Audio is often an overlooked aspect of making a video game, but more often than not, it can be 0ne of the most important components in really driving an idea home. In a game like Grounded, with two entirely different atmospheres separated by day and night, the music serves a crucial👍 role in delivering that transition. Obsidian studio audio director, Justin E. Bell, sat down with TheGamer to reveal how he pulled it off.
Bell has been with Obsidian for just about a decade now, working on Fallout New Vegas back in 2010 as one of his earliest projects. He's since tackled the likes of South Park: The Stick ಌof Truth, Pillars of Eternity, and The Outer Worlds, although none of thoseཧ games are anything quite like Grounded.
The Day
Bell recalled being excited to work on Grounded after playing even the earliest stages of testing. "I reme꧃mber being very charmed by the colorful art style and the cuteness of the aphids," he said. "It just seemed like a wonderful world to work in and bring to life."
That initial feelings of curiosity and color are what ultimately drove the musical approach to the 🉐game's time in the sunlight. The team had♛ originally tried a score that was a bit more unnerving to represent the strange sense being shrunk down to the size of a bug, but it "didn't feel supportive of a long play experience," explained Bell.
So instead, the composer began working on something that conveyed a better sense of wonder and nostalgia rather than discomfort. This was done by simplifying the ambient music, then triggering a small set of strings when𓆉ever a player would discover a new point of interest and overlaying the ambience🦄 with that sound.
That subtle decision gives the player just the slight♒est push to keep exploring, and it works magnificently. Those strings combined with the game's 90s-inspired aesthetic invokes nostalgia in many of those who are play🉐ing Grounded, and it feels inspired directly by the "backyard" movies of the 1990s.
After all, movies like Honey, I Shrunk The Kids and A Bug's Life are the closest thing that Grounded has to "source material." Just like in those movies, the imagination of what it might actually be like to shrink down to the size of an ant speaks directly to our inner child, and it's a feeling that Grounded is able to capture better than those before it.
The Night
Just like those movies of the 1990s, at some point things in Grounded are going to get serious. One minute you'll find yourself curiously exploring the game's backyard map, building forts and𝓰 having fun with friends only to have 🎶the sunset sneak up on you to introduce an entirely different setting.
At your base, things might not seem all that bad. A "ni🎃ght variant" of the daytime ambience track plays in the background, which Bell explained was meant to have a relatively chill vibe compared to what comes next. When you wander off awa🧔y from camp is when things really start to get unsettling.
"It's meant to tell you as the player, 'watch your back, you're probably going to get eaten'," said Bell. At this point, massive, stalking spiders can come at you with incredible intensity, turning just about anyone into an arachnophobe. Grounded becomes a horror surviva💎l game, and the music establishes that beyond a shadow of a doubt.
The Grounded Theme
While Grounded may seem innocent at first, you're given a hint that things aren't quite right as early as the title screen. It seems colorful and🥀 fun, but there's something unsettling about this adventure that you're about to embark on.
The game's theme utilizes a 1980's-era synth horror style that captures both senses of nostalgia and fear. The track is the perfect choice when you consider how it's able to tie together Grounded's very different themes from the night and day portions of the game. It also just gives the game an overall sense of retroꦦ coolness, and what's better than that?
When asked if a🅘ny specific horror mov▨ies had inspired the theme, Bell explained that he was more so inspired by an era rather than any particular film or television show. To really drive that sense of nostalgic fear home, he worked with 80s-era synths such as the Yamaha DX7 and the CS-80.
The result is something that couldn't work better. Nostalgia continues to be a driving factor in gaming, and while Grounded might not be based on any pre-existing property that we all loved in the 90s, it's still able to perfectly recreate that feeling of revisiting one's childh🐼ood.
So while Grounded's gameplay and crafting systems can certainly stand on its own merit, there's something to be said about how well the music helps drive home the game's ideas. Grounded is certainly a one-of-a-kind survival game, and it'lꦫl be interesting to see how it eventually evolves over time.