Games

In most Real-Time Strategy games, music is a a superficial accessory, meant to set the mood or create a sense of immersion. In Sonorous, Erik Nelson's MFA thesis project, music is an essential, dynamic element that is deeply linked to your every action. Sounds in Sonorous are formed and developed by your gameplay action; as you progress through the game, your units will pulse out the ever-changing sounds of a unique original melody.

Recently, software such as Toshio Iwai's Electroplankton and Harmonix' popular Guitar Hero have established the notion of generative music gaming, in which the soundtrack is a direct result of a player's in-game action. Sonorous fuses the idea of generative music with the rich, choice-centered gameplay of the Real-Time Strategy genre.

In this game, players control a small group of units, each with different attributes; these units also each correspond to different instruments, including drums, bass and synthesizers. As your various units take different actions, such as moving, stopping, and attacking, they will generate different loops of sound.

By playing Sonorous over a network, you can compete with another player, manuevering your units to destroy a set of mechanical nodes and capture a central citadel. In the course of this competition, your actions will control the ensemble performance of 8-bit flavored digital music. As you wheel the camera through the action, you will hear the musical emphasis shift from unit to unit in response to your wavering focus; as you move towards the climax of the game, manuevering your units through increasingly rapid motions and attacks, the music will respond with rising intensity.

Sonorous uses its soundtrack as a narrative through-line, specifically tailored to the player's actual experience. As the game continues to develop, other features, such as beat-matching gameplay and increasing control over different musical aspects of the units, will deepen this connection and enhance the creativity of play.

To hear a sample of music created in an early play-session of Sonorous, click here.

For a more in-depth look at Sonorous' purpose, influences and gameplay, you can read Erik Nelson's thesis paper by clicking here.