A deep dive into "Life Below" with composer Julie Buchanan

In Megapop Games' latest release Life Below , you find yourself underwater in a refreshing and fun take on the city-builder genre. Your mission is to carefully design healthy reefs and habitats and restore ecosystems.

As the ocean guardian Thalassa, you channel the power of the mysterious Reef Heart to grow vibrant coral reefs, manage water quality, and lure over fourty species of wildlife back to the sea floor. The narrative is written by award-winning British video game writer and journalist Rhianna Pratchett. 

But how do you really create the feeling of being underwater, through sound - and through music? 

Music as glue, guide and emotional trigger

Under the surface in the real world - but still one unknown to most of us - there is surprisingly much sound. These sounds, or the absence of them, again tells us a surprising amount, something award-nominated composer and sound designer  Julie Buchanan discovered during the research process for the official soundtrack, and which she used strategically.

Curious, we took a deeper dive into the underwater music world with Julie Buchanan and CEO and Co-Founder of Megapop, Jørgen Tharaldsen. 

What is the music's role in creating the total player experience in Life Below?  
And how important is music and sound in games, in general? 

Julie continues:

"While I always have goals and intention in composing and designing the music for games, it’s also inherently a very subjective experience for players hearing the music. Every player can form their own emotional connections and meaning in the experience beyond my original intentions, which individually can give players more depth to their experience." 

Jørgen Tharaldsen agrees:

"The music in Life Below is there to guide, nurture and not the least transport you to this ethereal, magical underwater world. From calm retrospective moments to emotional narrative moments, to moments of danger, loss and victory. It’s all there to make you feel."

Regarding the role of music and sound in Life Below specifically, he further explains:

"As it’s a city-builder, with a lot of content, the players may spend hundreds of hours in the game, so it needs to support this long journey. To enable this variety more than 80 different tracks have been made, each serving their own distinct role. 

The music is then actively mixed with SFX, and just like a coral reef, the more beings you attract, the more lively and “soundly” everything becomes, and that includes the music. So you play along with the music, so to speak. All of this is mixed with a feeling of “being submerged” into water, meaning water-sounds, real fish sounds (yes, really) and even whale song where marine audio experts have shared their fav whale songs with us! Overall it’s just a very complex, deep and layered musical experience, but presented in an innocent and hopeful way."

Julie confirms she was very inspired by real underwater sounds and creatures for both the sound design and music of Life Below.

"I did research about how sound differs underwater compared to on land, and learned about musicians who perform underwater and what types of instruments they used. Hearing real recordings of coral reefs and wildlife sounds, and learning that sound travels both faster and farther underwater, definitely influenced my decisions to choose a palette that incorporates both clear, long-ringing metallic instruments, and shorter plucked or tactile textures"

She adds:

 

"I think this evolved into a core design focus for me to maintain a balance between silence and sound. I think you can hear this in the contrast between the long washy textures of the ruined zone’s music and the short plucked instruments of the barren zone’s arrangements, for example."

Julie Buchanan + Megapop 

To get the job composing for Life Below, Julie was recommended by a good friend and audio peer, Oda Tilset, and went through interviews with the Oslo-based Megapop team. When the contract was signed, they started working together on the initial prototype of the game. 

"At this stage, we talked a lot about music references, instrumentation, and the general moods we wanted to create. We also did a round of several concept demos; trying different ideas in each one to trial and error how different styles felt. Early on in the development of Life Below the team brought me to Oslo and we had an in-person meeting to discuss music direction and how music could support and enhance the game design. It was at this meeting that we decided to move towards an adaptive music system and started forming an idea of how to get started."

"From there, I went back and revised the first linear background track I had written to edit it as a proof of concept for our adaptive music system, and to start figuring out different biome arrangements, instruments, and moods. We figured out the initial implementation kinks and after experiencing the music in-engine and confirming it felt good in-game, I used that track as a blueprint for how to design the following background music."

A prescription to unwind

After receiving great reception and reviews, the collaboration between Julie and Megapop, published by UK-based Kasedo Games, is a proven success. People highlight the effect the game has on them; both in terms of mood and as a prescription to unwind. In a reality where 50% of the world's coral reefs are destroyed, it's refreshing to be left with hope and inspiration, and the awareness of balance. 

A class-act

When asked about the collaboration with Buchanan, Jørgen states "Julie is fantastic!"

"Making the audio and musical landscape for such a complex game is no mean feat, and she has just excelled at every corner. She’s just a very curious lady, always looking for new ways, and then backed all of that up with some hardcore technical and compositional skills. She even has this incredible voice, which she applies so elegantly all over the game. It’s never really been a “no” as we work our way through versions, more a very high degree of willingness to experiment with us. More than anything she is a very nice human being, with a lovely cat.

"We have loved working with Julie, she is a class-act."

You can listen to Life Below (Original Soundtrack) here!