Hello-hello! Hope you’re doing well, and are settling into the snow-peppered winter moods. We (Ana & Tom) are deep in the woods of prototyping right now. We can't wait to show you all the specials we’ve foraged, but for this dev update, we're giving the mic to our sound designer, Martin Kvale! 🎤🙌
*Taps microphone* Hey folks, this is Martin speaking! I always feel warm on the inside whenever I notice people enjoying the soundscape of Tiny Glade, so I thought I’d share a bit of what goes into crafting the game’s audio!
Most of the sounds in Tiny Glade have been recorded out in the real world. Some of them come from actual bricks, doors, wood planks. But a fun little secret with audio is that things don’t always need to match reality, and there’s quite a lot of expression to be had from experimenting, and from finding odd sources for sound.
For example, I flip the pages of a small notebook for the flopping roof tiles as we change roof height.
And I use my fingers to go tippy tappy on a table for fences.
Oh, and some sounds that fences make are from chess pieces from my grandfathers chessboard.
kudos to grandma for taking this illustration photo <3
Just like other aspects of Tiny Glade, designing sound is an iterative process. Initially we even had four bespoke audio themes that could be selected in the game, including an instrumental one, and one made with mouth sounds only 😆 Those were fun, but we quickly settled on the one rooted in the real world - there’s just something viscerally pleasant about hearing all the bricks, rocks and paths responding to you, and it helps sell the visuals too. It sorta makes you intuitively understand the texture and weight of the building blocks. Still, Tiny Glade is not about simulating reality - it’s about doodling charming dioramas. That’s why we blend the real with the playful - the subtle tippy taps, chess piece clacks, and the like 😄 When in doubt, we always let vibes lead the way!
If you are interested in the more technical details of our procedural implementation, I recently did a small showcase for the Save & Sound Steam festival to highlight a few ways we work the sounds into the game. You can see it, and more importantly, hear the examples in this YouTube video.
Thank you for reading, and I hope you have a great week!
Love,
💚
-Martin & the Tiny Glade team