For the final game, I updated the classroom music piece, School Days, removing and adding different sections to sound less dramatic/epic/sinister and instead be more curious and full of wonder. I wanted the piece to be more orchestral than the other tracks as there is a sense of formality and order that comes with going to school.
Category: Sound Design
Musical Soundtrack: Early Childhood Room
For the Early Childhood Room, I composed a track called Robot Rhapsody that uses more unnatural and robotic sounding synths to possess a video-game sound. I wanted to create a sense of playful adventure and carefree imaginary worlds, while also bearing elements of soft and sympathetic emotion and compassion that a 6-8 year old child would have.
Musical Soundtrack: Baby Room
For the baby room, I composed a track, Dreaming Baby, predominantly made of soft instruments such as the harp and flutes to reflect the tranquil and dreamy state of the room with its floating clouds and cot. I wanted to capture the freedom and airy nature of dreaming in the musical melodies.
Musical Soundtrack: Late Childhood Class Room
I composed this piece, Classroom Extravaganza, for the class room which seeks to communicate the adventure, exuberance, pressures and unpredictability that going to school brings to a child’s life. It can also be switched for the Early Childhood room if preferred as its sense of adventure could fit that to.
Musical Soundtrack: Adolescence Room
I composed this track for the Adolescence Maze room. I wanted to communicate the ever changing emotions of being a teenager trying to make sense of their place in their world and being challenged to grow emotions amongst feelings of angst and sadness as the losing the innocence and wonder of childhood while being uncertain of what is to come as they grow up.
Musical Soundtrack: Toddlerhood Room
For the toddlerhood/toy room, I made the following track, Imagination Playstation, to represent the energetic, excitable and hype imagination of a child. I wanted the hyperactive melody to capture the mischievous, curious and waddling nature of a toddler.
Musical Soundtrack: Mid Adulthood Room
I composed the following tracks for the Mid Adulthood Room which sees the player in a dark office, an abstract and gloomy environment with no colour. The emotions in the first track, Lonely Office Life, are that of a deeply unhappy and demotivated individual in a mundane job with their condition hanging over them and deeply affecting their self worth.
The next track, Falling Apart, is for when the room falls apart when the player recovers the object. It is particularly dramatic as it represents the character’s mental collapse under the stress and strain of balancing his unhappy working life with dealing with his condition.
Musical Soundtrack: Early Adulthood Room
I composed the following tracks for the Early Adulthood Room which sees the player make their way through a beautiful forest. In the first track, titled First Love Forest, the mood is happy and relaxed to fit both the natural and peaceful environment and the blossoming relationship of the main character, full of positive wonder and potential and, above all, brimming with young love.
There is also another track, titled Unhappy Household, for when the player enters the house that is situated in this forest. I sought to represent the now melancholic aspect of the player’s relationship as their Alzheimer’s condition has led them to forget things and put on a strain on this loving relationship as feelings of loneliness and sadness creep in.
Sound design of the rooms
Yunjia Chen and I were in charge of the sound design part. After communicating with the room designers, we made the following table.
In the design of the basic sound, we hope to use a sense of unreality to express Alzheimer’s disease. For example, Sonic Detector and Radar, we used synth patches and reversed playback. In the sound design of each room, we communicated with each room designer and divided it into ambient sound and sound effects.
UI Sound
For the UI sound design, we continue the traditional non-realistic sound and make different sound designs based on the same style.
For the sound of the locator that explores the position of the room, we hope to use a sound that can be looped and not annoying, and this sound can also be distinguished in frequency from music and ambient sound.
You can audition some sound design:
Sonic Detector
Picture Appears/Disappears
Highlight Rubik’s Cube
Room Sound Design
We designed it based on ambient sound and sound effects, and recorded footsteps in different materials. In some rooms, we have made special designs, such as transfer Door.
Transfer Door
Also some items have more detailed sounds:
Microscope
In the original idea, we hoped to switch different ambient sounds in the classroom room according to the items we got every time, and made three kinds of sounds: exam, after class (noisy), after school (adding outdoor sound), but in the final game play, we chose after-school sounds to bring players a better gaming experience.
Also, we have a special sound production for dark rooms:
The dark room collapses after being triggered
For more details, refer to声音设计
Musical Soundtrack: Memories Lost
I composed the following track to be one of main themes of the game, titled Memories Lost. It seeks to sensitively portray the sense of memories fading away and how the player’s memories are incomplete due to the condition, Alzheimer’s, that the character suffers from. It represents the later stages of their life, with many memories having faded away and rendering a sad sense of incompleteness as they try to find what they have lost.
The music itself is centred around a melody that will reappear in different forms across the soundtrack in the game, depending on the narrative and the emotions of the room it is in. One of the key things I want the soundtrack to be is cohesive so as to build a strong consistency in the player’s mind and join the rooms altogether in a sonic way.
