Finding the Beat: The Music of Thirsty Suitors
We’re continuing our deep dive into Thirsty Suitors by exploring the development of the music and sound design that you’ll hear while playing.
Thirsty Suitors has a colorful art direction and it only made sense for us to bring that same level of vibrancy into the music and sound of the game. We wanted our world to have a unique feel to it and you’ll hear a mixture of hip-hop, South Asian, and Carnatic influences throughout your time playing.
This week, our Composer, Ramsey Kharroubi, and Sound Designer, Anne-Marie Weber, talked about their approach to creating the unique sound for Thirsty Suitors.
The Inspiration for Thirsty Suitor’s Unique Sound
If you’ve been following Thirsty Suitors for any amount of time, you know there’s a lot of different elements at play. We have turn-based rpg battles, step-by-step cooking segments, and wild skateboarding areas for you to explore. With some many different experiences, we needed to make sure the music and sound effects complimented the eccentric gameplay.
Ramsey talked a bit about the key elements of the sound in the game, “I think percussion in general and as an instrument really embodies the sound of the game. The beat is always driving the soundtrack. Given the nature of the rhythm based gameplay with the cooking, skating and suitor encounters.”
He went on to explain how this percussive flair bleeds into the sound design as well, “The on screen actions are also denoted by percussive sfx courtesy of Anne-Marie, which appropriately complement the hectic music, which itself is using a lot of traditional South Asian instruments. Rhythm and percussion is an important instrument in South Asian and Arabic cultures and it’s something I relied on heavily here to design the aesthetic.”
It’s safe to say that when you play Thirsty Suitors, you’ll be bobbing your head along to the wide-array of tracks in the game. In addition to great instrumental tracks, there are also a few songs in the game with vocals to accompany them.
We’re proud of what we achieved with these tracks. Here’s what Ramsey had to say about these songs, “It was a journey to find a vocalist who could sing in the Tamil language, do western vocals, and Carnatic singing. We had a few people reach out but nothing stuck. I’d say for almost half the project it felt like we were never going to find somebody,” Ramsey explained. “Suddenly we found Pri, or rather she found us and she ended up being great. She brings so much to the game's soundtrack.”
It’s no secret that in order to make the amazing games you love and play everyday, years of time is spent to bring them to life.
Throughout the time, many developers' lives change and morph and all of that is reflected in the work. “It’s amazing to me that during this game’s soundtrack gestation period I lived through a whole pandemic, moved from NY to WA, and experienced a number of different life events. The whole soundtrack feels chaotically similar to my life in that it’s a reflection of my own journeys.”
Finding the Right Balance
As with any avenue of game development, it’s not all sugar and rainbows. There are a number of challenges involved in creating anything for a video game. For the music and sound design in Thirsty Suitors there were a few places that Anne-Marie and Ramsey pointed to as interesting challenges for them to figure out during development.
Ramsey had this to say, “The balance between conversations, voice acting, and “battling” in the Suitor encounters was challenging. Making sure that the music flowed between the conversation bits and the action bits dynamically, and specifically accounting for voice acting including length of conversations was important to ensuring the whole game sounds better. Also encounters are locked in a certain tempo range of 100-120 bpm for player actions during battle to sync up with the music. Making sure the Suitor encounters were musically cohesive with the voice acting, narrative elements, and sfx was the most challenging aspect.”
What’ll you’ll find when you play through the game is a great balance between the vocals of the amazing voice cast we have alongside some of our music tracks that have vocals as well. These moments really elevate these battles while not becoming intrusive to the story unfolding in front of your eyes.
Anne-Marie agreed with Ramsey on some of these challenges, “While I've worked on a lot of other games before, it was my first time working on an RPG. In playtime it's actually one of the shorter games, but it still surprised me how large and complex it wound up being even within that smaller scope. There's a lot of bespoke work in each of the boss battles, and cooking as well.”
Channeling the Sound of the 90s
The world of Thirsty Suitors is largely inspired by 90s era aesthetics and vibes. You’ll see that the skateboarding elements of the game we talked about in a previous blog looked very similar to old skateboarding session videos of the time. You’ll also notice that our main character, Jala, goes everywhere with her trusty Walkman music player.
