Devlog 3: Beta Phase

For the Beta phase of production, my role switched from narrative/game design to sound design. I had already done some work on sound effects prior to this phase, but I worked on the rest of the sounds and music needed for the game.  

First, I worked on finding some ambient noises to make each scene feel more realistic. I sourced audio for an office, restaurant, and cafe for each of the main areas in the game. When sourcing this audio, I made sure it had realistic sounds for each of the locations (such as dishes clattering for the restaurant or filing cabinets opening for the office) without being too distracting. I wanted these tracks to be audible without overpowering the music or sounds of other interactions in the game. That way, they add some extra texture to the background audio without obscuring any of the audio feedback for the player. 

Next, I worked on music for each scene. Our team decided that we wanted separate tracks for each location to better reflect the mood of each of those places. I created three tracks (one each for the office, cafe, and restaurant settings) with different moods in mind for each. The office theme is a little more upbeat and reflects a high energy work environment without being too complicated to avoid distracting the player during the part of the game with the most demanding gameplay. The hobby theme is a little jazzier to reflect the cafe ambience of the scene. The date theme is a solo piano track to create a more romantic and emotional feel for the scene. 

Above is an image of one of the tracks in notation software. This allows me to create music that can be exported as a .wav file and imported into unity, or as midi files. For now, I’ve added the .wav files just as they are into the project, but during polish I will edit them further using FMOD to make the music change based on gameplay parameters.  

Another consideration when creating these tracks was consistency across all of the scenes. In a larger game I would want each character to have their own melodic motif, so for this vertical slice I made sure that each track was in the same key and contained some of the same melodic elements to create a feeling of continuity across Jessica’s entire memory. Finally, I added these sounds into the build using the scriptable objects that were already set up. 

Going forward, this audio will likely undergo some more changes. After discussing with the team, we have decided to make the music change depending on Jessica’s pain level or the player’s progression through the story. This could be done by removing some layers from the already existing tracks to create a pared down version of each theme after Jessica’s accident, or by adding effects such as a high pass filter to the audio when Jessica’s pain level is high to reinforce the impact of the visual pain effects that are already in the game. My focus during the last couple of weeks of the project will be to refine the existing music and sound effects and test these proposed strategies.