Unsonorous

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  A level from the game

Inspiration

After playing Portal and Portal 2 (two outstanding video games), I've been motivated to create my own puzzle game. This game jam gave me the opportunity to try and create one of my own. However, creating a creative and novel puzzle game usually revolves around a special game mechanic, such as portals in Portal and perspectives in Superliminal (another puzzle game). Hence, I decided to go with the often overlooked part of games - sound. Although having sounds come from different directions is common, having sounds not come from certain directions has never been done before. Hence, the idea for Unsonorous was born.

What it does

In the game, the player is tasked to find invisible cubes that are 'Unsonorous', which means that they cannot be heard. While playing, when the player walks past an Unsonorous object, the music that they hear cuts out near the object, allowing them to sense where the objects are. The player can also 'Focus' to extend there hearing range and find invisible objects from afar. The objects allow the player to bypass obstacles and go further into the game.

How we built it

The game was built using Unreal Engine 4 (my first time using it, I've used Unity and Godot before) as it was the only one I knew that had audio spatialization (being able to hear the direction of a sound). The Unsonorous effect is achieved by having two audio sources constantly following the player, with one on each side of the player. During gameplay, there is a raycast in the direction of the audio (for example left) to check if there are any Unsonorous objects in range. If so, it uses the distance between the player and the object to change the final volume of the audio source (eg if you're standing right next to the Unsonorous object on your left, you will not be able to hear anything on your left). When there is an Unsonorous object close to the front of the player, the volume on both sides decrease to tell the player that there is something in front of them.

Challenges we ran into

Originally, the plan was to have audio sources all around the player similar to that of the ones on the left and right. However, I realized that after testing, all the audio sources other than the ones near the left and right were very hard to discern as even headphones could not simulate sounds being near the front of the player. Hence, the Unsonorous sound effect had to be limited to the left and right ears. Making 3D levels was also very hard, so please forgive me for having terrible map design. I was also unable to make a main menu and pause menu so the only way to exit the game is Alt+F4.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The Unsonorous effect works! Its also my first time working on a 3D game.

What we learned

How to make a 3D game and advanced sound spatialization techniques.

What's next for Unsonorous

I am completely stumped on how to improve the Unsonorous effect. However, I could create better levels with better game design philosophy, in addition to adding quality of life things like pause menus.

Built With

• unreal-engine