Assets
Art
Reuse Assets
If the game mechanics are not fun, recreating new assets won’t save the game. Try to reuse assets as much as possible, example: Fallout: New Vegas reuses many assets from Fallout 3
Music
Melody
The problem with today’s music in games is the lack of a clearly defined melody. The music as a whole is great but is forgetful because it’s too complex. In older games, due to hardware restrictions, they couldn’t store a lot of music, so they had to focus on the melody. This way you will always remember the catchy melody like in Mario.
An example of where complex music can still be remembered is the scores created by John William. His scores are symphonies, but it has a clear melody which is what we remember. The rest is forgotten. The key is to find “hummable” melodies. We usually can’t hum more than one tone, so if it is hummable, the tune sticks with the player. Example: Halo’s theme is complicated by easily hummable. Remember this doesn’t hold for background music. Here we are trying to create an atmosphere so it doesn’t need to have a hummable melody instead it should match the emotion that is needed to portray.
Soundtracks
In most games, they have different soundtracks that indicate a boss fight and then calms down when the fight is over. Sometimes games have the same tune but different instruments per level like in Mario. New instruments are added to make it feel like you accomplished something when you walk to the end of the level, giving a sense of accomplishment.
In Portal, the audio builds up when you are doing the puzzles right. Other examples are speeding up when something in-game speeds up