Here are a few tidbits about how I approached the audio in SSSU.



I wanted all the audio to feel coherent. There is only 3 tracks and a handful of sound effects, and you are going to hear them over and over and over if you play for any significant amount of time, so they needed to mesh well at least.

Music wise this meant deciding on a few instruments that would feature in nearly every track. This decisions is especially important for jams. If every track you write can feature any of the hundreds of virtual instruments available to you, you will spend way too much time pondering, and not enough time writing. Constraints are your friend. You also tend to stray outside of them in meaningful ways as opposed to just adding another instrument to your infinite line up.

Sound effects wise this meant only using a few plugins to effect or color the audio I was using. I find that when you're manipulating a bunch of different sounds with the same plugin they tend to come out with a similar flavor, which is a good, if subtle, way of keeping things feeling connected.

Audio middle ware, in this case FMOD, was a big help on this project. For the Devs out there, I would really suggest getting comfortable with the basics of either FMOD or Wwise (I know, put it on the list...). It really does open a new level of polish for your audio team member(s) though. Most of the SFX were brought into FMOD as individual pieces and then constructed there. This allowed me to alter the pitch and timing of all the SFX and add some randomization to different elements to keep things feeling fresh each time they triggered. It also meant that when I was done creating, I could mix the levels of the entire game, and test it out almost immediately. This meant I could make sure the slimes grunts were not louder than everything else by twofold, or that the menu music didn't make you crank your volume, only to have the game play music blow your ears off.

My main takeaways from this jam are definitely not audio specific, but are important for every member to keep in mind, I think.

Stay organized,
Communicate with each other,
Tell your team members about your crazy idea -  jams are made for experimenting!

If you haven't tried Super Slime Slasher Ultra give it a go!
https://sebastianscaini.itch.io/super-slime-slasher-ultra

I also did a short breakdown of all the sounds for the Cash in SFX for anyone who is interested!
https://soundcloud.com/pflatt/cash-in-sfx-breakdown

Let it also be known here that if SSSU places top 10 in any Ludum Dare categories I will be doing a rap remix version of the soundtrack. Stay tuned.