Sanguine Sacrilege
(Video game, 2023)
- Musical composition
- Music production
- FMOD logic/design
- FMOD implementation/audio programming (C#)
- Audio asset design, editing and placement in Unity
This project was done over the course of 9 weeks, in collaboration with 9 other developers (a sound designer, a game writer, 2 game designers, 2 3D artists, an animator, and 2 programmers).
Sanguine Sacrilege is an isometric action roguelike, in which the main character goes on a holy mission exploring a temple in 16th century Mesoamerica, in search of a mysterious relic. The further she ventures, and the more she gives in to the temptation of the temple's inherent divine powers, the more she begins to question both her quest and her faith.
In the game, the player traverses the temple room by room, defeating the hoardes of enemies in one room before being able to enter the next. The player can choose to listen to the gods of the temple and receive various divine powers, by sacrificing blood at blood altars, or, choose to keep following the god who gave them their mission, with the promise of entering heaven as a reward.
In this project, it was important to me as a composer to represent the theme and environments as authentically and respectfully as possible, within the scope of the project. This meant researching what type of instruments, tonalities and compositional structures would've been typical for 16th century Mesoamerica, and drawing inspiration from that.
This resulted primarily in percussion patterns inspired by the tonal teponaztli drum; using certain wind instruments; as well as the usage of a so called "death whistle" which is believed to have been used during sacrificial rituals.
FMOD/musical concepts include:
- Adaptivity: The music changes depending on whether there are undefeated enemies left in the current room or not.
- Combat theme variation: When entering a new room the combat theme varies slightly by having different intros, selected randomly from a set. Then, depending on the selected intro, the music transitions into a corresponding part of the song.
- Stem fade in by distance: Depending on the avatar's distance to certain objects, different stems fade in and out. Close to the blood altars of the temple, the main character hears the whispers of the gods, tempting her to sacrifice her blood in exchange for divine powers. When entering a church room on the other hand, more traditionally european instruments can be heard, like bells, choirs and harpsichord. Some instruments have been manipulated and distorted to emphasize the sense of entering a mental space as the church rooms aren't really a part of the physical temple.
Audio programming in C# and implementation in Unity:
- Audio manager in collaboration with the sound designer. Working mostly with scriptable objects.
- Music manager, audio triggers and audio scene settings scripts and prefabs.
- Audio scene settings script designed for ease of use for all team members. For instance, all rooms of the temple were created as separate scenes in Unity, and depending on which type of room a scene contained, the script enabled anyone to determine the music for that room, simply by selecting a room type from a drop down menu in the inspector.
- VCA sliders functional in pause menu.
