Designing Sounds For Games
with Ben Ridge
Introduce yourself
I’ve been making music and SFX for games for almost 15 years now, mostly as a freelancer. For the past few years I’ve been more of an audio director type of creature, operating as Unfathomable Audio. Here I work with a small team who help me make stuff sound even cooler.
We’ve worked on some really cool indie gems, a bunch of learning apps with well known IPs, and some higher profile projects too - the most recognisable of which was Overcooked! All You Can Eat.
How can audio shape a game’s feel and identity?
Audio is a great tool for supporting immersion in a world or a thematic idea, especially when other aspects like art or animation styles might not fully show the intention. Audio can show the things that aren’t there visually. If a game has a squid-grenade that just explodes like a normal grenade, it’s up to the sound designer to find creative ways to portray the squiddy side.
For me one of the more important aspects is the weight of a sound. When the ‘roided up bad guy picks up a 750kg greatsword, it obviously looks effortless because he’s hench. Since he made it look so easy, the sound designer has to show how heavy the sword is, and thus how strong the villain is. I’m always super impressed when this is done well. I’ve been playing The First Berserker: Khazan lately and, while the animation shows the weight of the player’s weapon too, the audio does an amazing job of selling it. It makes you, the player, feel like you could cut a planet open. So ace.
What’s your process for designing sounds that don’t exist in real life?
If something doesn’t exist in our world, I’ll look for something about it that does, and build from there. If it’s an alien, for example, I’ll look for whether it has a mouth, saliva, if any parts of it resemble any creatures we know, what sort of materials its body resembles etc. Then I’ll think about whether it’s a sophisticated little guy or if it’s basically a wild animal. Often some of this information is only known by the dev, so it’s worth chatting about these ideas.
From here we’ve got a decent palette to start building and layering with libraries and new recordings. Most techniques are pretty common - pitch and layer animal recordings, gargle some yoghurt, blow through a straw/hog call into slime… So the finishing touch to give it a unique character would be to experiment until you can find at least one little twist or layer that makes it feel fresh. Every time I make any kind of audio, I ask myself “is this just the same default thing everyone else would’ve done, and if so, is that what we’re going for here?”
When it comes to personal recordings vs commercial libraries, using both is ideal, but if I had to pick one it’d absolutely be the latter. This can be quite an emotional topic for some audio people, but for me the end result is the only thing that matters. I’ve seen a lot of sound designers produce low quality work because it was important to them that everything was made from scratch. If someone has better quality slime than me, I’m choosing their recordings over mine! It still gets designed into something unrecognisable either way.
What’s the best way for Non-Audio people to give feedback?
You can definitely give good feedback without knowing audio lingo, but it can help to give examples to help explain your interpretation of the words you do choose to use. I’ve had a dev request that I make a sound more powerful, more more more. And I was basically blowing up speakers at this point. It turned out he just wanted the sound to be longer. It wasn’t about the big impact or the bass or anything, he was just happy with a long reverb trailing off after the sound. I was only able to figure this out when cross-examining the sounds that he did like.
Multiple references is a good way to go in general really. Then the sound designer can figure out what each ref has in common and go “oooh so you mean THIS?” On the other hand though, references are understandably time consuming for some devs to find, and it’s also common for people to only really remember sounds that stood out to them when they were younger. I’ll often receive 90s Nintendo refs for a game that otherwise has a modern, dark or organic soundscape haha. Sometimes it’s better for the sound designer to find/make a selection of examples so they can go through what’s right or wrong about each. It can also help a lot to jump on a voice call and make the sound with your face. I’ve gotten to the bottom of things instantly that way before, and always wish I’d tried it sooner!
In terms of the feedback itself, I’m always happiest when people clarify the aspects of a sound that they did like, as well as what they didn’t. That way I can avoid taking backward steps during the revisions.
Oh, one more thing - if the audio designer is implementing the sounds, it’s best to try to avoid giving feedback on a sound until it’s in game and has been marked as “ready for review.” The difference in the way things sound in and out of context is mind blowing.
For indie teams with smaller budgets, where are audio efforts best spent?
This changes from game to game, so it’s best to have a think about what your main selling point is and identify what your “hero” audio elements should be. If you’re putting most of your effort into super fluid physics or a strong repeating mechanic, I’d say focusing mostly on the relevant UI and/or feedback SFX takes priority. If you’re trying to immerse the player in a more narrative-driven thing, or a game where the emotion or intensity are important, it could be worth focusing your resources more on getting the right soundtrack. If your budget doesn’t allow you to get bespoke audio for the remaining stuff, you could probably get by with designed packs and perhaps even AI these days, but it would be wise to hire an audio person to just run through everything you’ve chosen so they can tweak and make it all fit.
It’s a weird one, but it also helps to know yourself and how you feel about audio. If you want to experiment and iterate a lot, going with an audio designer who charges by the day/hour is probably your best bet. If you’re more interested in having someone else take charge of all things audio without much of your creative input, it could work out cheaper to pay per asset. In either situation, you may be able to negotiate a discount if you’re able to tell them just how many days/hours/assets (minimum) you’ll need overall. It’s also common to get discounts in exchange for a small rev share.
Any tools OR techniques that have been game changers for your workflow?
I still haven’t made the full switch to Reaper just yet. For now I just use it when I need to do things in big batches. That in itself has made my life significantly easier, and it’s not even 0.1% of the aceness it offers for game audio. I’ll get there.
For the actual making of sounds, I think one of the best tips I can offer is to use amazing source material. It makes everything so much more fun and inspiring, not to mention significantly easier. If you have the gear, skills and environments to achieve top notch recordings, that’s perfect. Otherwise you’ll need some of the coolest sounding SFX packs - just make sure (if offered) you get the “construction” versions. This means you can use their recordings to design your own sounds rather than using their already-designed work as a base. It is important (I reckon) that you use the source creatively to make something you can still call your own.
Where to find more about what you are working on?
I’m attempting to write a book about how to be a game audio freelancer at the moment, and could use the accountability haha. I may start throwing it out there in sections for now, on something like Substack, which I’ll post about on my LinkedIn, where I’m always up for a chat in general.
If anyone was interested in checking out our work and our services, www.unfathomableaudio.com is the place for it!
Thanks James!