How does background music and sound effects affect reader immersion in choice-based interactive fiction—helpful or distracting?

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Hi — new here. I am a composer and sound artist. I’ve worked on sound and music for games (including AAA) and I’ve been making games since the ZX Spectrum/Commodore 64 days. I’m interested in how sound and music affect immersion in choice-based IF from the reader’s perspective. I want to bring to life a project I started as a student (I created a professional GDD and an Inform prototype). Now I’m porting it to Ink and thinking about audio in choice-based IF.

In videogames, audio is often integral to mood and focus; in text-first IF the effect may be different. Do readers find background music or SFX helpful to immersion, or distracting from focused reading? Which approaches (volume, sparse cues vs continuous beds, adaptive audio tied to choices, diegetic vs non-diegetic scoring, voice vs text) have you found effective or harmful? My personal view is that sound and music while reading tend to be distracting — as a musician and sound artist I notice audio elements immediately — but I’m curious what other readers think. Any experiences, preferences, or concrete examples would be really useful — especially if you’ve tested variations with players or have analytics/feedback to share.

Thanks — looking forward to hearing what people think.

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I know you’re asking specifically about choice-based, but I think what I am about to share, though I play exclusively parser-based when I IF, may still be relevant.

Music is, to me, usually distracting, because it comes to the foreground too much. Sound effects are supposed to come to the foreground and grab your attention - footsteps, a chiming alarm bell, thunder. They are usually short, do their business, and leave. Whereas music is usually there all the time.

And this happens even in films; if a film uses a song I know and like, my mind instantly turns off from the film and focuses on the song. If the movie uses opera, pff, game over. I won’t be able to focus on the scene until I can identify what’s being song, and possibly even by whom.

I have found, however, that in IF, music can really, really enhance the atmosphere when it sticks to background level. When it sticks to ambience. An example of a game which I found pretty, er, lacking, but which had a soundtrack which almost made up for the sparse descriptions because it was, by itself, more than sufficiently atmospheric, is A Martian Odyssey.

According to Cain (excellent game) is another one I played recently, which is also a parser game, and which also has excellent music, which draws me into the time period (such as it is; the action in the game arguably takes place a bit outside of time) and never comes to the foreground to distract me.

I love playing IF which makes good use of music; but it’s not easy. And to me, a very big part of “good use” means: a) it doesn’t distract, and b) it enhances.

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There has definitely been good uses of sound/music in IF games, but we don’t seee a lot of it overall. The skillset for making the content is uncommon----I presume—and a good implementation (timing, matching game events, etc.) would be a challenge above and beyond that. Here are some examples I can think of:

Six by Wade Clarke
Leadlight by Wade Clarke (paid)
A Matter of Heist Urgency by FLACrabbit
A Smörgåsbord of Pain by FLACrabbit

You can find reviews of those games at the links.

There is additionally a “music” tag at IFDB, but I haven’t reviewed it.
Search for Games

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I’ve found that properly used music and sound effects can help with immersion. When I say properly used I mean appropriate to the scene, not too loud, ideally something new and not a well known song (well known songs can be distracting).

For instance if you have a scene set during a thunderstorm and you play some mellow music and rain sound effects, I’m more likely than less to be immersed and sucked into the story.

Having said that I don’t find them necessary and can enjoy an IF story perfectly fine without them.

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Thanks for the examples. I like the soundtrack of this game, thought I’m not sure it works for the story. But this is exactly what I’m trying to figure out, regardless of music choices, aesthetics. For me, though, even ambient music can be distracting when I’m trying to read, which is making me realize this might just be my own preference.

Spot on. My approach is to use audio purely as a bridge. There will be brief cues during transitions to set up the next scene, but absolute silence while the player reads. Fading audio around choice points can create a natural rhythm. It requires careful planning to ensure every sound serves the narrative rather than just filling space.

Same here. I think music and sound effects can bias our imagination. When a sound dictates the mood too heavily, it leaves less room for the reader to interpret the text and build the scene in their own mind.

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In Martian Odyssey, what struck me was that there was hardly any text to interpret. And so, the role of atmosphere fell exclusively to the music. :slight_smile: It was like the way Moonmist had its room descriptions in the feelies; in Odyssey, the atmosphere that would have normally been found in the text was, instead, in the music.

…having said that, i don’t think it’s a good game.

But I never quite forgot this interesting division of labour.

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If I’m playing a text adventure, I expect sound to not be significant, and I’ll frequently have it muted anyway if there is any, if I’m playing on a laptop in a space where stray noise isn’t kosher.

A nice soundtrack – the one from Telarium’s Dragonworld back in the day comes to mind – can be a nice addition, and I’m mulling having an opening splash screen theme for the series that I’m working on. However, it’s important to not have the sound be important for the gameplay, or you make the game inaccessible to deaf/hard-of-hearing users, and to folks who can’t play with sound on.

