinking about a holiday. I mentioned my discoveries to Allan and let him work on the next stage.
Allan ended up replacing a section in the music with a steel guitar solo and I was very happy with the result. There was enough variety and Allan manged to fuse the relaxing feel of an island holiday with the fast-paced exploration in the game (somehow!).
You can listen to the music track in the video below. Headphones are recommended, I found I needed them to listen to the music properly while it was being made myself.
Now, only the Rock planets remain without music. Allan has already given me some draft music for these, so expect more about Super Space Galaxy‘s soundtracks soon!
Thanks for reading,
Kenneth Dunlop
Kenneth Dunlop's Game Dev Blog 