Goobie's Shell Hunt Audio Process
Skills Practiced
Foley:
I took this game as an opportunity to further develop my foley skills! Even though my game jam team had only three and a half days to make a whole game, I wanted to make our project to have an organic, authentic soundscape. I had to get really creative really fast, which led me to use many strange objects for simple sounds. I shook salt to mimic walking on sandy surfaces, rattled a fork and knife together for walking on hard surfaces, and stirred hot mac and cheese for walking on poison surfaces. I also recorded me and my friend's voice, giving our protagonist Goobie a little voice line whenever he jumped or landed.
Layering Sounds:
I practiced layering audio samples to create fuller sounds that blend into the game environment. I split raw audio clips into two and made each track's pitch different from one another, creating a full effect that's easier on the player's ear as opposed to one stagnant sound. I also used reverb to make SFX sound expansive and cavernous, like the game's deep sea environment.
Saying Goodbye to Work:
Our game has an audio echolocation feature. I attached a short musical jingle to special power up shells and used spatial audio in Unity to alter the sound's volume depending on the player's location. This let the player know how close/far away they were from a power up shell, helping them navigate in darkness with audio cues. Originally, I assigned a unique musical jingle to each powerup shell. While testing in game, I soon realized this may be overwhelming to the player, especially with background music going on. Having one uniform jingle for all shells prevented audio clutter, enhancing the player's experience while also making the sound unmistakable and easy for people to label across all levels. It was hard to let go of 5+ unique musical jingles I put effort into, but I set aside my personal loss in favor of the player's experience.
Challenges
Work Inside Reaper
My setup for the walking in poison SFX! I split the same recording into 2 tracks (PoisonWalk1 and PoisonWalk2), layering them and making their pitches different from one another. I also included the landing in poison SFX in the same file; this made everything more convenient. All I had to do was export separate stems for the land and walk SFX. I recorded sample room static and subtracted it using ReaFir, applying it to master FX so the identical static frequencies are removed from all tracks simultaneously.
Foley Thought Process
Walking/Landing in Poison
I chose salt to mimic walking and landing in sand because it is similar in texture to sand. As seen in the video, I tested shaking the salt at various speeds until I decided on a faster-paced shake (crabs have many legs that come in contact with the surface more often). I made use of the salt's weight by reeling it back for an isolated down shake, mimicking a solid, satisfying land into sand.
Walking/Landing in Sand
I tried to find objects that would make a slimy, goopy sound for walking and landing in poison. So mac and cheese instantly came to mind. Slow stirs mimic the crab walking in poison, while isolated jabs into the mac mimic one-time landing moments.
When I thought about a crab walking on a hard surface, I knew a lot of tapping sounds would be going on. So I chose to rapidly collide a knife up and down between a fork's prong (this surprisingly took a lot of coordination). I tried tapping the fork on different places on the fork to get different pitches, until I settled on one that was clear and bright enough for quality purposes. To create the land SFX, I tapped my fingers along the knife (in a wave motion, like tapping fingers on a table). This delayed some of the taps, simulating the crab's legs on hitting the ground all at once.