Author: Phoenix Hendricks

It’s finally time for our game to take flight!

After working for a long year, running into road bumps, problems, and difficulties along the way, our game has finally hit the show floor! On Wednesday, we attended the Stout Game Expo, where all of the Game Design students at Stout showcase the games they have been working for the past few months. We were blown away by the attendance! Just look at all of these people!

If you look over to the right, you can see our display.

And here’s a closer look! We had an incredible turnout and quite a lot of positive reception. Many people were interested in our game, and we got to talk to lots of people and share a few of the experiences and wisdom we had garnered creating the game. We were even voted to be the best 3D game of SGX! Overall, I’d consider it a huge success!

That being said, it’s been a long year but we’re finally getting ready to wrap up…

Well, not quite yet. Right now, we’re currently at GlitchCon to show off our game. Unfortunately, it’s too late to purchase tickets, but if you’re attending please be sure to look for us!

Additionally, and perhaps more relevantly, we’ll be appearing at the School of Art and Design Senior Show on Friday May 6th! The show runs from 5pm to 9pm and will showcase senior projects developed through the semester, including our very own Everend. If you missed us at SGX or would like to see it in an even more polished state, be sure to visit us at the show! Attendance i

It’s been a long year of work, but the entire team is extremely proud of the game Everend. We’ve poured our hearts and souls into this game and we are ecstatic that the game had such a warm reception! We cannot wait to see what opportunities we’ll have in the future, whether it be further showings at conventions or eventually further developing our game. We look forward to seeing what heights our game soars to!

There may be more news to come as May rolls around, so we’ll see you around then!

Hey, everyone! Phoenix here. In one of our previous posts, we posted a sound clip we recorded while we were in Crystal Caves. In case you missed it, close your eyes and take a listen:

(If the player is not working, download the audio file here!)

Really brings you there huh?

It might be something you take for granted while playing games, but audio like this is what really helps pull you into the experience. If you can, try sometime to play a game without the audio on and you might understand where I’m coming from.

This leads me into sound design for games. Sound in games tends to be a part of game design most people don’t consider as it’s something we don’t usually actively notice it while playing a game. This is because sound is a very subtle way of breathing life into the game, usually in tandem with action. It’s also a way of giving character to a game and to put things in context. A door can take on many different meanings depending on how the door sounds when it opens, when it closes, when it’s knocked on: you can tell whether it’s metal, wood, thick, thin… Kind of funny how much you can tell about something just from how it sounds. In tandem with graphics in animation, it can really make a game object convincing!

Not only this, but it can also provide players with information even when they aren’t looking. With so much going on in one screen, sometimes those little audio cues can help. For example, having a jump sound will let a player consistently know if their character jumped, even without having to look. With these audio cues letting us know what’s going on, it becomes easier for players to pay attention to other things in the environment or for players to tune into events happening in the game world. Audio certainly does a lot for players!

Now how does this tie into level design?

As part of the design team, I’ve worked closely with them to help develop some ideas for how the world is set up and how to help players build skills they’ll need later in the game.

This is an example of some of the level design I’ve worked on for the game. If you’ll take a look, you’ll notice on a few of the images I have labels such as “S: Waterfall.” This is what I use to keep track of what sounds we’ll need. While designing a level or even portions of a level, it’s important for me to keep track of potential sounds we need for the game so labels like these can help with that task. Every thing we add bumps up the number of sounds we need until we get a list something like this:

This isn’t even the whole list and it’s already quite a lot!

With so many different sound effects to include it’s important to keep track of them in a list like this. This ties into level design with keeping track of all of the features of a level, from environments to objects to creatures. When something is added into a game, more than likely it will need a list of sounds to accompany it. This can range from the short list the mole has, to the lengthy list the player has, to anywhere above that! By keeping track of what’s going on in a level or in a feature in the game, it helps ensure you develop the list of sounds you need. In the end, your game could have dozens or even hundreds of different sounds and it’s important you make sure the sound is there. The player is listening.