Fight the Dragon is a new game by 3 Sprockets that is currently available on Steam Early Access. We've adopted a layered adaptive music structure that is triggered by the number of enemies our fearless heroes encounter. This is the preliminary overview of the music.
Three adaptive layers. The bottom layer plays in exploration mode, no enemies. Middle-layer plays when our fearless heroes encounters 2 or fewer enemies, and the full, top layer when they encounter 3+ enemies. The music thus adjusts to the level of activity and molds to the gameplay. Here's a video example of the layers in action. Alpha footage:
Metric fun. The meters in the music, in each track, continually move away from, and back to, the traditional 2/4. A significant portion of the soundtrack is composed in 5/8 and 7/8. As the music is predominately rhythmic, with short thematic motives at the core of each track, the metric shifts keep the pace of the game chugging along.
And two more top-layer only examples which really demonstrates why I love writing music for video games -- so much room for cool rhythms, sounds and themes:
Symmetrical modes. While there are epic adventurous harmonic moments in the music, the tonality of the music isn't rooted in traditional structures. The symmetrical qualities of the modes at the music's core allow for incredible flexibility with adding/removing various musical elements, while also inherently maintaining an uncertain tone -- perfect for battles.
Here's another brief example of the adaptive music in action:
Here's another brief example of the adaptive music in action: