When I was approached by one of the developers for 'A Demon Killed My Babushka' I could tell this project would be something special. As part of a 6 man group, they were developing a Russian themed action game as their masters project over in the US and asked if I'd like to be a part of the team, working on both music and sound effects.
After a talk about the scope and direction of the project, I was unsure in my ability to provide the music they requested. The brief was a tricky one, to produce an intense action piece with dark themes but featuring comedic overtones in a Russian folk style. After a night of independent research, studying the folk style, instrumentation and history, I went back to the devs and accepted the project.
Early Concept Photo
Music
First Track
In line with their goals and submission date, I worked closely with the team to ensure they had what they needed in time for their deadlines. For the first piece of music I blended a traditional folk style with modern rock over the duration of the piece, Steadily progressing and swapping out a Russian Balalaika for an electric guitar and drum kit by the end of the track. The composition of the track was very important for this project.
As the developers we building their own game engine, they were not using a traditional middleware software, which allow the sound and music to be implemented to a complex degree. To cater for this, I build the tracks into long loopable sections, including panned and scatter instruments, in an attempt to make the music sound as complex as possible, whilst being implemented as easily as possible. The track is also structured to match the visuals, with the first few sections focused more on light melodies and focusing the player on the storytelling of the visuals. Towards the end of the piece, the track intensifies, enhancing the bloody style of the game and giving a strong soundtrack for the player to kill their way through the level to. Fine tuning the project with the developers feedback throughout production meant that they were very satisfied with the music.
Second Track
The second track was similar to the first in structure, again working in loopable sections and fitting the storytelling timeline of the games visuals. The brief for this piece was a more intense combat track, therefore I jumped straight to an immersive track with drone notes surrounding the player and a pumping kick drum mimicking a heartbeat. With a tempo change over time at the beginning of the track and building to a punching electric and orchestral theme by the end.
Sound Effects
I wanted the sound effects to be very consistent with the games action packed and fast paced style. The aim of the sounds were to compliment the visuals and enhance the theme while remaining easy to implement within the developers custom engine.
First up was the players character. This was briefed to me as a 'vampire badass' and left the door open to my interpretation with its theme. I used my own voice for these sounds, allowing complete control in timing and tone, before editing and processing the sounds in a consistent pattern, creating a 'voice' for the character. With a pre-set created for the players voice, I could record any sound I needed in my own voice and simply apply the pre-set for the output to sound like the character. I created exaggerated sounds for the player, with a strong dash and jump sound, as per the players abilities, as well as sounds for when the player is injured by enemies.
Producing enemy demon voice lines was my next task. For this, I recorded sounds through a cardboard tube, giving a natural reverb and 'alien' sound, before cleaning up in Audacity to remove background sound and processing in Logic. This 'pre-processing' meant that less processing was required in software. This not only saves time but heavily altering sounds in software can easily degrade the sound. By applying this effect when recording, I could push the sound further when editing.
I used different sounds and processing units for each demon type, utilising equalisers and pitch shifts, as well as reverb plugins to give each demon type their own 'personality' from high pitched whispering to low pitch mumbling. Alongside the differing models for each enemy type, this really compliments the game and the players ability to identify each opponent.
For each enemy character I created a variety of attack, chatter and death sounds. This provided the developers with more than enough material to create a real presence of the enemies in the game, with them seemingly communicating with each other. These chatter sounds have more purpose than just adding more sound to the game, but help to fill the time in-between the player attacking or being attacked. This sort of down time can often highlight a lack of detail in a game, and this kind of idle audio helps to bridge the gaps between audio and keep the world feeling alive while playing.
The developers 'Swole Team 6' intend on releasing the game following further development and I hope to continue my work with them in future. It was such a great experience to work with enthusiastic developers who had real passion for the product they were creating and were so open to my creative ideas and input.
Submission Gameplay
See Also: 'A Demon Killed My Babushka' Music
