As you may have seen if you played some games in this jam, sound is an often overlooked aspect in game design (specially in game jams, where you have little time). Even when not completely ignored it sometimes feels like it doesn't fit into the game, like it was an extra piece put at the end just “because you have to”. But sound is actually a fundamental part to making a great game because it contributes to the overall game feel and can serve a wide variety of purposes! Some of them are feedback (giving the player information on their actions), helping the narrative (music can tell A LOT just by itself, just imagine it being paired up with good characters like in Undertale), or it can simply reinforce the character of a game.

In Robbie I tried to create audio that would fit into the dystopian world and make the experience more fun.

I had very clear from the beginning that for the music I would use synths, the protagonist of the story is a robot so I felt like synthetic sounding music would be the correct choice. I used massive since it gives so much control over the feel of the final sound and I simply love it.

For the effects I used A LOT of bitcrushing, which basically distorts the sound to get a bit of a lo-fi, weird sounding, distorted sound. The game also uses dynamic music so when you do one of the two important advancements a new instrument kicks in. This also gives the player a message that they are going in the right direction.

Sound design was a similar process, lots of bitcrushing and layering, which is one of the most important technique used in sound design. Layering consists of playing several sounds together to get a result with character and personality.

For example, the “jump” sound was created using four different layers: a pneumatic bomb flushing out some air, the same sound again but pitched down an octave to fill the lower frequencies, a weird match-like sound to give it more impact and finally the sound of a motor faded in and out.

I couldn’t spend as much time as I wanted on sound design because I also had to code but I hope this post had useful information in it :D

Feel free to check out and rate our game and happy game-making! <3