Servant of the Lake: Devlog 3 – The Sounds of Servant of the Lake 🎶

We are back with a new music devlog! Servant of the Lake is our most ambitious project to date in many ways, but especially in terms of music collaborations and SFX design. With less than 2 weeks before release, we would love to offer a sneak peek into the processes of creating both the soundtrack and sound design, including all the interesting collabs we’ve had on this project. We hope you’ll enjoy the symphony!

Servant of the Lake allowed us to return to the Vanderboom Estate, which had Victor Butzelaar especially excited to work on the soundtrack. Revisiting the house and its characters reminded him of how fun it was for him to work on Rusty Lake: Roots and its iconic soundtrack. But he also knew it wouldn’t be easy to live up to those beautiful compositions, which all had such a profound impact on so many fans. From early on in the project, Victor Butzelaar composed and recorded the main theme which we all agreed fit perfectly with the atmosphere of the game – you’ve probably already heard it in our Servant of the Lake Demo and our existing trailer so you can already let us know if you agree with us that it’s a great main theme on which to build the rest of the musical arrangements for the full game. From there on, we brainstormed a lot around all the different rooms and in-game locations we needed music for, and we started to create them one by one in a way that they would all complement the main theme.

As the content of the game was growing, we also saw more opportunities for interesting musical collaborations, for different reasons:

Lavinia Meijer – Harp

It was around 8 years ago that we had the very fortunate pleasure of meeting Lavinia Meijer, one of the most acclaimed harpists in the world. She attended a small, intimate session near our office, and, during this event, we got to chat about our work with Rusty Lake and hear more about her incredible career, which led to all of us agreeing that it would be very cool to be able to collaborate in the future on one of our Rusty Lake projects. Years later, we had another fateful meeting, but this time it was truly the perfect timing to have concrete plans for a collaboration on none other than Servant of the Lake. The harp, as a beautiful instrument, turned out to fit perfectly in Servant of the Lake, especially for our newly introduced character, Alexandra Vanderboom. Being present in the studio and getting to witness Lavinia playing her magical custom-made harp was like having a private concert, a truly unforgettable experience. We cannot wait for you to hear this beautiful addition to the soundtrack while playing Servant of the Lake.

Liset Pennings – Alto Flute

Since our players will also get to visit the gardens of the Vanderboom house as well, we wanted to re-create a recognisable and familiar theme in Servant of the Lake. In many of the iconic Rusty Lake: Roots tracks, you can hear a flute peeking through other instruments and ambient sounds, and Victor knew exactly who we should collaborate with for Servant of the Lake to re-create an elevated version of that sound. Liset has worked together with Victor on multiple occasions, and as a musician of the Dutch Orchestra, she not only brings a lot of experience but also a ton of talent that we now have the pleasure to display in Servant of the Lake. We hope you will love it as much as we do when hearing the outdoor tunes in-game, familiar but new at the same time. The alto flute is also used on some different occasions more as a sound effect, to build up the tension in the level select screens.

Iris Muller – Vocalist

For the first time in a Rusty Lake game, we have a vocalist on one of Victor’s tracks. As you dive deeper into the mysteries of the Vanderboom Estate, you will hear a beautiful, eerie voice, one of the most exciting tracks of the album. Iris performed the perfect vocals for Victor’s background music, plus we were just happy to collaborate with her again, after having the pleasure of previously working with her for the voice of Laura Vanderboom.

Sound Design

Jorick and Giliam from Driftwood Audio got the assignment to work on Servant of the Lake and once again took the sound design to the next level, making the Vanderboom Estate feel like a real living place full of mystery and atmosphere as well as the occasional cosiness. Their goal was to give every space in the house its own sound identity, while making sure that each room feels unique and believable for the time period the game is set in. Almost every item, object and piece of furniture has its own unique sound design. They made sure with painstaking attention to detail that every interaction adds to the feeling that you are present in the house.

Alongside these sounds, they also created a lot of special ambient effects, including rain falling outside, thunder, creaking wooden floors and more of these specific sounds that you can expect to hear while inside an old estate.

Together with Victor Butzelaar’s soundtrack, the sound design draws you deeper into the world of Servant of the Lake and keeps you immersed from beginning to end.

The Voices of Servant of the Lake

After release, we will also shine some light on our incredible Voice Cast. We can already share that William Vanderboom will be voiced by Paul Guyet, Alexandra by DB Cooper, Aldous by the one and only Bob Rafferty, the maid by Kara Edwards and the coachman by Mike Wijdenbosch, the latter 2 whom you’ve already heard perform their respective roles in the Demo! Our voice actors are bringing the experience to new heights, and we can’t wait to share more behind the scenes of their incredible work. In the meantime, we hope you enjoyed how these incredible artists have breathed soul and atmosphere into the world of Servant of the Lake through music and SFX and that you are excited to experience the full game on August 13th!

P.S. Let us know in the comments if you have any questions for us regarding the development process of Servant of the Lake! We hope to answer as many as we can in an upcoming Q&A!