Ever since I was little, I liked planes. I’m particularly fond of fighter jets because of their speed and maneuverability. For years now I have wanted to make a fighter jet game. Now of course such games exist plenty already, still it’s different if you do it yourself. In fact, 8 years ago I already attempted to write such a game which I then stopped because it turned out that making games was quite the effort.

Imagine, how excited I got when I was presented the opportunity to give it another shot. Of course I took it. So here we are not only did I make this, admittedly rudimentary, game but I also ensured it would have dope music.

Now I am a huge fan of the iconic Top Gun movies. They clearly set the standard for how movies involving fighter jets should be. I don’t know about you, but when I watch Top Gun I feel like I am flying that jet. That is exactly the kind of feeling I wanted a pilot of my game to get. So I made it my mission to dissect the movies to figure out how they achieved that, and how to recreate that with music.

The game runs on a Meta Quest. If you were to play it, it might play out something like this: Once you strap on that VR-Headset, you are placed inside the cockpit. When you engage the thrusters you accelerate and lift off the runway. As long as you are just cruising you get relaxing music. Then alien space ships spawn, you can hear from which direction thanks to spatial audio. So now you look around, locate the space ships and fly closer to them to take them out. As you get closer the game recognizes that you are about to be engaged in a battle and changes to music matching that situation. Those space ships do fire back as soon as you are in their weapons range and you hear something that sounds like metal on metal to the left of you, that was an enemy bullet that just hit your wing. Your plane is taking heavy damage. Now the music transitions to heavy battle, which means the music now is at its most intense. The bad ass fighter pilot that you are, you shot down all space ships and win. So now, you hear that satisfying victory theme.

The best part of all this? I didn’t make the symphony myself, we both did. You as a pilot just played a game, that nobody before you ever played exactly this way, and the music responded. There are states, so situations you are in, cruise, battle, heavy battle, victory and defeat. Each of them have several motives so little musical pieces that are cross faded together a little bit different each time you play. That is the essence of adaptive music and that is what makes it so cool.