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I’m reminded of a very recent question about visuals in IF. All your concerns are valid and the answer to each question, I feel, is really the level of understanding and expertise in the execution of sound and music.

If I were to compose my own music for IF and make that an honest effort (I’m not practiced beyond terrible cassette tape recordings and guitar tabs), I would try out a layered approach and reduce the layers as the page remains, but never remove the music entirely. Otherwise, it would feel like the music is a known distraction and the music fading out entirely is an apology of sorts.

Perhaps some of the games suggested employ this technique, but I’d start a new scene with a fully layered bar, then fade out the layers until the basic chord progression is all that remains and allow that to continue. I think it might be pretty effective for IF… or start to feel formulaic and tired. Who knows?! :wink:

I’m not sure what your favourite instrument lineups are, but orchestral is diverse and timeless. It’s why I can watch a Star Trek TNG episode today and not experience any cringe… unlike most 80s content that is marred by terrible synthesizer sounds.

Even two chords alternating can provide emotion and tone.

I am talking out of my ass though because I’ve never put any of this into practice. It’s just how I would approach the problem. Also, self-imposed limitations are a huge catalyst for creativity. Make the music remain, without being annoying – that’s your limitation. The easy solution is to fade it out entirely. That sounds like a cop-out.

My favourite soundtracks to videogames are Endless Ocean and Mass Effect… and Myth.

  1. stable, safe ↩︎

  2. movement, openness ↩︎

  3. tension, anticipation ↩︎

  4. bittersweet, nostalgic ↩︎

  5. open, hopeful ↩︎

  6. unstable, anxious ↩︎

  7. wonder, uplifting ↩︎

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I love using music and sound in my games, but I understand some people hate it. Luckily BGM is rarely specifically important to the story so it’s easily muted or turned down.

I agree that sound effects can be overdone like you’re in a Foley studio making a cartoon, but sounds and music can create a vibe. Sounds are good especially if they relate to tactile actions - closing a door, turning a key, pushing a button, completing a chapter. Interface also - a click when a choice is made can be very satisfying, or a loot-jingle can create satisfying associations.

I’ve been experimenting in Storyfall which is able to generate narration for almost any text in the game and wondering if there’s a way to make a ‘radio play’ sort of IF. The narration has its own controls to change volume or shut it off completely in the engine.

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Personally, I find music quite distracting in part because it sounds intentionally authored, with structure and patterns, like something with a meaning that I’m supposed to pay attention to. I find diagetic ambient background noise (rain, wind, crickets chirping, traffic, etc.) much less distracting, because it’s easy to interpret the “meaning” of and then mostly ignore, and because I have a lifetime of practice at ignoring ambient background noise.

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I’m thinking of separation as a design principle.
One structural decision I’ve been thinking about is how to handle sound and image alongside text. My idea is to keep them separate rather than simultaneous.

The approach I’m experimenting with uses ink’s divert system to create dedicated media knots between text passages:

*[Continue] → media_land
=== media_land ===// sounds and images: wind across open steppe, etc.
*[Continue] → next_passage

The reader finishes a passage, chooses to proceed, experiences the sound and image moment on its own, then moves forward. The media knots are named destinations in the ink architecture, which keeps the main story flow clean and gives each atmospheric moment room to breathe.

The choice label is something I’m still thinking about. [Continue] is neutral, but since the whole story is built around my character’s sensory relationship to the land — she reads wind, stone, bird calls as information — there might be an argument for labels that stay in her voice. [Listen] before a wind soundscape. [Watch him] before a scene with her bird. The choice text is part of the experience too.

The question I haven’t fully resolved is the distinction between atmospheric media moments and narrative ones, e.g: a soundscape that sets mood at the beginning of the story. But what about a sound that carries information the player needs? Then sound becomes intention. Something that foreshadows what’s coming, or some information that could help a later choice? In that case, does [Continue] still work, or does it feel too much like a dismiss button?

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I’ve previously experimented with background music (actually more of an atmospheric soundscape than music) in a parser game and it was well received. The most important thing is to ensure it’s optional, as not everyone will want to hear it. Some players might be also using screen readers, so sound effects might interfere with their ability to hear the text.

I currently have two Ink projects underway, built using @techniX’s game engine Atrament. You might like to look into it. It offers a #PLAY_SOUND and #STOP_SOUND tag for sounds that are played once, and #PLAY_MUSIC and #STOP_MUSIC tags for looping music tracks.

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I find background music and sound effects in IF - of whatever form of IF - incredibly distracting as I read. So much so that I will usually turn the sound off, or even mute my device.

There have been a few games I’ve played - sorry can’t remember the specific examples - where the sound effects were part of the puzzle. I didn’t get on well with those.

Sound effects can also be problematic for people with hearing impairments. And for me they’re bad for cognitive impairments when reading.

So yup, not a fan, but I appreciate views differ.

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