Since the crit we had as a group we have been working towards implementing the feedback provided.
One thing that’s working well was that the music and sound effects were really good and fit the idea of the game really well. We thanked them for their feedback, they said the music as well had a lot of layers which felt nice and didn’t clash too much with the game. As sometimes overly complex music can make a video game distracting to play as your brain is listening to the music rather than concentrating on the current action.
One thing to add or change. One student said a variation of sound effects, they enjoyed the music and the sound effects Jingya had made, but they offered the feedback that perhaps we could change them in between levels. Or create more variations of the sound effects we have created already, to allow an element of immersion that comes from variation in sound.
One positive overall. A student noted that what we did was a good job and they were very impressed with the music compositionally and creatively. They enjoyed our presentation and our take on what the MA students wanted us to do. They thought our ideas fit the game’s aesthetic perfectly and were excited to actually see the finished product.
Tutor Feedback. We were told similar to the student’s feedback, that our presentation was professional and excellently communicated as well as our slides were valuable to showcase our work. Our music fit the work correctly and even though we only showed one level, we were told that it was excellent and that the development should continue more and expand based on our ideas. As well to this we were congratulated on our work together as a group and that we should be very proud of our work ethic and attempts of working with the MA students as it took them a while to deliver anything for us to base the sound work for. An important part of the feedback which no one had said except the tutor was the idea of our perspective as sound art students, typically game design students will only think about the most obvious sounds. For example footsteps or breathing, shooting. But as sound artists and sound designers, it is our responsibility to think about everything that sound can encapsulate and how we can use sound to enhance motifs. Fear, strength, comfortability, a sense of place, all these things can be displayed with sound.
We took this all on board and did some final touches on our submission for the MA students, Jingya did some variations of the sound effects and typing keyboard noise. I and Will created some varied tracks for them to use across levels in the game. I also created a soundscape to go along with the levels as I felt even though the music was playing it needed a base layer of machinery noises.