The Music & Sound of Starweave

Our second last devlog has landed! In today's edition, members of our audio team (Caio, Anna, Cal, Russell, and Austin) answer a couple of questions about the audio design of the game! For our full launch schedule, check out our Steam page below:

STARWEAVE

⚠ Spoiler warning! There are spoilers for the game's story below. ⚠

What went into the audio production of the game? What was the process like?

CAIO: The process was very iterative. I had worked with Rachel Geng on a student project she had previously made, so she invited me very early in the design process to serve as the audio director. The first few months were spent conceptualizing what we wanted the soundscape to achieve, both from an emotional and storytelling point of view, as well as from a player-feedback perspective, and creating many audio sketches to validate our assumptions and aesthetics.

At the beginning, it was just me and the composer Will Bourassa Bennett, but we quickly realized the scope needed was quite large, so I got a few other friends I trusted involved in the process: Austin, Anna, Cal, Bobby, and Russell to help out both with the music and the sound design of the game.

The idea of having multiple people working on the audio with each one imprinting their own personality on the same theme was an intentional move we discussed to support the idea of contrasts that the game portrays: both the contrast between the main characters and the world of lucid, as well as the contrast between the main characters that are the driving force of tension that the narrative revolves around. So we gave each composer their own narrative arc to own the music for, reinforcing the narrative structure as well as the radical changes in interpersonal dynamics we see throughout the game. But we still needed some level of cohesion.

Will wrote the main musical motifs for the game, and then everyone else ran with them and spun them as their own. So there’s a continuous melodic thread throughout the whole game, but dressed in different clothes. From a sound design perspective, we wanted each character to feel unique, with their attack and skill sounds having distinct sonic identities. Troubadour’s heal sounds more melodic, Blackguard’s attacks sound harsh and punchy, Lighthouse spells sound more mellow and solid. I used a lot of synthesis to design those sounds, contrasting them with the more animalistic sounds for the creatures Bobby and Russell designed.

Is there a particular music track, or moment in the game, that you’re most proud of?

ANNA: “Dawn of a New Day” was the last track I wrote for Starweave, and it was the most comfortable and confident I felt while writing for the game. By then, I had become accustomed to the sound palette the other composers and I used, so I honed in on the sombre tone of the scene and the unique qualities of each character’s signature instrument that adaptively played when you talked to them. I think what resulted was something fittingly ambient, like the tracks that came before it, but still melodic and heartfelt; particularly Blackguard’s version is one I’m very proud of.

CAL: A lot of interesting challenges for me came with designing Beacon 4, and how to represent the cast splitting apart, and to convey that in the music. The party members are tired at that point, and one of them says, ‘How many more of these do we have left?’ A lot of my thought process was about creating something unsettling and eerie, while still maintaining that desperate tone.

From what I remember, at least while working on this, Beacon 4 went through a lot of revisions, and personally, I kept going back and forth on whether I wanted to do something structured or let Wwise piece the music together. The track plays random fragments of the main motif, all played in different tonal centers, and some inverted or retrograded. The team is still there, but they’ve been through a lot, and they’ve grown apart a bit, too. It was a fun challenge to piece this together and work with the team to design how this would play out in the cutscene with the random playlist container in Wwise.

AUSTIN: My favorite moment I got to score is definitely the underscore for the scene right before Troubadour's death. I love the tone that shows tension and foreshadowing without going overboard, as the scene still occurs relatively early in the game. It's a big turning point and one of the first demonstrations of what lies beneath the surface and what's ahead for the party.

I tried to give the music enough emotion to sustain the dialogue, while also giving it just a little edge, like it was kind of stumbling or confused. Like many parts of the score, each character got special layers to come in when the player talks to them, and as a little foreshadowing/easter egg, Troubadour's layer is the sparsest, having very little activity, as if something he's beginning to fade away...

What’s your favorite sound effect you designed for the game?

