Show Notes
In this episode, we talk with Antoine Vachon, audio director at Rogue Factor, about the development of their brand new single-player game, Hell is Us. Through our conversation, we explore how things went for the team when exploring the aesthetics of this brand new IP, how being a AA production empowered them to build the game they wanted by taking some wild swings, how technology has reached a point where it's feasible to work with a relatively small team while achieving high-production values. We also chat about his influences, the role music plays in their game, the team's approach to using sounds as a narrative tool and so much more.
More from Audio Logs
In this episode, we're taking you to the battlefields of WARDOGS, the brand new tactical shooter from UK developper Bulkhead Studio. We met with audio director Sean Garavan and Albin Jansson from SweejTech who helped build some of the technology powering the game's sonic presentation. The game's just entered early access about a month ago, and so we thought it'd be interesting to get a better sense how things are going behind the scenes. We talked a lot about how the team has managed to meet player expectations, especially given the type of game they're creating. We also dove deep into the inner-workings of how early access has them approaching the evolution of the game, how they're reacting to player feedback, what ambitions they had before launch, and what they've got their aim on for the future of WARDOGS. Hope you enjoy!
Ready to go on an adventure? In this episode, we're taking you to mythical lands as we're chatting with composer Patrik Jarlestam about his work on Iron Gate Studio's Valheim. The game got its big 1.0 release back in September, so we thought it was a good time to talk with Patrik about his experience and how it evolved throughout the past 5 years of early access. We took a deeper-dive than usual when it comes to the nitty gritty of writing music here as Patrik took us on a journey that shed light on his interpretation of Viking music, how he came up with a tone that was inspired by nature and Scandinavia, and obviously so much more. Hope you enjoy!
How do you remake something as monumental as Halo: Combat Evolved? Join us as we sat down with Becky Allen, Sun Kim and Ryan Schaad from Halo Studios to hear about their story and how they approached this from the audio-perspective. This episode was recorded and scheduled to release before yesterday's layoffs impacting the many devs, including our three guests, at Halo Studios and across the XBOX umbrella. The whole situation got and I to think about whether even releasing this episode made sense. After checking in with Becky, Sun and Ryan, we all decided that it was best to move forward and to celebrate their work through these difficult times. Our goal will always be to shine light on the people and on their work creating the games we explore. This episode is no different. The context is sensitive, and so we're hoping to inspire and spread some positivity across the global game development community throughout these difficult times that keeps on delivering brutal blows to the entire industry with this episode. In the spirit of focusing on the bright side, we're humbled to be able to showcase the awesomeness of our guests for this Halo: Campaign Evolved episode, and we're sending all of our support to everyone that's been impacted. Taking a classic and modernizing it has to be a daunting challenge, so we spent a lot of time picking our guest's brains on the kind of thinking and philosophies they adopted when bringing this project to life. With 25 years worth of design and technical evolution between the original and this shiny new remake, the team had to assess what would work and what was best left untouched to ensure that the game felt both like a modern AAA 2026 game, while staying faithful to its source. Becky, Sun and Ryan were extremely generous sharing their many insights on all things audio. This was our first time covering the production of a remake, and so we both learned a lot from our conversation. This is a topic that isn't often talked about, so we're absolutely thrilled to be bringing it out to you all.
Number 20! We've reached a big milestone and wanted to take this opportunity to do something a little bit different. We met with Em Halberstadt and Nicholas Zhang from A Shell in the Pit to talk about their work on House House's latest game, Big Walk! This episode is really special as it's our first time chatting with our guests from within the game we're exploring! This led us down a bunch of unexpected paths that were absolutely a joy to dive in. Em and Nicholas gave us a peek behind the approach they went with to sound the game, how they gathered sounds that balanced the grounded and whimsical, how they wrangled the unpredictable with the in-game proximity chat system, and so much more. Hope you enjoy!
In this episode, we're joined by Andrei Castañon to talk about his work on the early-access life-simulation game, Paralives. Since Andrei is the sole audio developper on the game, he's had his hands on all things audio. He very candidly took us across on a journey sharing his experience joining the team, composing the score, designing the sounds, facing the many challenges that come from sounding a cozy life sim, creating the in-universe language, and a whole lots of insights on the realities of the indie game dev scene. Hope you enjoy!