In ROOM-9, I wanted the sound effects and music to exist as a way to maintain rhythm and pressure. Like the environment, art, and UI, the purpose of sound is to make the player feel the sense of pressure caused by time and space.
Overall Sound Design Ideas
Overall, I wanted ROOM-9’s sound to be slightly less existential. The game will not continuously play obvious background music, and most of the time will be mainly ambient sounds and basic sound effects. This will prevent the music from dominating the player’s emotions. The silence itself is a source of stress with this design.
While there is no clear countdown displayed in the game, sounds can help build the player’s sense of time without directly prompting them. For example, as the poisonous fog advances, the ambient sounds can change slightly, becoming lower, allowing the player to subconsciously feel the tension. But it won’t be a very abrupt cue sound, more closely resembling a gradual build-up.
In the room, sound effects take on more of a behavioural feedback role. For example, when stepping on a button, triggering a mechanism, completing a challenge, and so on, there will be related sound feedback. The overall sound effect will be relatively simple, just telling the player the result of the action.
Related Research
In the direction of sound design, ROOM-9 references games that are also very restrained in sound, but with clear feedback:
LIMBO
LIMBO uses almost no traditional background music, with only ambient and base sound effects most of the time. It is this seemingly quiet sound atmosphere that keeps the player in a constant state of unease and alertness.
Danger does not appear through music changes, and the player often learns that they have made a bad judgement only after they have acted. This delayed feedback prevents the player from relying on the sound to make a judgement, but only through experience and feeling.
This design approach makes sound part of the environment. The sound doesn’t tell the player what’s going to happen next, and even in moments of relative safety, the background remains in a low state of sound, making it difficult for the player to truly relax.
INSIDE
INSIDE’s sound design is much more closely related to spatial and rhythmic changes. There is no constant background music for most of the game, and the player hears more ambient noise, footsteps, and some vague sound effects already.
These sounds occur naturally as the space changes. When the environment becomes closed or the tempo speeds up, the sounds become denser or lower; on the contrary, in relatively open areas, the sounds gradually decrease in presence.
conclusion
By analysing the sound design approach of these two games, I gradually clarified ROOM-9’s overall direction in terms of sound. These two games share a similar design approach, both choosing to restrain the presence of sound, not using it to directly influence the player’s judgement.
I wanted the sound to be part of the environment, silently influencing the player’s mental state. Let the judgement really happen in the player’s feelings, not in the guidance of the system.