What do you think of the music in this video?

video

Personally I don’t like it that much. It doesn’t seem to go with the video of the gameplay.

To me the music sounds mysterious, strange, intriguing, ominous and slow, but the game is a classic tower defence which generally has fast paced, driven and intense gameplay. The music itself is rather ‘flat’, predominately using percussive type sounds, without a strong melody to pull you along. For a game trailer its not very inspiring and doesn’t grab you.

So in my opinion the music needs to match the gameplay and the emotions felt when playing the game, which currently it doesn’t. It needs to be more up-tempo and probably more ‘positive’ in its ‘vibe’. I would say that it needs to choose a genre to fit the game graphics, but it seems to be mixing up many styles such as medieval/fantasy (Castle Tower/Gnomes), futuristic (the weird and very shiny War of the World like guns along with beam weapons that are fired) and gardening (the map, gnomes and other references within the game), whilst the general presentation is futuristic/modern.

Honestly I think the whole aesthetic style of the game needs to be re-thought and made consistent to one style/genre, that in turn should point towards use of an obvious genre/style for the music.

But is it a better fit than this one?

old video

LOL - nothing is better than John Barry’s James Bond Themes :wink:

No they are equally as bad (IMHO), the second one is so subtle that it is almost completely drowned out by the game sound effects which have yet a different ‘style’ to them than everything else. From what I can hear of the second version (without being deafened by the sfx) is a gentle, relaxing, new-age/ambient type of track. Again doesn’t really fit in with the visuals or gameplay. Whilst your game appears slightly slower paced in terms of the speed of gnomes, the tension of trying to destroy the wave with placing turrets on the fly is really the over-riding experience (again IMHO).

As I said before its difficult to give any recommendations as due to the conflicting visual styles being used, there is no specific genre or style of genre that would fit. However it needs to be up-tempo with a strong melody, something that adds interest to the visuals and at the same time complements them.

The best I can recommend is to browse youtube for other TD games and see what forms of music they are using and try to determine why. For example I just stuck on Daft Punk’s Derezzed soundtrack whilst playing your first video (with its sound disabled) and it sounded much more interesting. It was perhaps too electronic and too dance orientated to fit the visuals perfectly, mainly as the gnomes seem to move quite slowly.

Edit: Actually this daft punk track works better https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om38ziFMS7s
However I’m still uneasy suggestion this type of track as it only works with some of your visual elements, not all of them. The beginning works well though as it has a feeling of anticipation in the music that builds up, this gets you ‘excited’, which is probably vital as you want to grab viewers immediately.

Do the gnomes speed up later in the game? Could you maybe speed up the gameplay playback slightly, so it might fit with a faster paced tempo?

And to go further if this is meant to be a game trailer, then think about it ‘telling a story’ through the visuals. At the moment its all viewed through a single camera (game camera), perhaps think of cutting in some close ups of the action, rotating the camera 360 in a single sweep (and not simply due to how you would rotate it as if you were playing a game). Then look at how you can cut between the various views you’ve recorded that fit with the music you’ve selected.

By mixing up you video with different views, using cuts and transitions you might be able to make the visual mesh better with an up-tempo track. Again study other game trailers on youtube, see what you like and don’t like, get ideas of things to try in you video.

Good Luck

Edit: Oh one other tip, try playing the game to the music you are going to use when recording the gameplay. Often you’ll find that you can time your actions to be in time with the tempo/beats. Synchronization can be very powerful between visuals and the music.

Edit2: Something i’ve just realised, i’m not reading any of the text you are displaying the video. Not sure why, i’m just blanking it out, so i’m actually missing lots of useful game information. Its hard to say why the text doesn’t work, maybe its the positioning, font size, font, how it fades in/out.

However when I did start paying attention much of it didn’t have any context. Again this is the perfect time for adding camera cuts. If you are going to talk about the 3 tower types, cut to a close up of each one in action in turn. Same with the enemies, which I assume from the text are zombies and aliens, though they look like gnomes? If you are going to ‘announce’ an enemy type show me a close up of one when you do.

About half way through though you seem to run out of things to say, suggesting that the video is too long, or you need to space out the textual information or add more information.

Sorry to be so critical, but you did ask :wink:

For me this is fine for a first pass on what you want to do with the video. What you then need to do is apply critical thinking to it, compare it to other games, think of ways to improve it (e.g. like some of my suggestions would hopefully do), then start a whole new video based on your new ideas. Even then that video may not be final as you want to analyse it again. Its an iterative process to achieve the best video you can. This is all assuming its meant to be a game trailer and not just a random video showing off you game to a few friends etc.