A Third Person Fantasy Adventure Game
With a Focus on 3D Audio

Abe’s Journey is a short game created by Simon Kærslund specifically for the Sonic College subject 3D Game Audio. In small teams, we were tasked with the creation, composition, and implementation of all the audio and music for the game, focusing on demonstrating the capabilities of 3D audio in a surround sound setup.

The project was a great exercise in teamwork, making creative decisions together, and delegating tasks among us, each serving as a specialist in our allotted areas of responsibility.

My primary responsibilities in the team included creating ambiences and overseeing the overall implementation of the audio systems using Wwise. Meanwhile, my fellow students, Jonathan K. Skovlund and Alexander Vienberg, were responsible for creating the sound effects and soundtrack, respectively.

Ambiences and Implementation

The ambiances of the game were created with a focus on surround sound. For example, in the video above, the foundation of the ambiance is a head-locked surround sound recording of a forest, combined with emitters positioned around the environment to create an extra sense of immersion in the game world, such as a bird-song emitter placed in a tree, insect chittering on the forest floor, and the calls of frogs on lily pads in the swamp area.

For implementation, I set up the work units in Wwise and created the relevant attenuation and reverb settings. I also modified and added to the C# scripts in the Unity project to better suit our needs for how the audio should trigger in the game. For example, I added collision boxes for the house and forest to change the behavior of the ambiences and music. An example shown in the video is high-cut filtering the forest ambience when inside the house and triggering the exploration music when leaving.