Max LL & 'Spiritfarer' - A Composer Analysis
If you liked Firewatch, I'm sure there's a part of you that would love Spiritfarer too.
After my recent dive into Firewatch’s Boombox, it only makes sense to discuss Chris Remo's peers and their masterful work. This is a light touch into another example of fantastic original composition, its public reception, and how music that makes you feel can win the music streaming game.
Max LL
‘Spiritfarer’, creatively
‘Spiritfarer’, statistically
1. Max LL
After my admiration of Chris Remo’s soundtrack, I went into Spotify to find out artists and composers that Spotify think are similar to him. I then came across Max LL.
Spotify’s bio has Max LL self-describing himself as:
Max LL (Maxime Lacoste-Lebuis), is a Canadian film composer and multi-instrumentalist who’s been crafting evocative musicals works for picture for nearly a decade. His music has been performed by Montreal’s Metropolitan Orchestra and is regularly featured in films, games and audio-visual projects around the globe.
Now I am sure that Max LL has a prolific career in multiple mediums. That contextual breadth of having to compose for different themes as well as mediums comes undoubtedly comes with a wide range of experience, adding to his successes. However, I intend to only speak about the gaming compositional side here.
I had heard of Jotun as a game, and I had heard of Spiritfarer - seeing that Max LL had composed for both really surprised me. Mainly because Jotun is a viking-inspired kick-started game that has beautifully made calm moments, as well as some huge orchestral powerful moments during combat and boss scenes. Capturing that dichotamy while maintaining the same inspiration and theme is impressive, as you can hear for yourself below:
Most recently, Max LL has been working on Bandle Tale - A League Of Legends Story. I mean, you can already tell Max LL has made it in the gaming space if a League Of Legends branded, tongue-in-cheek pixelated crafting RPG is asking you for your work. Even in the trailer you can feel what Max LL is trying to capture and the composition tells you so much about the feel and theme of the game from the outset.
We can see that Jotun proved his diverse capabilities, and Bandle Tale proves he can tell a story. But I think one of his soundtracks and its relative success is very much intertwined, a story the music industry can learn so much from.
2. ‘Spiritfarer’, creatively
I decided to get hold of Spiritfarer when I saw it was on offer. I intended to play it casually, and now its the only game I’m playing on Switch right now.
Here’s the animated trailer. That’s right, an animated trailer. That’s nice isn’t it?
Spiritfarer is rated as overwhelmingly positive on Steam, which is a great indicator that it’s well received. You need to have over 95% of people to give it a thumbs up in order to achieve that.
Steam best describes this game as:
Spiritfarer® is a cozy management game about dying. You play Stella, ferrymaster to the deceased, a Spiritfarer. Build a boat to explore the world, then befriend and care for spirits before finally releasing them into the afterlife. Farm, mine, fish, harvest, cook, and craft your way across mystical seas. Join the adventure as Daffodil the cat, in two-player cooperative play. Spend relaxing quality time with your spirit passengers, create lasting memories, and, ultimately, learn how to say goodbye to your cherished friends. What will you leave behind?
This is an important juxtaposition to recognise. Spiritfarer plays as a cosy game, giving you all the time in the world to do the things you need to do. The character building is incredible; The way you can interact and build relationships with others carefully lays out a foundation we should aim to have our own relationships influenced by.
On the other hand, there is a deep edge to it, which you can discover if you decide to play it, which 95% of people suggest you should - “ultimately, learn how to say goodbye to your cherished friends”. What sadistic developer decided to make us develop connections to ultimately break them? Well, Thunder Lotus Games actually. The moment that brings this all to a head is when you deliver your guests to the Everdoor to say goodbye…
Instead of going for the Jotun approach of swinging between calm moments and thunderous orchestral pieces, Spiritfarer was able to merge the two. The foundation of the composition speaks volumes despite only instructing whispers in the compositional decisions it makes. There is a carefully crafted mix of inevitable melancholy layered with this optomistic, youthful adventurous topline that brings peace and preparation in the same movement.
I’m going to say it one more time though, Spiritfarer plays as a cosy game. This is important to know. ‘Cosy games’ are described by gamesindustry.biz in context of building relationships:
“Cozy games are generally regarded as featuring cute characters, often anthropomorphic animals or child-like humans, who engage in player activities such as farming, gathering, growing and nurturing, with a vague goal of creative personalization and in-game socialization.”
“But coziness is broader than farming and village-planning. The essential nature of cozy gaming is that of helping other people through non-violent means, often by nurture and generosity. Self-expression is core to the games' progression goals, which tend to be open-ended.“
So now we can set the scene - Cosy games are built in a way where the soundtrack, its accuracy to the context, and its replayability are integral to the structure of a cosy game. This game is an escape to somewhere safe, non-violent, social and predictable. If your soundtrack captures this feeling, and is mapped to this feeling, I bet people would enjoy listening to that soundtrack when they are not playing the game…was that a segue? yes it was.
3. ‘Spiritfarer’, Statistically
Max LL’s Spiritfairer’s tracks has on average 1-3 million plays, with some other tracks not far under one million plays. In comparison to Max LL’s other tracks on Spotify, this is much higher.
Also, Max LL owns the recording rights to these tracks, nice one Max LL!
Let’s compare this to his other works. Bandle Tale soundtrack has started with a good push but has long way to go. Bearing in mind this has only been out for less than a month it has a couple of thousand plays. Spiritfarer has been out since 2020 (4 years, 48 months) and has a million+ streams. If Bandle Tale continue on their same numbers consistently with no uplift or fall off, they are forecast to get only 25% of what Spiritfarer has in the same length of time.
However, Jotun, a fairly well known game, was released in 2015, almost a decade ago, and is only scratcking 50k plays, with one stand out track at 1.7 million. Albeit, this was a different time where it was very common to see one stand out track that got playlist have a significiant difference in track plays, but I mention this so we can remove time as a variable. There is something else going on. Bear in mind that Metacritic scored Jotun as 79 and Spiritfarer at 84, which isn’t too far apart, so I don’t think the reception of the game is the reason as that is too broad.
Spiritfarer is a great example of how ‘main music’ can also be ‘background music’ when the outcome is the same. Spiritfarer is encouraged to make people feel. The idea of this music having a strong theme as well as intending to be ambience too is exactly what this soundtrack is intending to capture. Spiritfarer is a relaxing chilled experien, and the music is a key part of any cozy game (Subjective, I know, it’s a game about replacing the grim reaper but still). If you want to soundtrack your own life with the same feel as the relaxation of the game, you would turn to this soundtrack, and the stream count proves this is the case.
If I were a game developer, I’d want to ensure that my soundtrack was not just incredible quality, but also made the players feel. That feeling gets wrapped into a soundtrack that any listener can revisit to feel that again. I mean, if you aren’t a fan of Spiritfarer, why don’t you go listen to Mick Gordon’s soundtrack for DOOM: Eternal? There, I bet you feel something now, don’t you?
TLDR:
Max LL is an excellent composer. Spiritfarer is a gorgeous cosy game with moments of thoughtful sadness, and the soundtrack mirrors this feeling. I believe the high stream count for this soundtrack is because players associate the relaxing music with the peace while the game, and they (we) want to replicate this feeling when we are not playing the game too. Soundtracks are vessels of feeling, similar to albums … Curious, isn’t it?
