It also gives you the emotional meaning of each level as well, and so the moments when it's quiet or the moments when it's anxious or the moments when it's scary are almost entirely coming from the audio, because nothing's really changing in the visuals. He just went completely beyond the call of duty on this game and the results are just amazing. And the things that he did-I mean the footsteps allude to it, there's got to be hundreds and hundreds of different footsteps, different types of like 'walking fast', 'walking fast on gravel', 'walking fast on stone', 'stepping on wood', 'falling on wood', 'landing on wood', 'turning on wood', it just goes on forever. It's classic audio designer, he wanted a video game where there were virtually no visuals so it would just be audio selling everything. He told me that this was basically his dream project. Yeah, Alistair just went absolutely mental on this game, there's no other way to describe it. I'm digging myself further into this hole. It just made these really strange sounds, it was perfectly healthy. Maddie the cat, I believe the cat's name was. He just captured the injured cat.ĬD: Yes. It wasn't a real cat, that's what you're saying. He might have used samples of it, but if he was actually screaming cats, that would probably be- ĬD: Oh yes, I forgot. MM: I'm not sure he got cats to scream, mate. just went absolutely mental on this game, there's no other way to describe it. He's just been with us for almost everything we've done. So he did all the Darwinians by getting cats to scream and mewl and stuff, and he did all the music in Defcon, he did Multiwinia. And Alistair Lindsay has been an audio guy since Darwinia, so he's done the audio on every project of ours. Because you can't see anything, but there's no reason why you can't hear exactly what you would hear if you were there, and you can get all these hints from the size of the room that you're in and the terrain that surrounds you just from listening to the sound. I mentioned originally that when we did the prototype I took one of our programmers, Leander, and I took Alistair, audio guy, because I knew the audio was going to be 50% of the game as far as I was concerned.
Sound is absolutely critical in this game.
Was that an important part of the game?ĬD: Yes, it is. One thing that stood out to me is that you backup the visual mechanics with some really phenomenal sound design. We've never really done anything like this game internally, so it's all been quite new and I think that's been really good. We've never really done a first-person game before, we've never done a game where you're walking around a 3D environment, exploring it. It's completely the opposite end of the spectrum to Prison Architect, and it's a real breath of fresh air, you know? But at the same time it's also way out of our normal comfort zone. I think because it's such a different game to Prison Architect as well. I'm really quite glad we picked this one. It's completely the opposite end of the spectrum to Prison Architect, and it's a real breath of fresh air. And I definitely thought that at the start, and I just wasn't sure if other people were going to feel the same way. There’s something kind of weirdly magical about that.
But then as you move, and you see the points moving around you, you start to see the layout of the room and the depth of the room. You scan the first room that you're in and it just looks like a load of noise, and you can't really see anything. I think that there's something magical about it when you first see the colours and you see the depth. I can never really predict what people's responses are going to be. I mean I'm always a little bit surprised, to be honest.