H.A.R. VEST

Art work made by Pokopish

In H.A.R. VEST, you play as a scientist that went rogue, one named Jason.

The game plays like a strategic platformer, where the player is rewarded with a better score for finding the quickest paths and saving energy points (the main resource needed to complete puzzles within the levels).

Made in 3 days for Ludum Dare 52: Harvest.

I was in charge of doing the game's soundtrack and sound effects. I wanted to give Jason a recurring leitmotif throughout the game, which can be heard in all but one track of the game. As for the SFXs, I recorded most of them myself, with the exception of the electronic sounds, such as shooting lasers, charging sounds, etc. Those were synthesized inside of FL Studio.

This track serves as the main menu theme and is the first song the player hears when they start the game. I was going for something with a futuristic vibe—something more chilled out, nothing too intense, but also kind of ambitious, making the listener understand that they're about to venture into a strategic, yet playful game.

To translate this idea into the track, I composed the track with just synthesizers to help with that sci-fi vibe, with the only exception being the orchestral drums you can faintly hear complement the rest of the instruments.

The progression is pretty simple on this one, as it's a fairly slow track and doesn't change all that much. One detail you'd be able to point out after listening to future tracks, is track it features a leitmotif to represent the main protagonist, Jason (I'll talk about it in more detail in the next track, you'll see why).

Next up is the level theme! This is the track you'd hear the most while playing the game. Since all the different stages are connected together and segway really quickly between each other, there wasn't really a need to make different themes for them (plus the scope of the game's soundtrack wasn't that big, as this was my first jam entry). However, to make sure the player wouldn't get bored of listening, I decided to make different sections that would loop, and have slight alterations depending on what part of the song it was at.

This one is a lot more active than the previous track. I wanted this one to have a much more active feel to it, so I started composing the drums and the bass. Once I got something kinda groovy, I went ahead and started writing different melody ideas. This is where the leitmotif for Jason actually originated. Despite being the level track, I initially
wrote this song before the menu theme.

Originally, Jason would have a different leitmotif for the rest of the soundtrack, which is the first main melody you hear in the song. But after receiving some feedback from team members and thoughtful consideration, I decided to stick to the other melody.

I had an idea to make a result screen theme for the game. I felt inspired by the approach Sonic Unleashed had regarding the matter, as in that game, a short tune plays, before playing the main result screen theme.

This track serves as a short prelude for "Kinetic". Since I wanted a little anticipation before the player knew what their ranking was right away, this track came to exist!

In the end, I'd say the execution worked out pretty well. Although being such a short track, it fulfills its purpose in a grand matter (I did consider whether to leave this track in the official soundtrack release or not, as without context, you wouldn't really get why this one song is so short in comparison to the first 2 songs in the album)

As mentioned in the previous segment, this track is connected to "High-Powered", playing after them and serving as the result screen theme for the player after completing all stages in the game. It's also re-utilizing Jason's leitmotif throughout it's entire song length.

I decided to make a different variant of each different ranking the player could achieve. The rank itself is determined by how efficient they were with their resources and how quickly they managed to go through all the puzzles.

The different variant's instrumentation is based on how well that rank is. So for example, the D rank variant sounds a lot more empty and less hyped up than rank A, since it's a lower score in comparison. Here are all of the different variants in order of least hyped, to most!

And if the player did really badly in the game, well, this one would play...

Yeah, not so good... Haha.

This one variant is also heavily inspired by the way Sonic Unleashed handled their ranking system. If the player got this rank, it didn't mean they failed the level necessarily, but the game would consider their performance so bad, they might as well have. We took this idea and made this rank pretty hard to get, as to not be really harsh on the players.

Overall, the soundtrack was very fun to work on! I'm happy with the leitmotif implementation, and overall vibe that the soundtrack offers. As it was the first game jam soundtrack I tackled, I'm pretty proud of what I was able to put together in the span of 3 days, and seeing people's feedback during the jam results was very enjoyable.

If you'd like to listen to the soundtrack, feel free to check it out here!

I was prompted with a list of 14 sound effects to make for the game, with each sound being labelled within 4 categories:

Menu Sounds

Button Click
Button Scroll
Button Confirm

Player Sounds

Jump
Airdash
Respawn Button

Electricity Sounds

Single Shot
Lightning Shot
Teleport
Energy Absorption

Object Sounds

Cardboard box destroyed
Laser Hit
Timed Switch box hit
Door open

With that in mind, I had a few ideas of sounds that could be constructed with real-life recordings, and other sounds that would require to be digitally synthesized within a DAW.

Then, I'd categorize these into 2 different sections:

I decided to record the sound effects that could be heard in real-life scenarios, like footsteps, door sounds, the cardboard box, etc. Like most foley sounds, you don't actually need to replicate the sounds physically to get a good sound that translates what's happening on the game screen.

For instance, the cardboard box sound, I used a piece of plastic and dropped it, combined with a swift woosh sound of a bag that creates the initial "punch" for breaking the box in-game.

I would also tweak some recorded sounds inside my DAW to better fit the setting, like the door sound. Since the door in the game looks and acts in a sci-fi manner, I pitched down the sound of closing my door and added another woosh, this time from quickly swiping my fingers on a table.

cardboardboxdestroyed0.wav

Cardboard Box Destroyed

doorclose0.wav

Door Close

These sounds were pretty straightforward, as they all had a similar aesthetic to meet.

Laser sounds, energy manipulation, they all sound very synthesized in most media, so I was shooting for that. Luckily, FL Studio has incredible packs for you to tweak and play around with, and that's exactly what I did.

As an example, I combined a lot of different instruments to create the "Lightning Shot" sound. In the game, there's a quick animation build up, then the projectile is fired from the player's character. To translate this visual element into audio, I used some instruments to make a rising sound, and other instruments to create the impactful "shoot" sound.

lightningshot0.wav

Lightning Shot

Here's some gameplay footage of the sounds working in-game!

As for the sound effects, I think I managed to capture the setting of the game quite well, and I'm pretty satisfied as this was my first time designing SFXs for a videogame.

If you'd like to have a go and play the game yourself, check out the itch.io page here!

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