I’m super pumped to announce that Joonas Turner is doing the sound design for Bleed 2!! If his name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s worked on roughly a million games and properties, ranging from Nuclear Throne and Environmental Station Alpha to Angry Birds and Transformers!! He’s an amazingly talented, creative guy, and his sounds are bringing Bleed 2 to life in a huge way.

Here’s a mini-documentary he made for his work on the upcoming Gunkatana! It’s a fascinating (and fun) look at how audio is made.

So, what does a professional sound designer bring to the table? I’m glad you asked!

Attention to Detail

In the original Bleed, Wryn’s boots made a little scuffing sound as she walked, which was nice. In Bleed 2, there are dozens of noises for walking, jumping, landing, wall-kicking, etc — and not just generic sounds, but sounds for carpet, metal, bricks, grates… it all changes depending on her environment and what she’s doing. Now imagine this kind of detail across the whole game. It really brings the world to life!

Surround Sound

All of my previous games have been straight-up mono sound. It never even occured to me to try otherwise! Now, at Joonas’ (much appreciated) insistence, sounds actually match positionally to their location on screen, and fade out the farther off-screen they get! It’s about ten steps up in terms of quality.

Looping Sounds

My previous games didn’t even have looping sounds, either (any sound that seems to loop is just playing over and over again on a timer.) Now, not only do I have looping sounds, but they change pitch depending on how fast they’re moving, which is another great touch that makes the game feel alive.

Ducking

I had never heard of this, but ducking is where you lower the volume of most sounds, accentuating the ones left at normal volume. So, when powerful actions play on-screen (like a big reflect, or an explosion) most other sounds are ducked for a split-second, lending impact and crunch to the game.

You can hear all this in this playthrough of the first level I did a while ago!

Interview (Part 1)

Finally, I asked Joonas a couple questions about his work, and he was kind enough to give really interesting and detailed answers! So, I’m gonna give you a little taste of it now, and hit you with the rest next week while I’m away at PAX East!

To start, can I get a little info on you and how you got into sound design for games?

Joonas: Ah it’s been a continuum of many things joined together from pretty much when I started to play music in bands way back as a young teenager from where I kinda got into live mixing bands and from live mixing I got into producing/recording bands. After some years I decided I wanted to pursue my sound engineering onwards and looked for a school to teach me further and after years of trying to get in to a school I got into a school which was primarily for movie sound. At the same time as I started school I got more into making my own games and naturally I made the sounds for my own games and noticed I really enjoyed that a lot and as life had it I started to work with other peoples games as well. It all happened kind of naturally, so happy how it all turned out!

What’s the process like for figuring out how a game will sound?

Joonas: For every game the process is always a little different, usually I have a look at the game and ask for concept art or videos or a build of the game to see whats up and if there’s any backstory for the game. From there I start to get some kind of a idea what the games world is about and how it plays so I can start to plan on the feel of the game, to figure out what’s the focus and core that I will emphasis on first. During all this planning I run back and forth with the game/visual designer(s) to see how our visions match together to make a consistent believable world. Usually around these steps I can already hear the game in my head and I make memos for myself and start gathering recordable objects and at times start recording samples so that I can just spring into action and actualize what I heard as swiftly as I can!

Like I said, just a little taste for now! I hope you’ll check out next week’s post, which will detail the specifics of Bleed 2’s sound and how Joonas created it, along with some exciting stories from the world of recording in the field and advice for devs on working with sound designers. Until then!