Soundtrack: Rusty Lake: Roots — The same melody, a different life in every instrument

Introduction — Every time the family tree grows, another instrument plays

Rusty Lake: Roots (2016) is a puzzle game that follows one family through its generations. As the review says, the growing family tree is its backbone.

The music is by Victor Butzelaar. According to the official Rusty Lake blog, the soundtracks from Hotel onward were commissioned from him by Rusty Lake.

The Bandcamp album has 16 tracks and came out on October 22, 2016. The titles alone show the range: piano, vibraphone, marimba, strings, trombone, bassoon, harp, glockenspiel.

Roughly speaking, it is an album where one instrument takes the lead again and again. The tempo, by my ear, is mostly slow.

Rusty Lake: Roots screenshot (from the Steam store page)

Link to the play experience — Each level gets a theme song, plus variations

The official Rusty Lake blog describes the Roots music this way: "Each level has its own theme song and variations."

According to Wikipedia, Roots follows three generations of a family across 33 short vignettes. So the structure gives each short scene its own piece of music.

This is the interesting part. The puzzles are short, and the view is a single room. So the music takes on the job of giving each scene its own face.

I could not confirm which piece plays in which scene. From here on, this is my reading from the track titles and the instrumentation.

A piano-only piece, a vibraphone theme, a marimba theme. They sound like the same melodic skeleton, only with the instrument swapped. That is close to the story itself: the same blood, a different life.

A design to take home — Keep the melody, change the instrument's face

First, the part you can take into your own music. In a game of short scenes, you do not have to write a new piece from zero every time.

Share the melodic skeleton and swap the instrument. The listener recalls "that is the family's tune," and also feels "this time it is someone else."

What I care about is how the loop ends. Short scenes mean quick retries. The same piece will play many times, so you pick timbres that do not tire the ear.

Sounds with a clear decay, like piano or marimba, make the loop seam less noticeable. (That is my own rule of thumb, not a statement from the creators.)

Analogy with puzzles — A scene solved in minutes, a piece that lasts minutes

The scenes in this game are short. The pace of solving is a breath or two of trial and error.

Some games suit silence during long thinking. Roots is the opposite: every move gets a push from the sound. Drag, fit, on to the next scene.

The length of the pieces fits that rhythm. A piece that closes in a few minutes breathes at the same pace as the scene.

As the family tree grows, you hear more pieces. The number of pieces becomes a map of the time you have played.

Rusty Lake: Roots screenshot (from the Steam store page)

Tracks to hear

The one official source I could confirm is a track on the auto-generated channel "Victor Butzelaar - Topic."

"Rusty Lake Family Tune." It closes the album and is known as the family's tune.

You can stream the whole album on the composer's Bandcamp. Start with the solo piano pieces; the range of instrumentation is easiest to hear there.

Closing — What I would steal

What I would steal is "keep the skeleton, swap the instrument." It is easy to try in any piece made of short scenes.

First, write an eight-bar melody on piano. Then hand the same melody to marimba and vibraphone.

Listen for whether the new timbre alone makes it feel like someone else's piece. If not, the skeleton of the melody is still too heavy.

When you relisten, look for the moment the same melody returns with a different instrument. For a related work, try Rusty Lake Hotel, where the same composer's sound plays in a narrower room.

Sources

・Steam: Rusty Lake: Roots

・Victor Butzelaar Bandcamp: Rusty Lake Roots Soundtrack

・Rusty Lake Blog: Soundtrack of Rusty Lake: Roots

・Wikipedia: Cube Escape (structure of Roots)

・YouTube: Rusty Lake Family Tune (Victor Butzelaar - Topic)