When we met for the first time with the MA students, I asked the guys for some reference, any video game they liked or that they where inspired by to make the game. They told us that their main inspiration was a video game called What Remains of Edith Finch, a 3D game released for multiple consoles and that won multiple awards including the BAFTA best game award in 2018. This was a bit unexpected because I thought they where going to suggest a game in VR instead of this one in 3D, but then I saw the movie and gameplay of the game and noticed that even though it was 3D it had such immersive qualities that could even seem it was made for VR.

The game is a collection of different tales and stories revolving a family in the US. Edith is the last surviving member of her family, in the video game Edith investigates into her past experiencing the life of her family members, with the objective of finding an explanation to why she is the last one of standing in her vast family line. The game takes through reality bending journeys across Edith family tree, dealing with hard situations and death, as each single story line finishes with the death of that family member. In the video game’s web page it states the objective of the game as ‘Ultimately, it’s a game about what it feels like to be humbled and astonished by the vast and unknowable world around us’. This relates a lot to the narrative of The Phone Box as their objective is also to create live like experiences that uncovers the nature of life, more specifically the nature of mental health. As well as What Remains of Edith Finch, The Phone Box is not afraid of crossing into sensitive territories. Through a sound perspective I have to be careful into not being overly triggering, as sound always mirrors the themes and concepts of a narrative, while discussing mental health and hard situations paired with intense music could provoke in the gamer an overwhelming experience.

The music of this game is composed of quite mellow strings and winds, bringing a textural pulse that is never too intense or too quiet. I would say that the music has quite a melancholic character, hinting a sense of introspection and nostalgia. When seeing the first sketch of The Phone Box, I thought of designing the music to be quite dark and present to represent the void and darkness of the visual. But after hearing the soundtrack of What Remains of Edith Finch I though that maybe this darkness and intensity of my original idea could drift the attention away from the narrative. I decided to keep some aspects of the original dark ambient drones I composed, but mix them with some melancholic aspect to create a similar effect as the theme of Edith. To achieve this I though of including a generative melodic line in a minor scale that develops slowly and randomly through the game. The sound of this melody would have a more pleasant aesthetic than the rest of the drones, making the music less intense for the gamer and hint a slight sense of melancholy. Also I thought including some generative aspect to the music was quite adequate, generative music is widely used in video games (for example Minecraft) because it is self developing and it does get repetitive to hear.