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Soundtrack: Kine — engineering a jazz you cannot play wrong
For Kine, where three instrument-robots roll through a theatrical city dreaming of making it as a band, Chel Wong wrote show-tune-flavored jazz. But it is not music that follows a score. Every roll the player makes on the board sounds a note, and so that this improvisation can never go wrong, a safety net is stretched underneath - a key, a constant bassline, banks of recorded sound. Verifying the design of this 'jazz you cannot play wrong' against the composer's own Q&A and developer interviews, black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take it apart.
Soundtrack: Grim Fandango Remastered — the first big-band beat in the land of the dead
Peter McConnell's score paints the dead's four-year journey in film-noir big-band jazz, Mexican folk music, and orchestra. How does iMUSE, its dynamic music system, mesh with the time of an adventure where you get stuck and return to the same room? I write it in my own words, as a piece about design you can carry home.
Soundtrack: Ghost Trick — the swing of possession, rewinding the four minutes before death
A gunshot, and the hero is already dead. As a ghost he possesses objects, chains the single action each one can perform, and re-edits the four minutes before someone's death — and the music for Shu Takumi's Ghost Trick was written by Masakazu Sugimori, composer of the very first Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. A swing a touch faster than a walk, and short loops that never grate no matter how many times you rewind. The 2023 HD remaster re-recorded them under Takumi's supervision. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take it apart through a lens a composer can carry home.
Soundtrack: Genesis Noir — a universe built from improvisation, sounding when you touch it
In the black-and-white adventure Genesis Noir, a watch salesman named No Man tries to save his lover from the Big Bang — a gunshot fired by a jealous god. There is no dialogue; the story runs almost entirely on sound. Skillbard's Tom Carrell and Vincent Oliver spent four years scoring the cosmos by 'bolting live jazz improvisations together like puzzle pieces.' Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take apart why a touch-and-try puzzle and an improvised score fit each other so well.
Soundtrack: Murder by Numbers — the sound of filling one cell at a time in a neon-lit L.A. detective show
Los Angeles, 1996: fired TV actress Honor and a robot named SCOUT she fished out of a trash heap chase murderers while solving nonogram (Picross) puzzles — and the music for Mediatonic's Murder by Numbers was written by Masakazu Sugimori, composer of the very first Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. Jazzy lounge cues, plus five loops written specifically for puzzle-solving. Including the Honor's Theme that disguises itself as a TV show's theme song, I, Doremi, take it apart, black coffee in hand, through a lens a composer can carry home.
Soundtrack: Gunpoint — silence by default, and the circuitry sings only while you plan
The three composers Tom Francis picked through an open call — Ryan Ike, John Robert Matz, and Francisco Cerda — gave Gunpoint a sound drifting between jazz noir and electronics. Like the stealth puzzle it scores, it stays silent most of the time. But the instant you enter Crosslink mode to rewire the circuitry, the same cue slides into an electronic variation. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take apart this design that switches thought and action through sound, in a form you can carry back to your own writing.
Soundtrack: The Sexy Brutale — a masquerade that tells time by ear
The music Matt Bonham and Tim Cotterell wrote for The Sexy Brutale is electro-swing that conjures a 1920s masquerade — but underneath, it is the most precise clock in the mansion. It differs from wing to wing, tightens toward each scheduled murder, and resets with the loop at midnight. How a time-loop mystery and its music mesh, and how to steal the 'let the sound measure the hour' idea for your own writing. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take it apart.
Soundtrack: Contrast — live jazz lit inside a city solved by shadows
Move a light, reshape the shadow on the wall, and slip into it as a 2D silhouette — Contrast's puzzles are quiet and ask you to observe. Yet this 1920s-styled city glows with live jazz: songs the cabaret singer Kat actually performs inside the story. Smoky ballads written by Nicolas Marquis and sung by Laura Ellis. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take apart a design where the music becomes a character.
Soundtrack: Human Resource Machine — the quiet office, built from a single synth
The music Kyle Gabler wrote for Human Resource Machine is made almost entirely from a single free soft synth, Synth1. Languid office jazz, tiny loops that turn over in a dozen seconds in-game, the same themes stretched out on the album — I, Doremi, black coffee in hand, take apart a design born of constraint through a lens you can carry back to your own composing.
Soundtrack: The Pedestrian — a jazzy gait walking a city of signs
The music Logan Hayes wrote for The Pedestrian is a single garment stitched from jazz, ambient and Eastern-European melody over a backbone of piano and orchestra. Behind the puzzle of rearranging signage panels to connect doorways, it keeps reshaping without ever cutting out, driven by FMOD. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take apart this music as a companion that never falls silent, through a lens you can carry back to your own writing.
Soundtrack: Superliminal — The most suspicious sound is the one that soothes you
You wake in the waiting room of a dream-therapy program. What Matt Christensen wrote for Superliminal is lounge jazz that could be playing in a hotel lobby, carried by pianist John Reeves' hands. The comfort is both the weapon and the biggest misdirection — just like the puzzles where perspective changes an object's size. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take apart how this no-fail first-person puzzle meshes with music that never rushes you, through a lens you can carry back to your own composing.
