Indie Games Plus spoke with the developers of Keylocker to talk about designing music for a game where songs are a form of rebellion.
Keylocker is a game of rebellion in a future where music is illegal. Can you tell us what inspired this concept?
Nana Moon, Director: The first inspiration came from two places (or maybe I should say two books)! The first one would be Wandering Earth by Cixin Liu, one of my favorite sci-fi authors of all time, and Blindness by Saramago! Both books are incredibly different, but they both worked their way into my brain as vital inspiration for Keylocker.
From Wandering Earth, I was inspired and intrigued by the alien lifeform that the character (who is a climber) meets in one of the tales. That character exposes the whole history of their people in a short format throughout the book saying how his civilization came from the core and now they’re colonizing other planets. I wanted to work out a worldbuilding about a civilization that came from the core of the planet excavating outwards. That sounded like the wildest concept to me, but it ended up working for Keylocker. You get the Satellites excavating from the core of Saturn, building a tube around themselves and shooting upwards trying to reach the atmosphere. A herculean task!
From Blindness, I took the concept of music missing from the world. Blindness is a book about a world without vision, and I thought that concept of lack was really enticing for me and I wanted to explore it, but through something that is often seen as “useless,” like some of the arts, or music in this case! It is seen societally as useless, but it is indeed vital for our living and enjoyment of living.
Two other books that inspired me for the visuals of the world were Neuromancer and Synners – both really good cyberpunk books!
How did this illegality in the music affect how you implemented sound effects and songs into the game? How did this theme affect the game’s total design?
Moon: This game was the first game we actually hired someone to do sound effects for us; we wanted the sounds to be really professional! We know how important sound is for games, and it was especially important for this game where we thought of using silence as a narrative tool as well, so the SFX had to be perfect!
For that, we hired Gustavo Coutinho who has a great passion for this subject and did the most incredible work for the game, with my favorite part being the prologue that is completely silent until you find Rocket and “unlock music.” This is a very iconic moment in the game since, up to that point, the whole game is “silent,” or, I guess, as silent as it can be with the chunky but oppressive sound effects of chains coming from the prison that B0B0, the main character, is trying to flee.
Elektrobear, Composer: There was a conscious choice early on to try to highlight this theme by taking away music entirely from the first area of the game until you meet Rocket, the Jukebot, and he brings music back into your world (literally). It might’ve turned players off the game since the atmosphere early on can be pretty oppressive, but we think it’s worth it for the moment you get to have with Rocket’s introduction.
What kind of music felt right for Keylocker? What thoughts went into making a soundtrack for a game where music is against the law?
Elektrobear: Figuring out what the music is going to sound like is always a bit of a process for me, personally. It starts with Nana sending me reference music with the sort of tone or feeling she wants to reach, which in this case was a whole lot of soviet post-punk and goth punk. We tried to go for a more normal Cyberpunk approach as well, but it wasn’t really working out to start with.
Eventually, through some trial and error (plus a whole lot of emulations of Synths that defined the early era of electronic music and those classic ‘80s feeling sounds), I started navigating towards a sound that pulled together inspirations from punk, funk, disco, city pop, cyberpunk, Arabic elements, classical elements, synth-pop, and alt-rock.
In essence, there are four varieties of musical tracks in Keylocker. There are the band’s songs, which mix synth-pop vibes with that sort of early ‘00s alt-rock feeling, and Psamathes pulling it all together with her heavenly vocals. There are the area songs which try to take in the feeling of the area to express and enhance it, passing over the widest area of musicality in the process. There are the battle songs, which are usually my take on the Cyberpunk music style – dark driving synths and drums – and finally, there are the boss fight songs which are strongly influenced by classical music to try and differentiate the Satellites from the rest of the world as classical was historically the music of the upper classes.
Moon: Since the beginning, we always knew we wanted to work with a singer for this game, but we didn’t quite know how yet. Elektrobear had never worked with a singer up to that point, and I had to suddenly take on the work of writing lyrics in the game’s language (all to make everything authentic to the world), create that language and learn how to make lyrics that sound good, as well as helping Psamathes and Elektrobear to acclimatize with the vision I had that was still a bit cloudy at that point. I can say that our last song together is definitely much better than the first, but I love all of them and I trust my life in the hands of these two if I must when it comes to putting their all into bringing a fantastic soundtrack together.
