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- Chris Ward
Chris
Ward
Immersion Through Sound: ALIVE_INC
The goal of this project was to collaborate with students in the Game Design course at Clonmel TUS. My colleague Arkadiusz Derezinski and I wanted to create an impactful and immersive audio experience for the 3 games we worked on. I was the composer, and Arkadiusz was the sound designer. The first of these games was ALIVE_INC.
ALIVE_INC is a multiplayer shooter set in a sci-fi universe. The lore and background created by the developers were really interesting, and the scale was ambitious. My aim was to create a score that added to the existing world and emphasised the dangerous nature of the missions being undertaken whilst coexisting with Arkadiusz’s Sound Design. The soundtrack is cinematic, dramatic, and brash. I utilised industrial drums, big brass sections, distorted electric guitars and driving synths to create a sonic character that informs the player of the dangerous world they are entering. These projects are a culmination of the compositional and technical skills I developed during my time at TUS and SRH Berlin.
This work was heavily inspired by the work of Hans Zimmer and Ludwig Göransson.
A big thank you to Zilvinas, Michal and James for allowing me to work on this project with them and for providing the artwork that serves as the basis for the cover art.
Immersion Through Sound: ThreadBound
Threadbound is a horror-influenced puzzle game set in an old mansion, where the player controls a mouse trying to uncover its secrets. I decided to lean heavily into the theme when writing the pieces for this game and opted for a traditional orchestral score blended with electronic and ambient elements. The goal was to support the narrative of the main character and set the tone of the environment the player would be immersed in. The pieces feel nostalgic, scary and sad at times. When composing the pieces, I always tried to imagine how this little mouse might feel in such a scary place, and this informed the melodies and timbres of the pieces.
I tried to represent different stages of the mouse’s life; time is a constant theme throughout the soundtrack, emphasised by old clock sounds being used as percussive elements. Strings are often used to convey the emotions of the pieces, as well as synths designed to sound like old toys from the Kinetic Toys library by Native Instruments. I hoped that these pieces would help to bring the wonderful story created by the developers to life and encourage the player to get immersed in the world of ThreadBound.
This work was inspired by the works of Tobias Lilja.
A special thank you to Ella and Paula for allowing me to work on their game.
Immersion Through Sound: MidNight Combat
The final game I composed music for was Midnight Combat.
Midnight Combat is a retro-inspired boxing game where the player needs to defeat the infamous “Rat King. It has a very strong art style and presents its retro style beautifully. The music for this game served a different function than the previous 2; the majority of it was very much a functional element of the game loop, signifying if the player had won or lost his fights. I used chip tune elements for these pieces to emphasise the art style and often downsampled certain elements to achieve this. The main theme is a Jetset Radio-inspired piece that is highly sample-based around the boxing theme. Just like the game itself, it’s fun and doesn’t take itself too seriously. In the case of this soundtrack, often less was more; the in-game functional music is simple by design.
Full of cheesy horn lines, samples and drum breaks, I wanted to attempt to make the music as colourful and bright as the game is.
A big thank you to Luke for allowing me to compose for his game and for providing me with the artwork used for the cover art.