A Beat-em-up inspired by Hong Kong Cinema

Kick the Habit is a demo project I developed for the subject Game Audio at Sonic College.
The focus points of the development were the dynamic audio systems – including both physics based audio and dynamic combat music – and the humoristic fact, that the only interaction in the game is to kick everything and anything.

The project was created from scratch in Unity using C#, and both the soundtrack and sound effects were created specifically for the project. The implementation of the audio and music systems were done using FMOD.

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Audio Systems

The main priority of the development was, firstly, creating a dynamic music system, which would change in intensity depending on what was happening in the gameplay, and secondly, creating an interactive sandbox which would demonstrate physics-based gameplay with dynamic, velocity-controlled sound effects.

An example of the three dynamic intensities of the combat soundtrack in the game.
(0:00-0:08 low, 0:08-0:16 mid, 0:16-0:33 high)

The music system is comprised of a few different music tracks. During non-combat scenarios, a looping ambient music track is playing. When the player kicks open the door to the next room (level), it will transition into the ‘Low Intensity’ loop of the combat music. After defeating 4 opponents, a stinger will play, and the music will transition into the ‘Mid Intensity’ version of the track, etc. After defeating all enemies in the current room, the music will transition back to the non-combat track.

I developed this system as a way to learn and experiment with dynamic music, and how it could be implemented into a game featuring combos which could be used to control the intensity of the music.