Brain Rhapsody

"Brain Rhapsody" is a 2D Bullet Hell game where you take control of a student having a bad trip in class. The player is able to change between 4 different forms complete with different music tracks to fight enemies and avoid greening out!

Description of Work:

I was one of three people in charge of early creation of the game’s music changing mechanic, as well as the structure of the music itself. This was very important, as it determined what the rest of our game would sound like, as well as what key we’d have to work around when creating sound effects. I in particular decided the genre (drum and bass), rough chord structure,  and helped create the bass and drums for the song. In addition, a bulk of the audio work/sfx was done by me. My primary work revolved around the astronaut’s sound, which included the astronaut’s theme song, and all sound effects for it. In addition, I collaborated on the creation of the mob boss theme, and the saxophone solo was created by me. I also created the majority of sound effects for the game, such as all sfx for the mob boss (save for the firing weapon sound effect), and all sfx for the diver form. I also created the start button sound effect, as well as a pause sound effect, though this latter sound effect was not implemented into the final game. Finally, I also kept and took notes for the group whenever we met to discuss our game. 

Artistic Statement:

I’ve always had a deep passion and appreciation for sound in video games and how it is able to drive a story or convey a given aesthetic, so I wanted to create a game that made heavy use of sound. One of my biggest inspirations for this project was Dead by Daylight, which features lobby music that follows a general tempo and pattern, but changes timbrally based on which killer the player has selected. Additionally, “The Legion” from the same game has music that changes based on equipment selected by the player, and this was another inspiration for the game’s central form-changing mechanic that would also change the music. 

For this project I decided to use Reaper, as I needed a DAW that I was familiar with and had many plugins for. Since I would be making a wide variety of sound effects, I needed many different timbres and tools, and I was confident I could achieve this with Reaper. We also used Unity due to our programming team’s familiarity with the language, and while we did try to use FMod, we eventually scrapped it due to being able to achieve the same results in less work time with Unity.     Ultimately, I wanted to express my love for sound design in video games. I wanted a project where sound played a very important role in the game’s experience, being something that you wouldn’t want to mute or forget about.

Visual Documentation: