The Secret Weapon Of Sound Design For Indie Games

Okay, here we go. We're going to be working on audio today. I'm going to show you guys how to create some really great ambience. It's going to change everything for our scene. Audio is directly connected to visuals. The goal with audio is to make it feel like it looks. Sometimes you need to cheat. So, we're going to do a lot of that. Now, I can't show you too much of what the forest level is, but the reason why we're going to do new audio for this is because something feels off with the level, and I don't honestly I don't know what it is. So, let me hit play here, and we can hear this out. There is a bird that chirps. Even the crickets. Sure, I like those. And I don't like the birds either. So, we're going to rework this. It's important to note that Thomas is using artless.io. I don't recommend it. I don't recommend artless.io because they're going to charge you thousands of dollars to license your the game sounds after the subscription fee. I found this out the hard way. I was subscribed. I was downloading all these sounds and then I found out that those sounds aren't actually licensed for games. So, in a way, I was kind of trapped. Two

years later, I finally paid the fee. So, I'm willing to go ahead and keep using these sounds. I've already downloaded a couple sounds, including some trees in the wind, some ambient sort of very soft, cold sound. I'm going to open this up in Audacity. Audacity is a free audio tool. So, let's go ahead and hear this. Okay. I don't like this. I don't like any of these birds. So, we're going to cut all of these out and hope that we get a nice smooth transition. Let's listen. We did. So that sounds like a jungle right there. So I'm going to kill that. The birds really ruin it. They bring joy and we don't want that. We don't want birds on this level. This is dark. Let's go ahead and import that other sound, which is chimes. Very subtle chimes. We just want very subtle chimes every once in a while. The way I used to think about ambient sound is I thought it's coming from over there. Sometimes it's okay to simulate as if there's

something in the corner that you can't see and it's like to your right. It's okay to sort of move that around as long as it's subtle and it makes the world feel alive. So, I'm going to add some of these throughout just sparingly. And I'm going to add some reverb to this to make it sound dreamy because this is a very dreamy environment. And I'm going to do a pitch change. That one's too much. Moving forward, we're going to add in some uh wind. There's a movie. I'm not sure if you've seen it, but there's a movie called Signs. Now, I know some of you are like, "Oh, well, duh. I've seen that." But just remember, guys, if you said duh to that, you're probably getting older. In that movie, the sound of the corn blowing is just spine tingling. So, let me explain how we can do that.

Here, we're going to use wind in the trees, the sound of leaves blowing. We're going to use that to create a sense of horror. Now, what you want to do is you just want it to happen like every, let's say, 15 to 30 seconds. See? Isn't that great? Oh, woo. But you don't want it to be constant. You want it to be this feeling of something's in the trees. What's gone? Then it's quiet and you have that quiet ominous dread and then it comes back. I would argue that this one effect with the leaves, it might be like the most valuable thing about the ambient sound on this level. Back to quiet. See, like storm is coming. Here we go. Comes in again. Oh. Oh, I'm going to get rid of these

chimes. They're too happy. They're too happy. Okay, moving on. Branch Creek wind. Is that how you spell it? I want to hear the bending of the trees. If there are very specific sounds that you just can't find on these li sound libraries, the free ones tend to have those specific sounds. And they're not perfect, but there's something got to sort of manipulate this so it's sounds different every time. We're going to do a pitch change and a speed change. Then we're going to increase the pitch. We're going to decrease the speed. Uh, let's get some crows. Germaine, we're working on some sounds. Trying to get a really creepy forest vibe. It's a lot of different sounds we're going to have to put in for

this one sequence. Your job when it comes to the art and the aesthetic of the game and the atmosphere is to communicate with every sense you possibly can. So the goal with your game, aside from game design and mechanics and what happens in the brain, you want to try and capture the senses as much as you can. So that's sound should reflect the visuals. The visuals should reflect a smell. All right, let's go ahead and bring in these crows. This one's kind of creepier. One of the best uh ambient sounds you can look at and study is Resident Evil 4 the remaster the first level. when it comes to like ambient wood woods sound. I'm gonna add a new stereo track down here. I'm just going to shift this over just a tad. Drop it down so that there's a subtle just a subtle echo. It's almost like a subconscious one that you it makes you feel like you're outside and you don't even know

it. Okay. So, what kind of enemies do we have on this level? The scream of the walker runner. She has a really awesome scream. I'm going to grab this and I'm going to put it in there subtly. Maybe once or twice. Look at the length here. We've got every 3 minutes it loops. Every 3 minutes we're going to hear a scream. That's kind of how you have to think about it. Do I want to scream every 3 minutes? I think 6 minutes actually makes sense. Going to take about 30 minutes to beat a level. 15 to 30 minutes. So that's how many loops, you know, 30 / 6 is five. So I'm going to add this this subtle scream. I know it sounds strange. Bear with me. We're going to add a couple screams and yells throughout here. We don't need any thunder cuz that's actually being controlled by a it's like a lightning directional lightning prefab I have and it plays thunder when a directional light flashes. So we're not going to worry about thunder right now. Clown.

Nope. Great. That's That's my voice, by the way. And we're going to hear all of this in the distance echoing through the trees. Right. You can see why I want 6 minutes of ambience so that we can have all these different sounds, but they they don't can't tell they're on repeat. There we go. Tracks. See? All right. Let's add a stereo track here. What I'm going to do is add a delay. Delay makes it sound like it's outside. See, that's it. It's all I need. Okay. Footsteps. That's great. How is it that I was logged in and now I'm not? Hello. I was just logged in. What? That's really like that makes me want to scream. I am so annoyed. I I'm never going to get over this. Okay, we're logged in. By the way, we can pan this to the right here so it always sounds like something's coming to your right. And then I'm going to grab the the running. I'm going to put that

on the left. Way too long. You just want it to be very subtle. Subtlety makes it scarier. Perfect. And we're going to put on the the left side. Okay. Uh that's great. Now we need we need carnival sounds. Step right up. Step right up, lad. No, we got to be we got to be British. Ladies and gentlemen, step right up to the fairground forest carnival rides, games, popcorn, and more. Hang on. I know that sucks. Give me just a sec. Watch this. We're going to add a ton of reverb to this. And we're going to do it a slower tempo and slower speed. Hey, let's try it. Let's listen.

ground it, man. Here we go. That's it. Super subtle. One final thing here. Bring it all [Music] together. There we go. All we're going to do, we're going to have this every once in a while. [Applause] [Music] See, we're going to just fade it out. Now, it this doesn't mean we're not going to use 3D audio for some of the carousels. This is so that if I'm standing far away and I'm not near any 3D objects like a merrygoround or something, I still every once in a while get that carnival vibe just coming from the from the trees. It does a lot of work for us as an indie. We don't necessarily have to make every aspect of this level look like a carnival. The sound can do a lot of that work for us. Sorry, I'm I'm cooking right now, guys.

Give me just a sec. That should be good. The ultimate test is to see how this sounds in the game. This works. Let's get to the bare necessities.

That's all we've got. Click the link below to check out the webinar. It's going to show you how to make a 3D game in 15 minutes. Click the link below. Totally free. My treat to you.