We truly put a lot of effort and time into it. Music is one of the pillars of The Tsar's Secret since Tenebris focuses on the sounds for creating the visual design.
In The Tsar's Secret, you are an occultist mage that can use two spells: Tenebris & Silentium. The idea is that by using Tenebris, you kind of 'erase' light from the world, so your enemies will be blind, but you will also. On the other side, Silentium will switch off sounds from reality, so you and your enemies won't be able to hear clearly.
As you might notice when playing, Silentium does not wholly mute the game. You can still hear the music and SFX, but as if you were hearing it from inside a soundproof bubble. We made this decision because making a whole mode without any music is quite challenging. At first, we tried it but soon discarded the idea. Playing without music wasn't as engaging as we wanted it to be.
So, yes, music is one of the pilars of this game. We want the experience of The Tsar's Secret to be as immersive as posible. Hearing distant noises such as a fountaing, footsteps behind the walls, or the tictac of the clock help to transform the game into a truthful experience.
Creating the music
We used real imperialist russian music as the base for the theme, but adding dark and fantasy elements on top of it. In the beginning, the firsts versions of the music were more cheerful, like the main aesthetic references. But for a stealth game it felt odd.
The challenge in creating these music pieces was to keep the essence, mantaining an aesthetic coherence. But also to make it fit the genre and the situation. We needed the music to mantain the player in a tension mode during the whole level.
One of the pieces that we cherised is the music box's song. Did you noticed it? I think it's the kind of element that usally goes unnoticed!
Let us know what you think about the music and which one is your favourite song from the game.
Pst, pst!
You can discover secret passages just in Tenebris mode!
