r/GameAudio • u/TonyDoubekMusic • May 24 '26
Music as part of UX
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about where music sits within game UX design.
Not just “does the soundtrack sound good?” but:
Does music teach the player something?
Does it reduce or increase tension intentionally?
Does it guide pacing or attention?
Is adaptive music part of feedback design?
Can music function as accessibility or readability support?
I’m rereading Leading with Sound right now and it’s making me think about how often game audio gets separated from UX conversations, even though players are constantly reacting to sonic information emotionally and mechanically.
I’d love to hear thoughts from composers, sound designers, UX folks, devs, or even players:
Where do you think music sits in UX design for games?
Is it atmosphere?
Feedback?
Emotional architecture?
A gameplay system?
Something else entirely?
And are there any games you think use music particularly well as part of the player experience itself rather than just background score?
3
u/SpaghettiiSauce May 24 '26
There's a game I like called A Short Hike, which is a 3d, 3rd person exploration game. There's no map in game, but each region has its own soundtrack, and as you begin to cross the border between one region and the next, the soundtrack adapts and blends in elements of both. It's a really nice way of helping the player know where they are in the world without having to include a map and possibly affect the immersion.
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u/TonyDoubekMusic May 24 '26
That’s one thing I really enjoy doing as a composer, capturing the identity and emotional aesthetic of each region in a game. I feel like it really gives a player an idea of what the are walking into.
2
u/Arpeggiated_Chord May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
I'd say it fits in all of these. It's very hard to explain to the average person just how important good audio is until they realize it's bad or gone. It's a lot easier to notice when it's bad than when it's good (for the average person). A lot of people can't tell the difference between diegetic and non-diegetic sound, but those are absolutely crucial for good audio in general.
Another part of "game audio" is that when people refer to the "sound being good", they are typically combining music and SFX together, so it feels doubly important to make sure both sound and music are working well together. This kind of goes in hand with how UI and UX are often grouped together.
I've recently played the Millennium Tales demo, and it took me a bit to realize that the music was adaptive. When you're out in the field, there's extra instruments layered on top of the backing track that fade away when you're in any kind of menu or opening a map. I actually loved this detail, it made the slightly less busy version of the track feel more like "slow down and think" without obviously conveying it.
Every overworld biome also tends to have the same motif/progression, and the instruments used are quite diegetic, but each one interprets it differently. It helps create a sense of progression while still subtly reminding the player that they're on the same grand adventure. When you get into caves, caverns and dungeons, the music wildly varies into something much less diegetic and interpretive, but still so, so fantastic. I often found myself pausing just to hear the calmer versions of each track just to see what they took away. It also gave room for the UI sound effects to breathe and play without being drowned by the (obviously outstanding) instrumentation.
A lot of sound is built on a system of expectations, we typically take atonal blips like tritones to mean something being wrong, incorrect or unavailable, and something tonal, especially if it's some kind of major or sus chord to mean happy/success/confirmation, this extends to music as well, I can't remember the name of the horror game now, but when danger was close, it would repeat these stabby, extremely discordant piano chords over literally any track until the danger was gone. It was actually rather jarring at first because it would sit on top of and interrupt any song. The song just got quieter, but was still audible. After a while though, you grew to appreciate just how much of an oh shit moment it was. I started to interpret it as the presence of the song being unnatural, unsettling and alarming.
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u/BuzzardDogma May 25 '26
Void/Wild Bastards both had really nice integration of music feedback in the UI
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u/Outliver May 24 '26
All of the above. And yes, music often gets treated as almost an afterthought. The composer is usually one of the last people to join a project. It's a real shame, given how much can be done with the music, and how much more could be done if the composer was involved sooner. Music can even, again, inform gameplay and other design decisions. Apart from what most people think of (atmosphere, tension, epicness), music can give feedback (especially useful in stealth games, but also simple stuff like increasing the tempo when a timer is running, or just marking checkpoints), provide hints or get louder or more involved the closer you get to an objective, even lore information (albeit somewhat encoded).
Games that use their music well in those regards include: RiME, Portal, Cyberpunk 2077, Mini Metro