Although the "gameplay" doesn't look anything exciting (being a solely black screen) there is a lot going on behind the scene that allows the sounds to reach the player accurately. By using reflect appropriately by the player standing on the staircase (bottom right) while looking towards the top left direction. The sound that is emitted from the washing machine (yellow lines) would be on the right of player but due to the reflect plugin, they would hear it in their left ear, allowing them to accurately follow sounds and place themselves in the world without being able to see.
SoundLight is a unique experience that focusses on bringing an Audio Only experience to the player. You play as a blind child who spends the day with their sister and have to navigate the world following only their sisters voice facing challenging tasks like crossing the road and navigating through a playground.
This game uses high quality voice acting and sound effects that are easily distinguished using Wwise's Spatial Audio systems. This project allowed me to develop my skills in using the Reflect Plugin that Audiokinetic has to offer in order to create more cohesive soundscapes for an environment.
To get the voice lines I conducted a a voice recording session in order to get high quality recordings. Each voice line uses the same attenuation to make sure that each time the sister speaks the volume is always consistent, proportional to the distance so the player can understand how far they'll need to go to get to the next checkpoint.
Each voice line has diffraction and transmission enabled to make sure that it interacts properly with the reflect plugin this allows the player to follow their sister properly through the house making it easier to tell if they need to get around a corner to reach the next checkpoint.
The footsteps themselves were created via foley. In a professional recording studio, I recorded myself walking on a wooden floor to get an authentic walking sound.
During the same recording session, we recorded ourselves blowing in the direction of the mic as well as whistling to mimic bird sounds to help build the soundscape I used for the game. Using a random container each of the disco balls outside will switch between just wind and wind bird tweets. this is means that outside wont be overpowered with bird tweets while still having consistent wind around the player. This makes an accurate soundscape that can help the player really feel that they are outside.
In the section of the playground, when the player stand too close to the edge a heartbeat starts and grows louder the longer they stay close to the edge. I did this using RTPC's in Wwise. I had the min and max of this RTPC go from 0-5 relating to the amount of seconds the player stays near the edge.
For this to work, I had colliders at the very edges of the playground walkways set as triggers, when the player walks into them, it starts a timer that counts from 0-5 and accesses the playerController script to change the RTPC value. I had it set 1 the moment the player walks into the trigger because the heartbeat was too quiet to begin with in seconds 0-1. So by setting it starting at 1 it meant that the player would know when they are close to the edge instantly.
This RTPC is then linked to the volume of the heartbeat loop I have.