Psamathes, our singer, actually has a physical condition that causes her a lot of pain, and she recorded the last song for us in extreme pain before going out for her surgery that wouldn’t allow her to record for a while when we had some tight deadlines. Although not advisable, I can really feel the passion that they have for music and for creating such incredible songs when they tell me these stories (much later after doing the songs so I can’t stop them from doing outlandish things! [laughs]).
How did you want to work music/rhythm into the combat of the game? What drew you to bring elements of rhythm games into the battles? What do you feel this added to the combat?
Moon: Some people come to our game expecting Crypt of the Necrodancer, but our game isn’t like that! Our game is more inspired by the Mario RPG games with their timed hits on turn-based combat. The rhythm is added with some of the timed hits that are attached to the BPM of the songs. We also have a Guitar Hero-like section that showcases the band’s music (with the powerful vocals by Psamathes).
Anglerman, Animator and Game Designer: For combat, the main idea was to take away the RNG accuracy of RPGs and turn it into a timing challenge that required players to pay some more attention. I believe this helps bring the players closer to the actual things happening rather than being in the backseat. Keylocker is very deterministic, with few RNG elements in its entirety – all of which belong to the whims of the Whale of Time in the setting.
Likewise, can you tell us a bit about the Electricity system and its Offensive/defensive properties? What appealed to you about adding this further technical layer onto the combat?
Anglerman: Me and Nana went over plenty of ways to make the classic MP bar more than just spell currency. The goal here was to give the players a lot of control of the most meaningful status effects found in JRPGs: damage and defense buffs (charging EP into LATKs/LDEFs), as well as having a constant ‘mana shield’ against ‘spells’ (EP reducing electric damage taken).
In-universe, electricity takes many shapes and forms, but it’s always about powering everyone up, as Doppelgangers (B0B0 and Dealer) are just like Robots (Rocket) in more ways than they themselves realize. Therefore, they live off electricity – they feed on it and use it to function on a daily basis. All game systems should be subject to the world setting and lore and all stories must respect the gameplay. That’s what we believe in.
Moon: As Anglerman said, we always connect story to gameplay, and as that is our motto, for this game we decided that to make the main character really be this beacon of hope in a society without music. She should have something nobody has any more: a powerful voice. Which serves as an allegory to fighting oppression, doing so with her own voice, literally!
Characters also have many possible options for combat abilities. What thoughts go into designing character abilities so players can be creative with how the character works? How do you balance them so that many different character builds are possible?
Anglerman: Keylocker‘s TUBE world is very much defined by social hierarchy and class hierarchy. Every single character in the game is tied to the definitions of one of the 10 possible classes – even the Satellites. This means that each class is responsible for different things in society such as ‘juggernaut’ NPCs handling trash compacting and oil extraction, ‘hackers’ handling scientific research, ‘attorneys’ handling all banking endeavors, and so on.
Taking that into account, all class abilities have been made to support both a specific gameplay style (tied to the 4 base actions) and to support the in-universe role they’d have. The rest was trial and error and a lot of testing! We find it more engaging to be able to customize as many aspects of characters as possible within the framework of the world rules (which in this case means the 4 base actions).
Like much of your past work, Keylocker is filled with hand-crafted fights meant to challenge the player. How do you create challenging fights without overwhelming your average player? What ideas are going into creating a good fight in Keylocker?
Moon: I think our average player is definitely overwhelmed! We had loads of people contacting us about their frustrations with the game. However, those that stick to the game ultimately understand one thing: with many struggles come many and bigger rewards be they through a new piece of equipment or a new piece of lore to keep them hooked. The “I must see what comes next” ends up being the catalyst for their character arc from frustration to pure bliss! There’s also the big factor that B0B0 is someone from the lowest caste in this society. If she doesn’t struggle with fighting the authoritative figures, then it doesn’t make sense story-wise, and combat and story must be connected at all times!
Anglerman: A lot has to do with the game’s philosophy of Dualities. Two attacks, two defenses, same rule for enemies. You’re either in the offensive or in the defensive and the fun thing is to juggle that a lot during a fight.
We learned from our previous games that game elements should be more slowly introduced and fights should get wilder as time goes on rather than peak midway. Our encounters system was very much improved from our previous game to allow some drastic changes to enemies during their turns, such as changing their AI completely based on losing an ally or forcing them to cast specific spells based on their current LP/EP, moving actors around to create new starting points, dynamic reinforcements that change depending on which enemy was killed first, ground effects added to specific tiles, and variable enemy base stats across the fight. All is possible, but only to the characters who possess power to alter the battlefield in major ways, which is limited to high-hierarchical figures in-world.
In the end it’s a juggle between “this is cool” + “this is possible” + “this will make players mad.”
What thoughts went into the visual style of the world of Keylocker? How did you shape this oppressive world and the rebellious forces looking to take it back?
Moon: I lived in Brazil my whole life and only recently moved to England, and one notorious change of pace for me is how much calmer things are here. I lived in a big capital before. I was born in Rio de Janeiro and it’s chaotic there, it’s hot, everyone is nice to you because it’s the only way to go through the chaos, there’s so many people around, it’s well lived, and bright. It’s the absolute opposite of the small countryside cottage English life I live now.
The Scrapyard Zone is super inspired by my home town, not because it has trash everywhere, but because you kinda know everyone and when you don’t, they still are nice to you. That aesthetic of makeshift homes are inspired by favela housing where people build their own homes around the edges of dangerous mountains. I always found that to be a beautiful state of being human, specially as those on the periphery, living on the literal edge of a self-contained world. Favelas are like little small self-contained cities – they have almost everything they might need, and they have a really strong sense of community. That’s what I wanted to express with the people of the Scrapyard Zone, the first area you visit in Keylocker.
And B0b0 carries that home with her, taking her friends along for the ride. I find it really interesting how you can observe these characters evolve and express their character arcs as they are exposed more and more to the corruption of this world. The Satellites had to look and be the exact opposite of that. There’s no sense of union between them; there’s only a sense of frigid conflict. They aren’t friends among themselves and even their relationships are considered taboo and unacceptable. Their visuals are somewhat inspired by the dystopian world staple of those that represent oppression having outrageous, socially unacceptable fashion. A bit similar to the world we live in ourselves. Look at the Met Gala. It brings a bit of that sense of not looking at who they are but instead looking at the skin that covers their identity, their fashion being a shadow that draws their crude selves into darkness.
Likewise, what ideas went into the character design? How did you find the striking look of your characters, and how did the illegal music theme help shape them?
Moon: The characters were definitely inspired by a lot of visual media from the past that I love. To mention some, I can say Evangelion, Video Girl Ai, Akira, and Ghost in the Shell, definitely. I guess Akira is just pivotal as inspiration for any modern Cyberpunk creation and Telesto is a character that could be featured in EVA (if I do say so myself). Although, the inspirations are so many that it then becomes something of its own kind.
I also really love the aesthetics of PC Engine pixel art and wanted to grab from that for the portraits and even world pixel art. Each Satellite concept art respected specific character rules – they needed to have some kind of encircling ring around them to represent their overbearing power as Saturnian’s rings. B0b0 and the characters from the Scrapyard Zone are more off the edge, living in a Zone that is heavily observed but at the same time abandoned, so they have more practical and unique attire from each other, a thing of peripheral culture where people will have their own style of dressing that is very unique to each individual.
Characters from Soundwave City were supposed to be incredibly oppressed – you barely talk to them because they’re silenced, so that informs how they look a bit more same-y between each other. Members of the Church use a specific attire depending on their rank, and it’s all related to their strange cult. The Clericopters have cone heads with smiles because they receive a head transplant upon being accept as members of the clergy on its first rank, but then later on you’ll discover the bloody history of this gruesome religion and why they look the way they do.
All of this is connected to the world and in some way connected to the roots of Cyberpunk as a genre. I basically wanted to make the designs more based on the concept behind what is cyberpunk, instead of just making it based on things that look cyberpunk enough. That concept of it being punk, that Vivienne Westwood and the Sex Pistols British culture, that rebellion against the establishment – it’s all a nod to that.
What do you hope players take away from your game and its story?
Moon: I hope that at the point of finishing this game, at least one person in the world has the correct tools to start an anti-capitalist revolution of their own that hopefully can save us all from this senseless madness we live in.
Elektrobear: The game industry needs more games like Keylocker, and gamers deserve more games like it too. The world is far too stagnant and uninteresting for something like this game to be cast aside for another rehash or remaster of last decade’s creative ideas. We should be celebrating and upholding the now and the future of games and moving forward together. Making new and interesting things that challenge the norm isn’t always a smooth road, but it’s the necessary lifeblood of our creative industry and I truly hope people can see this game for what it is and come to celebrate it. More games should dare to be interesting.
Keylocker is available now on the Nintendo eShop, PlayStation Store, Microsoft Store, and Steam.
About The Author
