The above video shows a selection of projects I created to showcase my skills in sound design for video games. My hope is this reel conveys the areas of sound design I'm passionate about, including creature vocalisations, mechanical movements, and environmental soundscapes.

Each of the following tabs in this section describes my general experience with creating those projects and how they influenced me as a sound designer.

Games presented in the demo reel:
- Doom (2016) - sci-fi first-person shooter made by id Software
- ActionRPG - Unreal Engine 4 example project made by Epic Games
- Valley of the Ancient - Unreal Engine 5 example project made by Epic Games

This was the first project I created after finishing my university course. I wanted to gain more experience in designing sounds for projectile weapons, so I figured that the game with one of the most satisfying shooting mechanics would be a great choice for a sound redesign. I knew that gunshot sounds would be the focal point of this redesign, therefore my aim was to create very weighty and powerful shots for both the shotgun and the laser pistol you see in this footage. The COVID-19 pandemic made it pretty much impossible to record real gun sounds, so I used a few shotgun sound effects I downloaded from various free libraries as my starting point. It did irk me a bit to use sound effects I haven't recorded myself. I tried my best to combine them with my own sound effects in creative ways (e.g. playing around with the timing of attack, body, and tail portions, mixing and matching sounds from different gun types) to create unique sounding gunshots.

Designing vocalisations for demons was also a fun challenge. A lot of vocal processing I've done in the past was for music recording projects in college, so having an opportunity to learn more about creature sound design techniques proved very fruitful for me as a sound designer. I particularly found this video about Venom's voice very helpful in achieving the sounds for the demons in this project, as it gave me a few ideas about how to make the vocalisations sound more "alien-like" without relying on good old-fashioned zombie groans.

Overall, I'm happy with how this project turned out. My aim was to stay faithful to the original impactful sound design of Doom, and I feel I have achieved that.

Originally, the audio for this project was implemented in FMOD as part of my university course's game sound design module. I think of it as a significant stepping stone in my ongoing journey as a sound designer, mainly because it introduced me to using third-party middleware as a way of implementing audio. This in turn allowed me to improve my workflow by utilising its audio processing effects (which saved time as I didn't have to jump back and forth between DAW and the game engine to fix minor stuff) and presenting me with new ways to create varied and intricate sound design. It also taught me a lot about the ins and outs of Unreal Engine and how game audio can evolve beyond the simple audio system UE had (note that this was way before UE's MetaSounds was available for public use).

Fast forward a few months, various file reorganisations and software updates caused the FMOD implementation in this project to break. So, instead of spending time at attempts to fix a project that at this point was over a year old and perhaps not the best representation of my skillset, I took it as an opportunity to reimplement everything in AudioKinetic's Wwise. I found Wwise to be straightforward enough to use that this endevour didn't take much time, and the overall structure of my audio events was left pretty much unchanged between FMOD and Wwise. I also improved on my original sound design by utilising Wwise's RTPC functions (e.g. the healing effect in the footage is actually the sound of picking up a potion going through a lot of pitch and playback speed automation).

Since this project is simple gameplay-wise (i.e. something that would potentially be played on a smartphone) and a bit reminiscent of old-school RPGs in its visuals, I wanted the sound design to reflect that. Therefore, I didn't put much emphasis on designing realistic sound effects, instead relying on distinct sounds that clearly represented the gameplay events they were associated with, e.g. using very differently pitched metal resonance for each character's weapon swings. I also didn't go over the top with the dynamic range, since I wanted the game's sound to be clearly hearable even at lowest volumes.

Valley of the Ancient is probably my favourite sound design project I worked on so far. Having a chance to play with the new Unreal Engine 5 features made me feel like a kid in a sandbox, but more importantly, this project made me aware of various intricacies of AAA standard projects outside of sound design that I didn't have a chance to look into before. For example, how animation states are controlled by the blueprint system for various player actions. I even implemented my own sitting animation just to see if I could do it.

The giant robot (Ancient) was the first thing I designed sound for. I considered the sequence where he rises from the ground to be the most important event in the playthrough, and since the project is very much a linear experience, the sound design had to convey a consistent sense of intimidation that the camera angle and shake did, i.e. it had to sound massive and threatening. Mass Effect's Reapers and Pacific Rim were some of the sci-fi media I looked towards for inspiration to achieve that. I recorded as many metallic hinges, kitchenware, and containers as I could find to have a large variety of sounds representative of the Ancient's armor plates moving around. Combining that with various gravel/rock and motor sounds resulted in over 30 individual sound layers working together to create Ancient's soundscape. I felt that it was needed to create the impactful sound design for the many dynamic parts of this sequence.

I had a lot of fun with the sound design of player character's (Echo) magic. I specifically avoided looking at how magic sounds in different media as I didn't want it to sound similar to one thing or another, it had to be its own thing. I focused on capturing resonances of various objects like metal forks and wine glasses to create the basis of Echo's power. I then combined that with sounds of a deodrant and an ignited match (not at the same time, don't worry) that I moved around the microphone to capture subtle changes in sounds' pitch. As a final layer, I used Native Instruments' Absynth 5 to create chaotic and unpredictable sounds to represent the magic dissipating in the air after impact. What I ended up with is a set of satisfying sound effects that made me enjoy using Echo's powers while playing through this demo. I would love to expand on this project someday, just to create more opportunities for myself to design AAA-quality sounds to match this project's visuals.