We wanted the music and sound of Thirsty Suitors to call back to some of these nostalgic nods from the time. Ramsey gave some insights into where the inspiration for the music in various locations in the game started.
“We felt a surreal version of late 90’s to early 2000’s music would fit Jala’s headspace the best. The game’s music is very much written from the perspective of Jala. So for me, being a child of the 90’s, the music I watched on MTV was my go to reference point. For example, the Skatepunk and the skatepark in the game are inspired by the Beastie Boys, which I’m a big fan of. Destiny’s Child, Garbage, TLC to name a few inspired some of the Suitor battles.”
There are much subtler ways that these sounds of the 90s and early 2000s work their way into the game. Anne-Marie spent a lot of time researching sounds of the era and incorporated fun sounds where she could. She told a fun anecdote about how Jala’s phone sounds came to be.
“Since the game is somewhat set in the 90s, it was the era of custom ringtones, so we made old school ringtones for each of the Suitors. I found my old Nokia 3310 and got it a fresh battery. Ramsey kindly provided me with some midis of the suitor themes, and with that I went and recreated them in the phone's composer, then played them back on the phone and recorded that for a super authentic sound. Really maybe it was just an excuse to revisit a bit of my childhood and play Snake again though.”
All throughout Thirsty Suitors–whether it's the music, sound, art, narrative, or gameplay–small nuggets like the anecdote above can be found. These personal touches are what bring the humanizing element to Thirsty Suitors and reflect the human hands that labored to make the game you’ll be enjoying very soon.
Ramsey had something to say about his general approach to creating music that speaks well to what we’re getting at in this blog:
“Music has the ability to bring worlds to life. For me as a composer, what excites me is to facilitate that aliveness, the intangible to the tangible, the abstract to the concrete, by creating a sonic language that appropriately fits the experience. I’m not saying I have succeeded every single time in doing that, but I always keep it in mind. I approach every piece like its own special project. Which means I want people to enjoy it outside the game as much as they enjoy it inside the game. So in regards to a game where everyone in all the disciplines has poured their hearts into and everyone truly believes in the project, players should know that a lot goes into every tiny aspect of its design and the intent is truly for memorable tunes.”
Game Development Tips
Anne-Marie and Ramsey both provided some tips for folks trying to get into sound design and music composition in games. Here’s what Anne-Mare had to say:
“Just get out there and start creating. There's so many online resources to learn anything you want these days, and so many free tools to start with. And once you have started making things, get out there and tell people about all the things you've learned, and learn from all of your peers doing the same process. Tools and techniques and processes are forever changing, and only by sharing does music and sound in games continue to reach new heights.”
Ramsey echoed a lot of Anne-Marie’s sentiments too, “If you’re passionate about music/sound in games and want to get involved, just start. Follow your dreams etc. There is a lot you’ll have to learn on your own unfortunately and nobody really shows you. That’s the main struggle, but there's ways to minimize it. Once you get the hang of it things get significantly easier to navigate.”
Outerloop Games Recommends
This week we asked Ramsey for a recommendation to give you all and he chose the 1974 Gene Hackman film, The Conversation.
Here’s what Ramsey had to say about it: “One of my all time favorite films is The Conversation with Gene Hackman, in which he plays a surveillance expert. The movie deals with themes of privacy, security and paranoia. It has a ton of attention to audio and sound and really blows me away how the audio is intertwined with the story and the script. The protagonist is also a musician within the movie and it’s really well done. I think as far as classic cinema is considered this one rarely gets a mention especially for how much it uses sound to tell its story.”
Thirsty Suitors Releases on November 2, 2023
We recently announced our release date with a sizzling new trailer that we’re excited about. You can check it out below:
Trailer link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LIj46_R62M&t=4s
If you’re excited about Thirsty, we’d appreciate it if you Wishlisted the game on Steam, it helps put the game in front of more eyes.
Wishlist on steam https://store.steampowered.com/app/1617220/Thirsty_Suitors/?snr=1_5_1100__1100
You can also join our Discord, and follow us on Twitter @outerloopgames.
Thanks for reading, until next time!