Oh hey there, Needless! Didn’t see you there. I’m Jordan Chin, audio guy for Inkbound. Let’s talk about the music, sound, and voiceover in our game.
Sonic Landscape
Very early in development, I worked closely with our writer, Brendan (Redbeard), to understand his high-level vision for the world. We spent some time sharing references and coming up with a few core pillars – rules about what should and shouldn’t be a part of Inkbound’s audio aesthetic. I usually find that by defining these creative boundaries from the start, it becomes a lot easier to write freely without straying too far from the mark. After that, you just throw ink at the well and see what sticks.
Here are those pillars:
- Sound effects should read less “literal” and more “magical,” often venturing into “musical.” I’ve always loved the concept of blurring the line between a game's soundtrack and its sound design. Inkbound had a lot of great opportunities to put this concept into practice. Your Kwill chirps synthesized melodies. Picking up Kwillings plays random notes along a major 7 chord. The “singing of the sea” is something that is often referenced by NPCs in the game, and even the Uhn pillars that augment your bindings emit sounds made from guitar harmonics. We wanted players to feel like there was some magic to the world itself, but enforce the idea that this magic felt normal to everyone living within it.
- Any “non-book music” should be aesthetically tied. There are two types of music in Inkbound - the tracks that play within the books, and the tracks that play outside of them. This pillar is about the latter. The environments contained within the books themselves are quite varied, so I knew that cohesion was going to be a challenge. It seemed important to try and ground the world outside of the books with common instrumentation. You may notice that each of these tracks – The Atheneum, the Sea of Ink, and the Bottom of the Sea – have a similar vibe and prominently feature synths, woodwinds, keys, and vibraphones.
- Each piece of “book music” should sound unique. In contrast to the above pillar, we thought that the individual books should be as distinct from each other as possible. After all, they represent worlds created by very different Binders. Fortunately, the structure of a typical Inkbound run allows this to work. Players return to the Sea of Ink between books, and back to the Atheneum between dives. So even our more eclectic tracks, like the Derelict Starship or the Radiant Market, will always be sandwiched between something more familiar sounding. In fact, I think their stark contrast to the main “Inkbound sound” is what allows the Atheneum and and the Sea of Ink to feel like a home base.
Use of Musical Motif
From working on Monster Train, I knew that our players would latch onto a recurring musical motif. I got this very nerdy idea to create “bookend” motifs for Inkbound – a catchy melody or phrase that would be both the first and the last thing players heard – and plant them throughout the game loop. So for example, the central melody you hear in the menu reprises in the villain theme, the final boss fight, and the credits track. (I actually tried to Inception™ it into your minds as early as our announcement trailer). The “bookend” structure lends itself particularly well to roguelikes, where players might squeeze multiple runs into each session. Ideally, the setup and payoff of those musical motifs should happen multiple times each time you sit down to play. There are more motifs to be found, and even a nod to an older project of ours called Death’s Door, but I’ll let you discover those for yourselves.
Fully Voiced Cast
This was a tremendous opportunity that I feel fortunate to have been a part of. Each member of our cast brought something new and exciting to their characters, and I can’t speak highly enough about them. Check out the credits sequence for a full cast list. But before arriving at the decision to fully voice the game, there were two interesting (failed) iterations of our dialogue system that I think should be discussed:
- First, we tried voicing a conlang (constructed language), a process during which I somehow managed to rip off Hollow Knight and every Zelda game at once. The main problem here, aside from my acting, was that there wasn’t enough variety, nor could we make a strong connection between the voiceover and writing. You’ll notice that the voice of the player’s Kwill is a made-up, melodic performance. Even with the Kwillspeak text obscured, it was challenging to find enough variety. Multiply that problem by the number of characters in Inkbound, and you can imagine how difficult it was to connect with them using this method.
- Next, some members of our team recorded one-liner “emotes” – things like “Hmm…” to indicate contemplation, or grumbling to indicate frustration – and we applied them broadly throughout the game to approximate the emotion behind each line. It quickly became repetitive and didn’t convey the nuance of the writing well enough.
Once we decided to fully voice the game, Brendan and I took the opportunity to expand on a principle that we first enforced during Monster Train: our voice actors are our collaborators. Aside from providing some artwork and character details, we gave them complete freedom to interpret their characters. We began every session by encouraging them to bring their own creativity to the table. Some of them would improvise radically different voices on the fly. Others would suggest line edits mid-session (all of which we took). Ultimately, the cast connected deeply with their respective characters, and helped to bring out something that we never would have achieved alone.
And that’s just about it! Inkbound is a game about the importance of stories. It ponders the threatening possibility of losing them, and it pushes players to think about their own. While my aim with the audio was to convey the weight of this very existential topic, I hope that it also leaves you with a little bit of the magic, wonder, and inspiration that I felt while making it.
Thanks for hanging out, and I’ll see you around the Atheneum!