RUSSELL: The Flying Snake was one of the most enjoyable enemies to design audio for, particularly its attack sounds. It consists of three attack stages, each meant to feel increasingly dangerous. The main challenge wasn’t creating the variations, but making sure each stage clearly scaled in intensity. Inspired by a blend of bat, snake, and scorpion traits, the Flying Snake’s attacks were designed to feel like fast, precise stings rather than heavy blows. The focus was on speed, sharpness, and threat, reinforcing the creature’s lightweight and dangerous nature.

AUSTIN: I loved making so many of the UI sounds in the game; it really let me nerd out on all of the different beeps and swishes and what they mean. But, I'd have to say my favorite sound out of all of them is definitely the Start button sound, right when you launch into your adventure for the first time. I love start game sounds; I think they are really important punctuation for setting the stage for what the player is in for, without having enough time or context to really show everything. It's the lights dimming in the theatre, as everyone comes to a hush and the curtains slowly rise.

For Starweave, I wanted to capture both the magic of the reality and the gravity of the fates you would encounter, and I did that with an impactful sound that immediately falls into reverb and cascades into a shimmering, granular wind-chime sequence. Hopefully, it welcomes the player and sets them up for the promises they don't yet know they've made.

[c]Caio Miguel Jiacomini[/c] [c] is a video game sound designer and audio developer. Comfortable with the whole game audio pipeline, he has worked doing everything from creative sound design to audio programming for several titles, from indie to AAA. He currently works at thatgamecompany as an Audio Designer on Sky: Children of the Light, creating a wide range of sound effects for the game and developing internal systems and tools for the audio team. Previously he worked at Psyonix designing and implementing sound effects for Rocket League. Beyond that, he has worked with teams of all shapes and sizes as a freelancer, including being the Audio Director of Starweave. Caio was born in São Paulo, Brazil, where he started studying music at the age of ten with an acoustic guitar handcrafted by his grandfather. In 2017, he moved to the United States to pursue a Bachelor's degree from Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he still lives. [/c]

[c]Anna Iris Hill[/c] [c], also known as v1ris, is a violinist and composer currently based in Rochester, New York. She is writing the soundtrack for TETHERPUNK, a 2D physics-driven action-adventure game, and was an arranger for Chicory: A Musical Tale, the official arrangement album of Chicory: A Colorful Tale made in collaboration with Lena Raine, Wishes Unlimited and Resonant Union. Her violin performances have been featured in the works of peak divide (UNBEATABLE), Alohaii, DM DOKURO, vally.exe/SoundCirclet, and in arrangements part of Chicory: A Musical Tale. She is also the violinist of the band “fabula nova” and has performed live with the Attack on Titan: Beyond the Walls World Tour orchestra.[/c]

[c]Russell Lim[/c] [c] is a game audio sound designer and Founder of JumpStart Audio. His work focuses on designing and directing cohesive audio systems where sound design and music work together to support gameplay, storytelling, and the overall player experience. Originally from Indonesia, currently based in Singapore, he is driven by curiosity in the field of game audio and has a strong passion for problem-solving.[/c]

[c]Cal Tillman[/c] [c] is a composer and music educator who graduated Berklee School of Music in 2022 and currently works as a freelance composer and arranger for games and film, who also teaches piano and violin to middle school and high school students. [/c]

[c]Austin Burkett[/c] [c] (he/they) is a Brooklyn-based Game, Sound, and Word maker and trickster, who doesn't quite get how to write bios just yet. He cannot stop thinking about topics such as ancestry, time, fate, death, and community, and will talk about the beauty of the human condition if you let him. Austin is perpetually in the process of figuring out what he wants to make, but has noticed some recurring themes around breaking rules, poetry in disguise, “play exercises,” the boundaries of the real world, and games as music. His research and thinking revolves around critical theory, education, fascism, love, significance, and identity, usually in relation to the many matters above. Outside of making, Austin can be found playing volleyball, meandering, enjoying cold treats in winter weather, improv roleplaying with dice and friends, and trying his best to do nothing. He is also a graduate of Berklee College of Music, and soon enough, the NYU Game Center. He hopes you have a wonderful day, and you find some extra light on your path.[/c]