Hi everyone!

My name is Alex Villada and I’m the Sound Lead for this project, as well as a member of the Interface Design Team.

So… Sound Design. Sound. Audio. It gets overlooked all the time and that’s part of what makes it so fun – being able to work on something that helps the project and enhances the audience’s experience, while not being in your face, is exciting. I heard this quote once and it stuck with me; it said something along the lines of this: “Sound design is tricky, and the trick is to make things sound believable and good. If no one mentions it, then you’ve done a good job.” I might be paraphrasing but the general idea is that good sound design does not stick out to the listener as unsettling or unfitting. There are so many variables in what makes things sound good that many people don’t think of, which begs the question: “What does it mean to sound good?” That’s a huge discussion for another time – but I do have an example I’d like you to think about.

Pretend YOU are designing sound for a AAA first-person shooter title – what are some things you need to think about? Guns? Probably. Footsteps? For sure. The guy you shot in the leg and is now in agony and despair? Most definitely. Now think about everything else surrounding the action. You need to think about the character’s movement, such as what they’re wearing and how that’d sound during a walk or sprint cycle. You’d need to think of the space the players are in, whether it’s in a wooden cabin, a house, a forest, a cathedral etc. You also need to think about footstep terrain impacts, kill confirmation notifications, hit-marker sounds and environmental sounds, and bullet travel sounds in the distance from other players. This is just a handful of things a sound designer needs to think about when designing sound and even then, there are many more variables that need to be considered.

One of the most exciting things about working on The Hierophant is the fact that it deals with Tarot and its themes. This allows for a lot of creative freedom with how we approach sounds, as some things might want something a bit more realistic, some might be a bit more ethereal or even unnerving and other queues might be flat-out magical. I’m a big fan of sci-fi and fantasy and horror video games and movies – so this is right up my alley.

Thanks for checking out our game, and thanks for checking out my blog post. We at Small Fry Media are super excited to showcase our work at Level Up! in April of 2020.

Thanks all, be good people.

Alex