Diary #1: The soundscape of Twinkleby’s starlit archipelago

[p]Recently a heatwave passed through Stockholm, leaving chill air and mercurial rains in its wake. We're nearing fall, and with it – the release of Twinkleby ✨ We're feeling nervous, nostalgic, and above all very, very hyped to finally share the full game with y'all, so over this transitional time between summer and fall, we will post weekly updates about our development journey. The early concepts, the wacky bugs, and everything in-between. Strap in, and join us on this trip amongst the stars.[/p][p]When we started building the game that eventually grew into Twinkleby, there were some core ideas we had early on. We love the serene builder genre, and were intrigued to explore it for ourselves. We were looking to some of our older game worlds – Pid, Meadow – to draw inspiration for gameplay and setting, and by the time we’d been influenced by the intergalactic setting of Pid, we knew that our next steps should be focused on sound.[/p][p]Through the years, we’ve worked with the musicians for Retro Family for most of our soundtracks, and with Twinkleby we wanted to do something special. As we created concepts for all of the scenery settings we wanted the player to control – day/night, weather, backdrops and the changing seasons – we realized that we wanted all of these to interconnect seamlessly with the music.[/p][p][/p][p]Pictured: to the left, the original music assembly prototype, and to the right, alpha footage featuring the scenery/music selection[/p][p]Over the next week, one of our engineers created one of the first game prototypes; a scenery selection-window, where she had composed unique melodies for every different option. At this point, we could play around with how to best break up the music structure and tie different instruments to different scenery, and then we could loop in Retro Family, and together compose the ever-changing soundtrack of Twinkleby.[/p][p]This spring, as we were wrapping up work on our demo, we playtested the game with Stockholm University. During these tests, we were curious to find out whether the students would pay attention to the changing soundtrack, and if so, what their favorite music would be. At the end of the test, there was a clear winner for the demo version of the game; a lot of students reported that the best scenery combination for ultimate relaxation was: nighttime, the starry backdrop, and a light rain. [/p][p]Picture: monitors displaying the Twinkleby demo set to starry and nighttime, with teachers and Might and Delighters in the foreground[/p][p]From the beginning, Twinkleby was developed with a love for music – and an appreciation for the wonderful musicians we’ve worked with during our fifteen years as a studio. We’re so excited to share more musical vibes with you all in the lead-up to the release, and cannot wait to hear what kind of soundscapes you compose for your islands.[/p][p]See y'all next week, and in the meantime; sparkle on ✨[/p]