UrZoo Developer Diary: Audio

Sound Designer: Armin Elsaesser

Having written music for alien landscapes (Savage Moon on PS3/PSP) and monster-destroying cities (Eat Them! on PS3), UrZoo presented a new and interesting challenge for me. Being a social game about animals and nature, I wanted to create a sense of fun and contentment for the player. I also wanted the sound effects to have a natural feel to them, so I charged up my portable Zoom H4n and headed to the local city farm…

It was a lovely summers day with plenty of chattering parents, shouting kids and bleating goats. I managed to record some great ambiance which will be played in the background during the game. You can hear a snippet of it here:

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For the music I wanted to retain the players attention without it becoming too repetitive. To achieve this I figured the best approach would be to have more than one music track play during game play. To avoid the music sounding like one long play list, the tracks will loop a few times, each interspersed with background ambiance (you heard earlier) to break up the music.

Continuing on the theme of nature I wanted to use music that would reflect this. I paid a visit to Simon Fossey, a banjo player of some 30 years. With my handy Zoom recorder I captured Simon in action playing some free-style bluegrass. You can listen to some of his music here:

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The next stage is to take the banjo recordings into Ableton Live, chop them up into individual notes and sections, then remix and mix down. You’ll have to wait until the game is released to hear the end results of this!

More developer diaries coming soon