Music Matters

A game has to look good, feel good, and sound good. I’ve been guilty of neglecting sound for the majority of my games - either sound is forgotten or minimal time was spent getting the right music and effects. For Shoot Into the Void, the audio was finally considered before the deadline!

Music

I loved our game’s premise because I love sci-fi, cyberpunk, all those futuristic settings. Music was added after the game was set up, so it was easier for me to think through what kind of music we want for each experience.

Let’s take the title screen and menu:

The player is in the cockpit, watching the stars and world beyond as the ship slowly drifts away. Loneliness in space has a familiar sound in media - it’s eerie, synth (as with most future things) and mysterious. After some searching, I got the perfect fit:

The main game has a different feel all together, let’s have a look:

This was a bit harder to retrieve. The music for this part of the game will be what players hear the most, so what do we want to them feel in this game? It’s ultimately a casual game, the target audience is likely in transit on their phone trying to get a high score for a bit. And that music is chilled. More lo-fi like, it’s not a high intensity game, control wise at least. So we settled for this one:

https://pixabay.com/music/beats-abstract-world-127012/

However, our game has boss levels. The bosses penalize you a lot more than the regular enemies, we suspect most people die off at this stage, and then go again to get really good!

With this one, we wanted intensity. Or rather, we wanted the player to understand that their decisions have weight. A shot from a boss takes off 50 points off your health, that’s 5x more than a standard shot! This is a moment where your next decision could be your last. Because that moment was so clear to us, the music we choose for it was the easiest to find:

https://pixabay.com/music/ambient-drone-space-main-9706/

The track was a little too long for it to build up, so we cut the song so only the latter half plays. Levels come and go quickly so it’s unlikely a user would hear the entire track often. Cutting the sound made sense for us and the player!

Sound Effects

We’re happy with how they came out. Especially the death animation, which has a satisfying techno-destruction feel to it. If you’re not making your own music, keep in mind that you’ll likely have to edit tracks.

It took a long time to find a pleasant charging sound. In the end we settled for this:

https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/sci-fi-weapon-charging-01-96645/

If you look at the original sound, it lasts 9 seconds long. Charging the shot happens in 2 seconds. We had to cut and speed it up to make it fit. Most sound effects were at least trimmed to have shorter running times.

Another thing we did was vary the pitch for the shots. When players hear the same sound over and over again, they get pissed. A little pitch variation is the go-to mitigation for that.

Limitations

So far, the audio has been well received. However, they’re not the most cohesive selection. Each one may suit the screen at hand, but they don’t all fit as a whole. Take a commercial game, like Octopath Traveler (currently clearing my backlog, don’t judge). The random battle theme is different from the boss theme, very different from the town themes. And yet, it all fits together as a whole. Unless you get a pack, that’s part of what you sacrifice by selecting various sounds instead of making them yourself.

Technically we could have added some fade ins and outs as well, so the music transitions as the scene transitions. Zelda Breath of the Wild is the master of this, but don’t just take my word for it:

Well, that’s all for this post. Thanks for listening to my Ted talk! Happy gaming everyone