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Sound in Keeper’s Veil is going to play an important role in adding immersion and tension to the narrative/atmosphere - almost acting as a character itself - as well as harbouring mechanic functions.
All of the sounds I have collected are from the website https://freesound.org/ and are under the ‘Creative Commons’ category.
Adding sound effects will give Keeper’s Veil so much more depth and really add to the rich atmosphere that we are after. The most important aspects of the game to give sound effects are objects that the player can interact with; for example, the radio.
The radio
There are five different button types on the radio and each will have a distinguishing sound that plays when the player clicks on it. The sounds I will be using have mostly been taken from similar old-fashioned technology to negate any dissonance the player may have experienced if cleaner/more modern sounds had been used instead. For example, the small, round, white buttons on the top right of the radio play a clunky, spring-button sound that was taken from an old projector.
The environmental ambience in Keeper’s Veil will align with the storm mentioned in the narrative. Each game day the weather will sound more intense; starting with some light rain and soft waves on Day 1, gradually worsening to booming thunder and howling winds on Day 3.
I was unable to find a specific track that was suitable to be used as background noise; they all had additional sounds that I didn’t want in the game. For example, you could hear traffic in the background of many of the tracks which is a problem considering cars don’t even exist in our game world! Also, many included sounds of seagulls or other animals, and even though they would diegetically fit in the environment, it goes against the theme of isolation. The player needs to feel entirely alone, with all contact they have with other life solely through the radio/letters - no seagull friends allowed!
Therefore, I decided to mix a track myself! I first found some sound effects that I wanted (see below) and imported them into Audacity.
553390__legnalegna55__rain-sound-effect-gentle-rain-on-window.mp3
363117__thewoodlandnomad__waves-002.wav
84111__benboncan__wind-on-door-short.wav
These are the tracks I will use for Day 2. Ideally, I would have liked to include more tracks to create a rich ambience with lots of depth, but I don’t know enough about sound design to avoid making it sound ‘muddy’. So instead, I multiplied each track to be the same length so that it would loop smoothly in-game and fiddled around with their levels so they could all be heard without being too loud/annoying.