Dev Diary: Audio & Score

Video games are multi-media projects that bring together various creative and technical disciplines into one place. Audio and music play a major role in games because they help shape the mood and vibe, invoke emotions in players, and are a big factor in user experience in the form of feedback. Players often rely on sound to give them cues, success or failure feedback, and even clues.

Today, we’re talking to Eliza Daly and Janal Bechthold about the audio and music in First Moon of Mercury.

Tell us a little bit about yourselves and what work you’re doing for First Moon of Mercury.

Eliza: Hi! I'm Eliza and I'm the Sound Designer on First Moon of Mercury. I've been working in game audio for around 6 years now and have had a blast working on a variety of different titles across multiple platforms. Every project I work on brings new ideas and challenges, with the current one being tackling the soundscape of First Moon of Mercury!

Janal: I’m Janal, the composer for First Moon of Mercury. I’ve worked with Games by Stitch on Rival Books of Aster and Terrorarium, and when I’m not creating music for games I’m scoring films, interactive experiences, and animated series!

(A fifteen second sample of Eliza and Janal's work on First Moon of Mercury's sound.)

How do your two disciplines work together?

Janal: The music and sound departments work together to create a sonic vision for all the audio in the game. When the sound and music are well done they help to set the mood and tone, provide emotional context to the story elements, heighten the action or gameplay intensity, and help the player feel more connected and immersed in the experience.

Eliza: Music and sound design go hand in hand so I always want to make sure I'm keeping all aspects of audio in mind whilst I'm designing and mixing. For example, some tonal sounds may need to be in the same key as the music to avoid creating any unwanted dissonance. Most importantly I want to make sure I'm doing Janal's work justice and allow it to shine in the mix!

When you are brought on to a project like this, what are the first set of things you do, and why?

Eliza: The first thing I'll do is review any content that has been sent my way, whether that be a playable demo, video captures, or documents. This allows me to get an initial feel for the game.

Janal: It’s really important that the entire audio team has a clear vision for the overall tone and style that we’re working towards. I tend to take a lot of initial inspiration from the story, samples of the art style, lighting, and overall gameplay movement.

I start by having discussions with the creative team, see what the other departments are working on, and trawl the Miro “mood boards” before coming up with an overall concept for the music. In addition to discussing the emotional direction, implementation strategies, and phases of gameplay with the team, I like to create a reference playlist to make it easier to talk about what type of music feels like it would tell the story best and be able to dial in on different instruments or sounds.

Eliza: At this stage I'll also discuss the sound with the developer as sometimes they already have an idea of how they want things to sound. I'll then gather references I like for inspiration and brainstorm a plan of action for the overall sound!

Janal: I also love to be incredibly organized so before I start writing I create a spreadsheet to keep track of all the audio files, implementation details, determine a file naming system, and create a specialized template in my music composing software (MOTU’s Digital Performer) which will house the instruments and sounds I want to use in the score.

Steam post image (A sectional screenshot of the asset spreadsheet for First Moon of Mercury.)

After you finished your initial actions for First Moon of Mercury, how did those actions shape your approach and/or the sound of the game?

Janal: After deciding on the general direction for the score, I start sketching a few pieces based on the particular game stages and share them with the team for feedback. I love this part of the collaborative process and feel like these back and forth discussions help focus the intent of the music and finalize the overall tone and moods. Often a fresh creative perspective emerges because of the collaboration and on some projects the result is definitely greater than if we were to work on our own contributions separately.

Once a piece is approved I break down those pieces of music into individual musical loops and elements that can be implemented into the game separately to maximize the interactivity and make the music integral to the game experience.

Eliza: Having the initial brainstorming step makes the whole process a lot easier as I already know how I want to approach certain elements and have often already thought of my stylistic approach. There's still a lot of designing left to do so I might have to come back to this question later!

Steam post image(A screenshot of Janal's DAW where she is composing gameplay loops.)

Tell us about your workflows.

Eliza: I'll usually receive footage of a new feature created in the game which I'll review and figure out how I want to address it in terms of FMOD implementation. This will dictate certain elements of the design. After that I'll proceed to the designing part of the process. Once I have a first pass done, I'll hand it over to the devs to hook up in game, which then allows me to playtest in-engine, and make any revisions to the sounds and/or address any bugs that inevitably come up!

Janal: My workflow can be summed up into three main stages: Pre-production, Composing, and Post-production.

Pre-production includes research and creative conversations. Composing includes writing rough demos, getting notes, addressing any changes, etc. and the Post-production phase includes final orchestration, creating sheet music, recording musicians, editing, mixing the music, and preparing the files for implementation into the game software.

Steam post image (Eliza asking a programmer to implement events for Rad Shield T2 in Slack.)

Is there anything specific that you really want to evoke in the sound you're building for First Moon of Mercury? How are you achieving that?

Eliza: I think the main [challenge] with this particular project is that I'm designing sound for an environment that doesn't have sound!

I would say the biggest part of my planning was figuring out how I wanted to approach this. I ended up drawing on the behavior of sound underwater, to influence how it might sound in space, ensuring that the sheer size of our surroundings is represented in the audio.

Janal: Since this high-stakes story surrounds futuristic high-tech and is set in space, the main sounds for the score are also technology based. You'll hear synthesizers and digitally created instruments, pulses and percussion evoking the sounds of sonar and computer consoles, layered with more traditional sweeping strings and guitar.

We really liked the idea of adding voice to the music as a way to insert the essence of humanity and increase the emotionality. Additionally, I'm using the interplay between the vocals and wind instruments (representing the solar wind) as a way to create wonder and awe.

The score is built in layers using ambiences and percussion to play towards the political nuance in the story, distorted loops for the tension and action moments, while layers of more acoustic instruments nod to the relationships between characters.

Steam post image (A screenshot of an SFX Eliza designed in Reaper.)

Pick any aspect you want about the sound you're developing for the game and nerd out. Tell us all about it!

Janal: Well if we’re getting nerdy here… I love to consider high concepts, especially how I can draw on an important story element and use it as a tool when I’m composing.

In this case, I’ve been examining the relationship between the planets and the musical scale. Mercury is the first planet from the sun and the Earth is the third planet so notes one and three in the musical scale feels symbolic. Interestingly, Mercury as the element is Hg on the periodic table and H has been used in medieval music theory to represent the music note B. B down to G is the distance of a third.

And if I dive in even further, the minor third seems to be innate as the first notes that children learn to sing across all cultures so those notes feel pretty universal for a story about trying to save our planet!

I’ve also been listening to sonification recordings of solar storms and solar flares. Sonification is the process of attaching audio parameters such as pitch, volume, and rhythm to data sets to help interpret complex information. When I’m listening for inspiration I’m looking for textures and interesting patterns in the sound such as a unique signature rhythm that will tie together music and the science of space.

Eliza: UI has always been one of my favorite things to design, and was one of the first elements I tackled on this project.

I went with a classic sci-fi synth based design but I often like to add organic layers within the sounds for depth, texture and variation. For example, the Menu Click sound has the synth patch, an antique stopwatch, and some chain samples! It's all about layers, you see. Even the smallest snippet of a sample can do wonders in a design!

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