About Firmament
Firmament is a puzzle-adventure game created by Cyan Worlds, the legendary indie game studio behind the best-selling games Myst and Riven. Featuring a unique steampunk aesthetic, deep storytelling and world-building, Firmament is the story of a seemingly abandoned world which the player is invited to explore and unlock the mysteries of.
Firmament is a fantastic visual and auditory feast, with thrilling new sights and sounds around every corner. At the same time, the world of Firmament feels completely plausible; as though it were constructed with a bigger purpose in mind…
The Music and Sound Design
Since the days of Myst and Riven, Cyan Worlds has thought of a game’s sound design and music as an equal partner to the visual elements of our games. In the case of Firmament the call was to use sound design and music to evoke a feeling of unsettled emptiness and mystery that the player would be able to feel, and compel the player to explore deeper into the story.
Capturing the essence of Firmament in musical form was a wonderful experience for me. It gave me the chance to explore sonic territory that I’ve only been able to toy with in the past. The music is what I call “industrial ambient”, filled with grimy, distorted drones, angular and warbling melodies, and dense, dissonant textures. I wanted to reflect the cobbled together technology of the game, the vast and beautiful landscapes, and the lonely, melancholy feeling you get as you explore each Realm.
Maclaine Diemer, Composer
The goal for both the sound design and the music in Firmament was less to act like a traditional score, telegraphing what big emotion the player should be feeling in any given moment, and more to use dissidence and ambient sound to slowly inject a vague sense of unease- of something having gone wrong in this amazing world that the player finds oddly empty of inhabitants.
Rather than use the sound design and score in a strictly traditional manner, we crafted Firmament in such a way that we were able to use sound to elicit complex feelings for the player, many of which they weren’t even aware of consciously, but instead felt viscerally in the liminal space we created within the game world.
Andrew Sales, Sound Design
Firmament features sound design by Andrew Sales, and an entirely original soundtrack, crafted by composer Maclaine Diemer, a nominee for the inaugural WSA Game Music Award at the 2023 World Soundtrack Awards, and mixed by Mastering Engineer Nathan Moody.
https://maclainediemer.com/
https://maclainediemer.bandcamp.com/album/firmament-original-soundtrack