The web game had a single song. The Unity version has 18 tracks and 9 stingers, all original — and not one note came from a sample, a download or a paid service. Each track is a score written in code and played by a synthesizer built for the game.
An instrument for every mood
The synthesizer has an organ with several registers, a choir singing vowels, strings, brass, church bells, harpsichord, lute, koto, shamisen, shakuhachi, timpani, taiko and gong. Every place in the night has its own track:
- the crypt pulses in Phrygian mode, with marching snare and choir;
- the library races through a baroque harpsichord in sixteenth notes;
- the Reaper dances a danse macabre waltz in 3/4, with a bone xylophone;
- the Bellwarden fights to a real change-ringing peal, with the permutations of English bell towers;
- the Moon Ronin arrives with koto, shakuhachi and taiko;
- the Grove of the Hanged plays a music box, a lullaby that soothes no one.
Music that follows the danger
The score is adaptive. Each track has up to three layers — base, intensity and peak — that play together, in sync, and only change volume as the horde closes in. Track changes wait for the next bar. Short stingers mark the big moments: leveling up, evolving a weapon, a boss arriving and falling, an Execution and clearing a stage.
And the sounds?
Sound effects are also generated in code, from the same recipes as the web game, and the visual overhaul brought dozens of new sounds for weapons, ultimates, dashes and thunder, plus looping ambiences for every map — all calibrated for loudness.
