Week Two

Now we had an actual concept for our game, it was time to expand on it and gain a better understanding of what would be required for us to pull it off. For this, me and Jack (Audio Lead at Birmingham) to begin deciding how the audio and music would sound in game. To do this we gave each other the task of creating a mood board which would help us in the long run with the overall feel of the sound effects or music which we created. In order to create my Mood Board, i decided to use Miro as it has been very useful during previous projects.

The first thing i done when starting my Mood Board was how the music would reflect on the game’s concept. During the first week, it was decided that the game would be set in Hell and the player would be exploring it whilst finding a range of different weapons and enemy encounters. With this i suggested that Hell would have this very gothic like tone to it and would therefore be best fitted with an dramatic score in the form of the metal genre. I also suggested that, we could implement Orchestral Metal as the game would focus on Christian topics throughout the narrative. As stated in the first week, i thought it would be a good idea to have a few ambient tracks as the player would be spending quite a bit of time exploring the enviroment of hell and i didn’t think that the Metal music would help immerse the player during the quieter moments.

Once i had explained the game concept and my ideas for the music, i decided to do some reasearch into games which had scores which could be used as inspiration. After some time, i had picked music from 3 different games which could be good inspiration once we start our own. The first game that i looked at was DOOM (2016). In the few years this and its sequel Doom Eternal (2020) have been out, both their soundtacks have gone down as some of the best within the industry. Both were mostly composed by Mick Gordon who was very successful with making a Heavy Metal soundtrack using synths, chainsaws and innovations in technology. DOOM’s soundtracks are the perfect thing to listening to whilst exploring hell and fighting swarms of demons.

The second game that i looked at was Minecraft (2011). For the most part, Minecraft’s music is known by millions to be very peaceful and nostalgic. However, once you begin to explore the more sinnister areas such as the Nether, theres a shift in the game’s music. This can be heard best in the song Rubedo which i brought up during the previous week. With this being an ambiant track, Lena Raine has done a very good job at showcasing the mysterious and creepier sides of the nether through sound alone.

The third game that i discussed was Resident Evil 2 (1998). Throughout the game there are these rooms where the player can quickly enter to save their game or restock on supplies before continuing to explore the apocalypic area of Raccoon City. During these sequences the song named Secure Place begins to play. With this song, Masami Ueda has been able to provide the player with a sense of relief whilst informing them that eventually they will have to leave and face the horrors outside. This is what we are hoping to achieve with our game as Hell is a kill or be killed wasteland.

The final game that i mentioned was Ultrakill (2020). Similar to DOOM, the music does a very good job of implementing metal during fighting sequences to keep the player energised whilst also implementing orchestral elements to give it a sinister and religous feel to it.

After this my Mood Board was complete.

From this week, we also began holding meetings with each teams so we could discuss any devlopment we had made so far and what we were hoping to achieve this week. Given that this was our first meeting, we didnt have too much to discuss. As we were waiting for the Design team to make a decision on everything they wanted in the game, we discussed amongst ourselves on the sounds that were a must. In the end, we decided that we need sounds for a crucifix sword, dagger and a holy magic shotgun. Then for the player we would need things such as footsteps and injured/death sounds. Then we showcased the Mood Boards that we created to provide the audio team of what we were hoping to achieve.

Then we decided for the next meeting we would discuss making our own assest list of sounds as well as who would be responsible for each.