Limbo

The biggest challenge was coming up with a theme and instrumentation for the game that didn’t completely ruin the sense of isolation, confusion, and wonder. Limbo intentionally lacks traditional melodic audio to create more space and a greater sense of environment – it really puts you in the shoes of the boy and adds to the immersion. But adding music… well that’s the challenge! I ended up deciding on a rather moody piano sound, along with various parts from other traditional instruments such as violin, viola, and cello as well as a few world instruments like the koto and “forest” drums to add to the slightly mysterious feel.

I split the audio into two main sections: the menu and the gameplay. Since the menu represents a more structured environment – and one that the player will spend less time in overall – I decided to implement more traditional phrasing here. I created a number of individual parts for right-hand piano, left-hand piano, cello, and viola. I then exported each phrase so that when randomly played in a sample-arcuate transition from one to the next each part would line up in time with the others. But I also varied the length, in measures, of each clip so that the overlap of each continues to change, resulting in a composition that is always unique from one play to the next.

I also decided to make the player part of the orchestration by adding different notes of the key to menu selections. For example scrolling through the menu randomly plays one of 5 pitches from an Obo. Just by skipping around in the menu the player can add to the melody and overall orchestration.

For the music during gameplay I took a much more experimental approach in order to avoid repetition over a longer period of time and to also add to the sense of instability through the melody. All of the sample lengths are different so that there is no traditional in-tempo overlap of melody. Each phrase from the various parts comes and goes and interweaves with each other in a complementary yet very independent way.

However, to add some dimension to the music and avoid things getting boring I did create a number of compositional “blocks” to be randomly selected as well as specifically triggered during certain events. For example, most of the musical arrangements happen around the root chord of the chosen key. However at times the game will change to phrases centered on the fifth of the key, or even modulate briefly to an alternate key. I also created two compositional blocks for the end of the game – one that adds the proper emotional context to the boy breaking through the glass, and another that resolves out of our minor key into a major key when the boy sees the girl in order to give a greater sense of overall resolution for the player. While these two are specific only to the end-game, each block is still comprised of a number of different phrases so that each “Ending” and “Resolution” is still randomly generated and different from one play to the next.