From the very beginning of ILL, we knew music would play an important role. Not just as a way to build tension, but as another layer of storytelling - helping make the world feel alive, unfamiliar, and unsettling.
For this dev diary, we sat down with Alon Mor, the composer behind ILL’s music, and Max Verehin, one of our game directors and co-founders of developer Team Clout, to talk about how the game’s sound is being shaped, why the soundtrack is not built around simple horror clichés, and how the latest-released “Whalesong” became one of the first glimpses into the musical direction we are exploring for ILL.
A collaboration built on mutual inspiration
The collaboration between Alon Mor and the ILL team began naturally, long before the soundtrack itself took shape. Alon first connected with Max through his own music, particularly his 2019 album Lands of Delight, which already carried certain moods and textures that later felt close to the world of ILL.
“It all came from my friendship with Max. His art was an inspiration for me, and my music was an inspiration for him. So we connected very fast, first as friends, and later through the game.”
— Alon Mor
For Max, the goal was never to find someone who would simply follow a strict list of references. The team wanted a composer with a recognizable voice - someone who could bring their own artistic identity into the project.
This trust became our foundation. Initially Max shared the footage, story ideas, creatures, locations, and emotional direction with Alon, while Alon responded with music, sketches, sound experiments, and ideas of his own. The result was less of a one-way assignment and more of an ongoing creative exchange.
Not just a soundtrack, but a world you can hear
One of the ideas we keep coming back to while developing ILL’s music is that, despite all the different moods and directions we’re exploring, it should eventually feel like it belongs to one strange, coherent world.
“We want the soundtrack to be varied. Something scary, something dynamic, something sentimental, something experimental, but still connected. You should hear it and understand: this is ILL.”
— Max Verehin
Alon approaches this by creating what he calls a large “sound world” before finishing individual songs. Rather than working strictly track-by-track, he builds up a library of sketches, textures, and sound experiments that he can draw from as the soundtrack gradually takes shape.
“For me, it’s like a pyramid. What the listener hears in the end is only the top, but I build a lot at the base first.”
— Alon Mor
Some of these experiments may eventually develop into recurring sonic ideas or recognizable elements across different parts of the game.
The horror of what you don’t hear
When talking about fear, Alon does not describe it only in terms of loud impacts or aggressive sounds. For him, horror often comes from absence, uncertainty, and the listener’s imagination filling in the gaps.
We often try to aim for something peculiar rather than simply frightening. Sounds may seem organic, but not quite human. Physical, but impossible. Familiar enough to feel real, yet wrong enough to make the player question what they are hearing.
Alon cites 20th-century experimental composers as part of his inspiration, including figures like Ligeti, Stockhausen and Pierre Schaeffer - artists who treated sound in ways that could feel deeply unsettling even outside the context of horror.
The goal is not to imitate any particular game or film, but to gradually create a sonic identity that will feel specific to ILL.
The story of “Whalesong”
As one of the first pieces from the soundtrack we’ve shared publicly, “Whalesong” offers an early example of some of the ideas Alon and the team have been exploring together.
Alon says the track was never meant to be just frightening. Inspired by the image of a vast creature, it focuses instead on creating a sense of space, with a mix of melancholy, sci-fi, and something slightly alien.
Max adds that the track carries a form of musical storytelling: the sense of a creature being born, struggling, and gradually dying.
The track went through several stages: from a rough sketch with the core motif and creature-like sound, to a more developed arrangement, and finally to the detailed version released as a single. Alon compares the process to turning a pencil sketch into a painting.
Experiments, textures, and unexpected sounds
A lot of Alon’s current experimentation for ILL involves processed sounds and unusual sources. Real-world sounds often become part of the music itself: a bird call can be stretched and processed until it resembles a long, unsettling choral cry, while metallic impacts or other physical sounds can be transformed into rhythms and textures. One work-in-progress track even incorporates the sound of cracking whips as part of its musical texture.
A soundtrack still taking shape
The work on ILL’s music is ongoing, with different pieces continuing to evolve along the way. “Whalesong” was the first track we’ve chosen to share, but it’s only one side of ILL’s sound. There are still very different things waiting to be heard.