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We were surprised to discover that escape game music is often neglected or composed in a way that it is just background music, unrelated to the players' progress in the room - often due to budget constraints.
We have therefore thought of a financially affordable solution that could be added to the room without difficulty so that the Game Master can evolve the music according to the scenario and the pace of the players.
Through a partnership with Audiokinetic, we can offer structures with a room creation budget of 60k€ or less specially programmed musical creations on a dedicated software, Wwise, specifically for your room and game progression!
How? We explain everything below!
Before starting, why is it useful to put music in an escape game - and even more so original music?
It is obvious that a half-broken cardboard set and a shaky scenario will not satisfy players in terms of gaming experience. However, when it comes to music, it seems less obvious: won't it risk 'getting on the players' nerves' if it is too present or repetitive, or could a makeshift or library music suffice in the end?
Like any component of an Escape Game room, the place given to music is a choice available to you: what experience do you want to offer to the players? It is no longer necessary to prove that a movie without its music would have a very different impact on viewers, or that video game music is a strong argument in itself to praise its quality. Yet, looking at the reviews of Escape Games, even among the best in France, we struggle to find mentions of musical and sound immersion, even though many rooms have very marked themes: horror, science fiction, espionage, fairy tales... all atmospheres that draw on a whole artistic imagination, especially from cinema and literature.
We believe that if you are keen on enhancing the immersive experience of the game, ensuring that the sound atmosphere brings the sets and the scenario to life and accurately reflects the ambiance you want to instill in your room, existing and non-personalized music will quickly reach its limits. Paying particular attention to creating a palette of musical and sound colors that will blend with your set and scenario is choosing to immerse the players' ears in the experience you want them to live. It is opening another door to immersion, emotion, and the experience of your room.
Indeed, if music is omnipresent, it does not allow players to concentrate. However, when dosed correctly, it can help bring places and settings to life with discretion but effectiveness!
We also think about highlighting specific chosen moments, shorter but intense, where music can add depth to the adventure: emphasizing a discovery, making the opening of a door solemn or mysterious, dramatizing a turning point in the scenario, similar to a video game cutscene. Music can also surprise, like when a Game Master knocks on a door or bursts into the game disguised as a character.
Wwise is a software developed by Audiokinetic mainly for video games (but not only!). It allows programming music to adapt to the situations in a game: for instance, you should be able to let your player wait in the middle of a quest without the music stopping, and have music that triggers only when an event occurs.
In addition, Wwise has a very simple interface that allows manual testing of music programming: checking that the music triggers correctly on the right events, that transitions flow as desired, that infinite random loops work, etc.
It is this interface that we want to make available to the Game Master so that they can trigger the music they want. Here is what it looks like:
If you are a Game Master, all you have to do is click on the 'Play' buttons at each event and... that's it!
Everything else is programmed!
In other words, in this example, when the team of players enters the Castle room, the Game Master clicks on 'Play' for Room 1 and here is what we have programmed:
Then when the players discover the second room, the Game Master clicks on 'Play' for Room 2: automatically, the musical transition occurs, with another introductory music for the new room followed by ambient music composed of different tracks played randomly. The programming ensures the smoothness of the musical transition, especially through the management of timing triggers.
On the right, in purple, there are other events that we have called 'Clocks'. They serve to give temporal references to the team of players: for example, if you want to announce that 15 minutes have passed since the beginning of the game, by clicking on this button we have programmed 1 'clock strike' (there will be 2 for 30 minutes, 3 for 45 minutes, etc.). Unlike room music, these sounds (or sound effects) overlap with the existing music and can be triggered at any time without disrupting the main music flow. One can imagine a whole range of events that could be musically supported through this approach.
You can watch below this example in video :
With the previous examples, we have discussed some possibilities that can be expanded and customized according to the rooms, highlighting several advantages:
If you are interested, please feel free to contact us for any question or observation, via our Contact Us page !
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