Back in January, I commissioned a friend of mine, who happened to produce music as a hobby, to create a music track for Beatdown Battleground. When he agreed, I gave him the following criteria:
- 1 minute long, repeatable
- 100 bpm or slower, slow enough for a tutorial
- Simple, not too many layers, the constant beat being the main focus
- If possible, separate the track into parts – to give game designer control of each phase
I showed him the tutorial from the games Muse Dash and Rhythm Doctor as an example for the kind of track I was looking for. After that, I left him to work on the track without rushing him since we weren’t rushing to implement music just yet. He ended up finishing the track extremely quickly and gave us this file to listen to.
Personally, I thought it was perfect. So I didn’t ask for more changes and kept it how it was, I thought it suited the style of the game and was simple and catchy enough for a tutorial level so we ended up happily using it for that.
He also sent the tracks separated into parts for our game designer to adjust each phase of the track to what suits the game best.
I was really happy with this outcome, and very glad I had commissioned a custom track instead of choosing an existing one. It felt personal to our game and saved us the hassle of finding the perfect track online. In the future, if we were to continue developing this game, we would continue working with this artist and possibly find more arists to make us music from other genres.