I met Ian Snyder standing on the GDC Expo Floor back in 2012. He was showcasing his game ‘The Floor is Jelly’, a nominee for the IGF Student Showcase that year. The game was a platformer, and a bit of something old made new. I loved the aesthetic of the demo, as well as the gelatinous physics that made up most of the game’s interactions. I could not imagine the lengths to which experimentation would take this game over the next two years. Despite the game’s lack of success, I feel very fortunate to have been a part of the process.
I played the demo for a bit, and we spoke about the mechanics and the audio. I loved the organic, floaty aesthetic that he had already started coming up with for the music. Acoustic instruments weaved in and out to create pleasant, persistent landscapes. A week passed, and Ian reached out to me over e-mail, looking for advice. We sought to understand what the potential for audio in this game was, in a way that would help create a solid plan of action. We talked about our favourite examples of sound in other games. We spoke about some of Ian’s music prototypes, and my past work on projects like Fez and January.
It became apparent that we envisioned similar things, and so we decided to work together on The Floor is Jelly. After many long conversations, we set out to first create a system for the rain world in the game.
Here is an excerpt from ‘Writing Interactive Music for Games’, a book published by a former professor of mine, Michael Sweet:
We spent months prototyping a music system for a series of rain levels in “The Floor is Jelly”. The system played an individual note for each drop, as it hit a surface. These drops generated harmonies that changed as the player moved. We even made an in-game editor. Unfortunately, playing a sample for each drop was too CPU intensive. Our system trashed the frame rate. The issue crept on us because we prototyped the idea using a sparse amount of rain. When we found we couldn’t increase the notes and droplets together, we had to scratch the whole system. Instead, we created short loops of rain-like music that change as you progress through the world. The frequency of rain is great enough that synchronizing with each droplet was unnecessary.
In the last two weeks of development, I got as much work done on the project as I had in the previous six months. I worked on the game on and off for two years. But looking back, I feel that I could have done better if I had showed up earlier and more often to work on the project. One of the most frequent obstacles I’ve faced as a freelancer has been the tendency to procrastinate and push “non-essential” work back. Juggling multiple projects sometimes requires a sense of prioritization. Of course, the lesson here is that the work I care most passionately about is all essential. If I had taken on fewer projects or asked for help, I might have been able to give The Floor is Jelly the extra attention it could have used. I am very pleased with how the work turned out in the end, and many of the methods and ideas were a direct result of working under a tight time restraint. They may not have happened otherwise, so it’s hard to use the word “regret”. However, it’s easy to imagine that we could have done some truly sophisticated things if only I’d dedicated more time.
One particularly interesting and slightly disheartening thing I should mention is that a lot of the ideas that were brought up in our initial e-mails fell by the wayside, and many were never even tried. I think part of the reason this happened is because it took so long to get really off the ground. I worked on the project in spurts, never for more than a few days in a row before moving on to something else. It was only towards the very end of production that I was working on the game every day.
In hindsight, all signs for me point to starting on projects early and setting aside consistent time to work on a single project. I have experimented with different ways of working over the years, including splitting my weekly time up between projects to stay on top of a lot of work. I think that cohesion of the work can suffer, as well as the possibility for thoroughness. I want to focus my energy on one project at a time when I can, instead of jumping back and forth too much.
Track Descriptions
The First Day
from Ian: "Day was the absolute first track for the game, and set the tone, if you'll pardon the pun, for much of what followed. Before this track I spent a great deal of time doing what felt like aimless thrashing in the dark, trying to find the right sound for the game. Nothing was working. Everything I wrote felt disconnected from the game itself, as though the music were happening in spite of the game rather than because of it. Nevertheless, once I found the lightly plucked guitar loop which is the core of the song, the rest fell quickly into place, and, furthermore, gave the game an aesthetic momentum. This track is particularly important in the history of the game, therefore, as it represents the moment I turned from making a twitchy, way-too-impossibly-difficult platformer with constantly shifting terrain to making a more relaxed game about purely kinetic sensations, without as much regard to difficulty. The track lent the game in its early development, when it most needed it, a sense of peace."
Moths and Moonlight
For the Night area of the game, I wanted something somber and introspective sounding. I went through a large collection of piano and guitar improvisations, looking for the right recording to use as a seed for this piece, when I stumbled on this piano piece where I improvised using the idea of these upward cascading figures of sixths. I then added a fretless bass solo to go along with it. As you play the game, the music shifts depending on how far you get from the central hub of the world. The further away you get, the deeper and darker the music becomes.
The Morning
Of my three tracks in the game, this is perhaps my favorite. The track is intentionally simple: a harmonica run through paulstretch and a soft mandolin solo drifting in and out, half-asleep. In this section of the game, the player is often interacting with a set of plants which, when touched, produce a musical twang (the sound of a banjo with a shoelace draped lightly over its string). The song acts as space for the player's musical improvisation. I'm also quite fond of the wooden, creaking sound heard in this track. Produced by rubbing the hollow body of a mandolin along my pantleg, it gives the track a slowly-swaying quality, as though one is in a boat or is listening to the branches of a large tree move in the quiet wind.
Swimming
This started as a simple 2 chord sketch on acoustic guitar, recorded back in 2012. I was thinking of using it for the first world of the game, and had called it "Autumn" along those lines. After revisiting it, I thought it might work better for the water world, in which I wanted a chill, laid back vibe. Also, Ian had already done music for the autumn level, and while I think he intended to have me replace all of his work, I was pretty fond of it and inspired by it, so I was more than happy to leave his work in. This production all came together only a few days before the game was released. I spent a good bit of time exploring other ideas for the ocean world, but many did not pan out. I tried mapping notes to the geography of levels, and some pretty weird and interesting phasing ideas, which felt too chaotic. Those tunes actually ended up in the last level of the game.
Rain in C Minor
This was the first piece I worked on and finished in The Floor is Jelly. We spent a good deal of time designing a crazy music system that played a tone every time a rain drop hit a platform, but it proved too cpu intensive. As an alternative we ended up creating a progression based on small "rain music" loops, and little melodic figures triggered by in game events, such as windows being unlocked, jumps, and sections of puzzles being solved.
Buoyancy and Gravity
This track is made up of the above water and underwater segments of one of the ocean levels. Both segments are actually versions of "Swimming", in reverse. One is also stretched out and made into an ambient piece by using PaulStretch.
Winter in C Major
I came up with a chord progression on the piano and each level in the winter world takes one of these chords. As you move between inside and outside, the timbre of the music changes. In the soundtrack version these two places are crossfaded between back and forth periodically.
The Universe is Before You
The music/ambience in the space world works similarly to the night world. As you get further away from the hub, the music shifts more and more, however the hub level in space is completely silent. There are also glitches on your way back...
The Last Day
This is a reworking of Ian's track "The First Day", using PaulStretch and copious amounts of reverb.
Our Thoughts Are Not Our Own
Originally written for the game's night area, this track features a leaky, tiny, old, student accordion a friend found at a garage sale. ($20!) The thing wheezed no matter what you did with it, and some of its own body had come loose and could be heard rattling around inside. I've no experience playing accordion, a daunting instrument regardless of its condition, so it's surprising we got the thing to make pleasant-seeming noises at all.
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This started out as an idea for the ocean levels. The instruments you hear are mostly balafons, a West African pitched percussion instrument. Each pattern phases against itself for about 113 seconds, while adhering to a musical grid. It also gets really messed up and glitchy.
For more info about the game, visit The Floor is Jelly website.