Hi, I’m Alex and you are watching “Game
Audio Lookout”, a series how music and sound
design in games work.
In this episode we’ll deconstruct one of
the incredible musical stages in Rayman Legends.
I’ve never seen something like this in a
2D platformer before.
When I played the level “Castle Rock”,
I was immediately hooked.
Rayman Legends has found its way into many
“Best Platformer Games of All-Time” lists.
Though it closely fails to beat the uncrowned
king Super Mario, it found a safe place next
the Nintendo mascot.
The Rayman series was created by French game
designer Michel Ancel and started in 1995
with the 2D jump’n’run Rayman.
It was followed by two 3D platforming games:
Rayman 2 and Rayman 3.
But the series went back to 2D sidescrolling
with Rayman Origins in 2011.
Origins was also the first Rayman game using
the UbiArt Framwork which also was adopted
by the 2013 release “Rayman Legends”.
The art-style of Rayman Legends is gorgeous
with very colourful graphics.
This makes playing the game feel like being
a cartoon.
One of the game’s level designers, Chris
McEntee, states in a Game Developers Conference
talk: “We’re constantly thinking about
the rules and constraints that the artist
has given us with the art the’ve created
and try to use it to our advantage rather
than seeing it as something that’s holding
us back.
The game’s incredible music was composed
by Christophe Hérald.
The instrumentation of the compositions is
very interesting as he uses whistling and
went with the ukulele as one of the soundtracks
main instruments.
The compositions can go from calm and relaxing
songs to epic orchestral music as seen in
the stage “Creepy Castle”.
But it can also change to energetic band music
when you are running against the clock, too.
The soundtrack was recorded with real instruments,
with the use of quite uncommon ones.
Composer Herald even used a cello played like
a bass guitar for the music used in in the
game’s stealth-like levels.
It was hard to choose a music stage we’ll
take a closer look at here.
There’s the hard rock medieval themed “Castle
Rock” we’ve seen in the beginning.
The second music level is an orchestral piece.
But in this episode of “Game Audio Lookout”,
we have a look at the third musical level
called “Mariachi Madness” located in world
three, “Fiesta de los Muertos”.
“Mariachi Madness” begins with a short
introduction to the rhythmical concept of
the song.
You are presented to the musical piece which
is a cover of Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger”.
This version features an ukulele and classical
guitars as main instruments.
To get you into the level’s flow, you only
have to get Lums on every accented guitar
stroke of the song and you have no threads
or obstacles to tackle here.
After that, the first true obstacles appear
in the form of worms and centipide-like creatures.
Here, you have to attack that top row of enemies
in time with the main accents of the guitars
in the music.
In the next phase, you now have to jump onto
the main beat of the music to stay on one
of the two worms without the spikes as you
can see here:
In phase 3, a new element of the level’s
design appears: There’s chains you have
to rapidly switch between in order to avoid
pink spiky balls.
Take a look at the number of chains and the
placement of the Lums: There’s five of them
just like in a musical staff notation and
the Lums even seem to be a depiction of the
individual notes of the solo guitar playing
in the music
In the next phase, the chorus’s main melody
kicks in.
It is played by a kazoo ensemble and you can
see enemies with trumpets and even trumpets
that shrink and un-shrink the player.
The climax of the level is also the climactic
ending of the song’s chorus.
Here, Rayman is repeatedly cannoned through
the air by those trumpets.
After that, the most difficult part of the
level starts as you have to rapidly beat a
line of enemies, once again in time with the
music.
All in all, Rayman Legends has an impressively
versatile set of musical compositions in a
lot of styles.
Because of recurring use of uncommon instruments
like the ukulele or the kazoo, this fits nicely
together with the cartoony look of the game.
In its prequel Origins, a toolset called the
UbiArt framework was created to be able to
connect game design with art and music.
According to composer Christophe Herald, the
senior sound programmer of the team even had
to build a whole system of synchronisation
between music and level design.
Rayman Legends even turns into a mixture of
2D platformer and a rhythm game in those wonderfully
crafted music levels.
According to interviews, the creation of this
levels was pretty tricky as the music had
to be synced to the gameplay just like in
movies or TV shows.
On the building of the music levels, Rayman
creator and project lead Michel Ancel said:
“If the song is repetitive you are doing
the same thing over and over in the game.
“Eye of the Tiger” is perfect because
you have events and beat changes.
The best is when the song goes up and down
or the guitar slides because then the character
can slide.”
Thank you for watching!
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enjoyed it and please subscribe to my channel!
What do you like most about Rayman Legends
game music?
Let me know in the comments!
Looking forward to see you again in the next
episode of “Game Audio Lookout”!
