I decided to make an audio-only web game, so I wanted to make sure I can manipulate sound well. I found a library which can do this called Timbre.js.

So yes, I committed the sin of trying to learn a new library to use for this LD.

The library allows you to chain effects and sounds together, kind of like BuzzMachines or Ableton Live. So for example you can start playing a sound, then feed that through an effect to make it sound muffled, then feed that through another effect to add an echo to it and so on.

This way you can create a rich sound environment that can be changed on the fly. My game starts with you waking up from a coma, so initially sounds are muffled and confused, getting gradually better. Timbre makes stuff like that possible.

It’s very cool and has pretty good docs too, but it still took me a long time to figure things out. After 9 hours of learning I’m just finally getting the basics to work.