Hi folks! This is Damian Sanchez, music composer and interactive audio creator. And that picture below is Sonotrigger Studio, from which all the audio in Temtem will come. I’m really happy to have the chance to write today’s update and talk to you guys about our vision and expectations for the audio in Temtem.
As all of you already know, the visuals in Temtem are stunning. Each floating island has its own finely detailed ambiance, and so too will the audio. One of the main challenges of the audio work will be bringing life to all those little sound details that will really make you feel like you’re there.
Rich positional sound landscapes
We could just have a stereo (two-channel audio) ambient track that covers all the sounds coming from a given scene. That would work just fine, but it isn’t enough for what we want to achieve.
We’re going to build rich positional audio spaces where the overall ambience will be generated by tons of little sounds and details coming from the scenario props (trees, waves, buildings, wind zones, etc), with randomly simulated wildlife and, if technology allows, “crowd simulation,” to make places with more players sound busier than more quiet areas in which you are the only Tamer.
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Unique creatures
Temtem are one of the other pillars of the audio work. Each of us will fall in love with one of these extraordinary creatures; some for the powers or skills they have, some because of how cute or cool they look, and, I hope, some just because they love how they sound. The plan is to make a quite charismatic set of “voice” reactions for each Temtem so they will each sound like their own unique personality.
Can you mentally identify 141+ people you know by only their voice? Well, there’s the challenge! With real animal/insect sources, plus some human-recorded voice effects on top and a little bit of audio processing magic, we’ve obtained some quite nice results for a few Temtem so far, don’t you think?
On the music side, we’ve really worked hard to show you what the overall style will be in this Kickstarter. “Temtem Overture” (the exclusive music track revealed) and its variation for the campaign trailer contain the ideas and the feeling that the whole soundtrack is expected to have. I’m working with a very classical orchestral palette with the goal of creating melodies and textures focused on sounding “adventurous and cute.”
We hate “plain” loops
What makes video games different from other arts is the interactivity. So why use linear looping music in a non-linear interactive experience? The music in Temtem will be, as often as possible, adaptive and interactive. I want the players to feel how the music evolves depending on the environment, whether they choose to explore the world by day or by night.
We’ll do our best to avoid ear fatigue and music repetition as much as possible by building complex pseudo-generative music systems for those places in which the melodies will allow it.
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Quality is not negotiable
Believe it or not, all the music you’ve heard so far is performed by virtual instruments, and we are quite confident we’re reaching the high-quality standards a project like this deserves. Although there isn’t a big recording session scheduled yet, we plan to have live performers on some of the tracks to bring more “humanity” to the music. But so far it’s all been production work within the sequencer.
Here you have a little playlist with some of my music highlights, including some tracks from Immortal Redneck, my previous interactive work for Crema.
So these are my thoughts and expectations about the audio for Temtem. I hope this update has given you some valuable information about this part of the development. I’m committed, along with the rest of the team, to bringing you more audio-related posts to show you more about the process in the near future.
And, of course, for those joining
Temtem’s Discord server, feel free to bring up some audio-related topics! I’m looking forward to chatting with you all.
