Social Media & Community Director Aster Wright had a chat with Usual June Audio Designer Adam Hay! They talk about his process for creating the voices in Usual June, inspirations for the music in the game, and more!
ASTER: Can you walk us through the process of creating the voices in Usual June? What inspired you? How did you make them come to life? What challenges did you face?
ADAM: Making the voices for Usual June has been an incredibly complicated process! When I started on the project, one of my first tasks was to figure out how to represent the characters with sound, as we weren’t planning to do voice recordings. After some initial experimentation I started using vowel sounds made with synthesisers, which eventually became samples of actual voices, which then spiraled into making an entire real time voice synthesiser!! Whoops!
A big early inspiration was Puppycat, from Bee and Puppycat. The show uses Vocaloid to make Puppycat’s made up language, and that became the lofty goal: could I make something that sounded like Puppycat for all the voices for the game? It turns out, after a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and consuming a lot of research papers on speech synthesis, I think I managed it!
It’s amazing how much emotion it brings to the characters, having them speak with the right cadence but using made-up syllable sounds really brings a lot of the scenes to life in a way I didn’t think would be achievable at the start. Dialing in the right emotional tones for being excited, subdued, or whispering to each other has been a long process, but totally worth it!
There’s lots more I could talk about the voices and the made-up language all the characters speak, how it is processed from the in-game dialogue and played back in real time, but I’m hoping to get in to the weeds of how it all works in the future!
ASTER: How do you approach making music for the game? What have been your main inspirations and considerations?
ADAM: The music for Usual June has been such a fun part of the game to explore. Some of the early reference points were a shared love of John Carpenter soundtracks, so there was an emphasis on doing something very synth-driven from the start. I wanted to fuse that with elements from what I guess I’d call Cosmic Hip-Hop (think Flying Lotus and anything on the Brainfeeder label), so the soundtrack is coming out very much a fusion of modern Jazz beats mixed with heavy 80s synthesiser atmospheres. It’s a careful balance of trying to write themes and melodies that might get stuck in your head, mixed with really atmospheric, grungy sounds as you’re exploring deep below Fen Harbor and uncovering it’s secrets. There’s also some Hyperpop influences in the combat music - I really wanted to bring the energy of that genre to the fights in the game.
It’s all filtered through my inherent music making style, essentially a lifetime of influences poured in to one person. Some of those big influences are 90s CRPGs, especially the Squaresoft ones that are so cherished, as well as the Lucasarts adventure games that had these amazingly detailed soundtracks, with fantastic melodies woven throughout.
ASTER: What’s been the most rewarding part of working on Usual June so far?
ADAM: Getting to work with such an incredibly passionate and talented team of artisans! We’ve attempting something very ambitious together, and it’s been a joy to be a part of that creative process. Every time a new piece of writing or environment or new creature design comes in to the game, there’s the thrill of wondering how I’ll be able to add my own sonic signature to it to make it come to life! There’s been a ton of technical systems to make that powers the combat audio to make it really juicy, not to mention the character voices, and it’s been a big challenge with big rewards to get all of these complicated things up and running.
ASTER: What drew you to the project originally?
ADAM: I’ve been a long time admirer of Finji’s games, and when the opportunity came up to work on their newest project, I very excitedly threw my hat in to the ring! An action-adventure hybrid with a mystery involving ghosts and weird creatures from another plane of existence? How could I not be drawn to such a fun concept!
Usual June Stamp Rally
We're hosting a virtual stamp rally for the Usual June demo in the Finji Discord! Complete the stamp rally to be entered to win launch keys and Usual June merch!
Usual June is launching on October 28th, so get those entries in before it's too late!