Dev by Vibra Gaming
Audio by Ark One Studios
Music Composition & Sound Design by Juan Schweizer

Spin Jones does not seek to hide at any time the homage that it pays to a well-known film franchise. Both title and cover express this clearly. Therefore, there were strong expectations to replicate that with the music, its theme being instantly recognizable and iconic in every corner of the world!  

The first challenge was exactly that: replicating for Spin Jones the musical signature of this film franchise and doing it with a cinematic approach. The orchestra and the march were, of course, obvious choices. The next thing was analyzing the melodic patterns to build something that would sound similar but feel authentic and new. The melody that is heard at the beginning of the piece was created with that in mind, and further decorated with the typical scales of wind instruments and violins.    

At the same time, the game called for high energy and intense dynamics. That is why we decided to add two key changes in a few seconds. The result: a 1-minute loop that weaves three different keys as smoothly as possible so as not to distract the player during the game.

Now, the soundscape includes much more than the main music. We will not address each element in this article because it would become too extensive, but we do consider it interesting to ask ourselves the following: how do we work with musical sounds so that they don’t create dissonances with any of the three music keys? Most of the sounds are musical notes that, as such, do not sound pleasant on every key. If these notes create dissonances when paired with those of the background music, then the player would certainly notice this, which is clearly not what we want. The trick was to choose three very close tonalities that shared several notes, and then use these common notes to form scales, chords or sounds for the different events of the game.

A second and very important musical loop is the one that is heard during Free Spins, after the intermediate cinematic sequence, when the 3 eagles are obtained. In this case, the music had to be much higher in terms of energy and more dynamic, but also more dramatic, since there is a battle being fought between Spin Jones and the Sorcerer. In addition, the music needed a triumphant tone, given the many prizes the player tends to recieve during Free Spins. It is a slightly more complex combination of emotions, so we were forced to stretch the use of different sections of the orchestra, seeking to surprise the player with instruments that appear and disappear, continuous harmony changes, an indefinite tonality, dramatic moments and triumphant moments. On top of all this, we planted many sounds that will surprise the player during some of the game events, even a small musical loop that gives the feeling of an indefinite crescendo. This can be heard during Respins, when Spin Jones is hypnotized by the skull.  

All of these elements climax when the player hits a jackpot and one of the various celebratory, fanfare-style cues is played, depending on how big the prize is and how it was obtained.

Although these are just some of the sound and musical assets included in Spin Jones, this is how we achieved an extremely dynamic atmosphere without saturating the player with repetitive cues or the music energy waning after a few bars. All of this, while heavily referencing the music of the franchise that inspired the game and all its audiovisual elements, achieving a balance that gives consistency to the entire soundscape, even in the face of the many sudden scene changes.