Horror lives and dies by its ability to create an atmosphere that unsettles the basic human state; it must confine, pursue, and isolate. It must be desperate, wrong. Even more so than in other mediums, sound is essential to horror in games since it must constantly envelope its audience in a way that keeps them moving through the world. A horror movie takes its audience with it but a horror game must rely on its audience’s willingness to keep going of their own accord and its aural landscape must antagonize and sooth a player in equal measure. Music itself typically takes a back seat to ambient noise. Akira Yamaoka is the torch bearer for this genre maxim. His work in the Silent Hill series, while not devoid of melody or traditional song structure, is predominantly dissonant squalls, distortion laden static, and the thick organic sounds of things that go bump in the night. Punchline’s Rule of Rose, a cousin of Silent Hill in the horror genre, takes a decidedly different route in creating a soundscape of dread and wrongness. Incidental sound takes a backseat to Yutaka Minobe’s chamber music score. Her eighteen compositions are the sorts of string and piano arrangements that wouldn’t have been uncommon in a radio drama of the 1930s, but are modernized to truly unsettling effect. The sixth track marks a distinct moment in the game itself when the protagonist, helpless and hunted to this point in the game, gains a bit more confidence in the narrative and the player is offered a bit more freedom to explore their environment. The string melody lilts along the piano’s rhythm, almost comfortable, until there are staccato scratchings on the piano strings themselves. It’s a sonic cue that all is still not well. The soundtrack's tone as a whole recalls Angelo Badalamenti's work on Twin Peaks, a mix of the familiar and the sinister that defies the audience's expectations to keep them engaged. Minobe’s score is actually recommended over the game itself. Rule of Rose is an atmospheric masterpiece, but it plays like absolute garbage. You can check download the full OST at Galbadia Hotel and be sure to check out the vocal theme “A Love Suicide” in the trailer below.
