Edo Edo was the first game for which I served as the games primary lead along with another co-lead. The project hosted over 40 other developers and had a 3 quarter long development period. Edo Edo was created because of my love for card games - Hearthstone and Shadowverse being my two big influences with Slay the Spire also being a major inspiration. Our goal with Edo Edo was to create a game that was both fun and easily digestible, but also with enough complexity to make the game interesting.
Edo Edo spans over 5 playable regions, with each region having unique enemies and bosses. Furthmore, the player can choose to play as several Chefs, each with their own unique abilities and playstyles. Because of the ambitious nature of the game, I chose to onboard a larger team of audio developers, as I also served as the audio lead of the game. In total, we had 6 audio developers who were in charge of composing the games nearly 20 soundtracks, hundreds of sound effects, and all of the integration that the game required. My role in the audio pipeline was to be "the FMOD guy" who did a vast majority of the audio integration, but also trained several of the audio members, equipping them with the tools to also implement in Engine. 

TTIwaITaSPtAW was my submission to the GMTK Game Jam and is an arcade-style game where you score points and build a combo meter by running people over with a truck. The game uses FMOD as its middleware solution. The music for this game was made in Flat and Musescore 4 and then mixed and mastered by another member in my team. The main gameplay track enhances the thrill of the game and follows a similar instrumentation and style as my theme from another game I made,  Mystical Magica. As with many games I have participated in around this time period, audio TTIwaITaSPtAW was implemented solely by me. Most sound effects for this game were sourced and then edited from online libraries, which included many sounds derived from cars, such as a car door opening. This game also featured a fair bit of voice acting, which was provided by members of my team. I decided to use FMOD for this project to make randomized sounds a little easier to implement, such as voice lines for when people get run over.

Five Nights at Peter's is a game inspired by the popular Indie horror game, FNAF. Unlike many game projects I worked on around the same time, I only acted as the audio designer for the team and not the implementer/engineer. For this game I wanted to employ many of the audio tactics employed by Scott Cawthon, the creator of FNAF. An example of this is making the jump scare scream out of a regular child's scream, and then editing the audio to sound like a jump scare. Other examples include the manipulations of pitch and EQ on mundane items to create the ambient sound in the game. An example of this in Five Nights at Peter's is the use of a heavily pitched down and bass-boosted fire alarm being used in the fire alarm. In FNAF, Cawthon's use of the constant whine of a desk fan increases the tension the player experiences as it is a noticeable sound that the player is unable to control, yet present the entire duration of the game. This effect was emulated in Five Nights at Peter's and to do so, I utilized the coil whine of a computer graphics card to proviude the constant, high pitched buzz te p-layer experiences in the game. The audio that I used for the opening and closing of doors was similar to that of the doors in one of my other games, Overgrowth, and I used the same strategies to create them. The non-lethal scare sound the player experiences when the animatronics are in close proximity to the player was created by heavily pitching down a chord played by an orchestra in Muse score 4. Much of the UI sfx in the game, like cameras and light switches were a result of foley taken from buttons and switches I found around my house. The telephone ring in the game is a recording od the telephone I have at home.

Notably, me and the other audio engineer for the team managed to convince the chancellor of UCI, Howard Gillman, and UCI professor Constance Steinkuehler (lead of the Game Development and Interactive Media major at UCI) to voice act in this game and narrate speeches that served as instructions an story for the player. I then was in charge of manipulating the audio files recorded from them to sound like they were speaking out of a phone.

WALL-B was my entre to the SGDA 2023 Game Jam and my first game jam to use FMOD as its audio engineering solution. The game was heavily inspired by Bennet Foddy's Getting Over It, as the player tries to complete a platforming course with hugely unintuitive and difficult controls. Failing parts of the obstacle course sets the player back and they have to redo much of their progress. The use of dynamic audio was present in both the music and sound effects in the game. The main track of the game starts off calm before ramping up to a faster, more flustered phrase, meant to emulate the player's anger as they progress. With FMOD, I included a feature that as the player progressed through the course, the music continuously increased in both pitch and tempo although subtle when the player is slowly crawling through a section of the game, this effect becomes very apparent when the player fails a part, gets flung back down the course, and the music suddenly drops in energy as pitch and tempo take a nose dive. FMOD was also used to change the music when the player opens the map, panning out the camera reveling the immense amount of track the player still must progress through. Opening the map seamlessly transitions the music into an out of tune, kazoo rendition of the music track in an effort to mock the player for their lack of progress. FMOD also allowed me to at randomly play ambient voice lines that taunt and make fun of the player. Voice lines were played at random and at random times, with the exception of one voice line that was set to always play 10 minutes into a run. Beyond this, FMOD was also used as an easy solution for varied pitches of the repeating sounds, like when the player collides with a surface. This metalic clank! that plays when the player collides is the hidden metal pipe falling easter egg in this game jam game. This game also features a title song, cutscene song, and victory screen song which all play at their appropriate times. 

Astral Onslaught! was a 2 quarter long project that started with a group of 5 during Winter Break and eventually became the largest project in terms of personnel at UCI's VGDC. The game is a platform fighter, akin to Super Smash Bros, and the playable characters are members of the western zodiac. For this project, I was the lead audio designer and engineer, in charge of creating the sound track, sound effects, and audio engineering solutions for the game. For this game, I decided to use the FMOD middleware solution. To make various solutions more easy to implement. An example of this is how music is handled between scenes. If for example, I wanted the music to play for the first few scenes and then switch to another track or turn off on the next scene, FMOD parameters would allow me to shut down the music exactly when I wanted. Making said parameter a global parameter would also let me shut off any other sound effects associated with the parameter when switching scenes, too.
One key component of my efforts in Astral Onslaught was the Audio Library system that I created in the Unity editor. The Audio Library was a system that made dragging and dropping character sound effects onto the character easy enough for anyone on the team to do. Since each character had a variety of movement options and attacks, they required many sound effects and the Audio Library was created to centralized where all of a character's sound effects were located. This system also accounted for online interactions, as this game was online. I implemented the Photon RPC system so that by default, whenever a character sound was put onto a character, it would be heard across all devices connected to a game server. The Audio library provided other levels of customization, including the capacity to accommodate characters that required more or less sfx than the average character (the character Capricorn, for example, featured almost double the amount of attacks as the other characters) and allowed for moment audio that could be changed to reflect a faster or slower character movement speed via a changeable value. 

Sound design-wise, Astral Onslaught! features 7 music tracks composed by me, a full suite of UI sfx, and hundreds of character sound effects and voice lines. In total, there are 569 audio files that are in use in the game, most of which were created my me. Each playable character - 8 in total - has a full suite of movement and attack sfx, as well as full voice acting. This was the first game that I participated in to involve cva, and I was able to learn a lot about vocal direction from it. We wanted the voice talent to be able to convey genuine emotion (like pain when getting hit or excitement when landing a cool attack) while still seeming believable. The Audio Library accounts for the dropping of voice lines onto the character depending on the character's action, and voice lines were selected/randomized in FMOD.

Overgrowth was my submission to GGJ 2023 and is a puzzle platformer where the player can spawn small children from the main playable character in order to solve a series of puzzles. Two key features of this game from an audio perspective is that over 5 and a half minutes of music were composed for this game, and that nearly all sound effects in this game are unique, with a vast majority being produced from foley.

The music in the game was supposed to be ambiant noise more than anything else, as we wanted to stablisty an unsettling, horror atmosphere in the game. Because of this, I composed the gameplay track to be long enough that the player will rarely, if ever, need the track to loop during a single puzzle. The title track is largely a continuation of the gameplay track and helps to establish the mood of the game.
Nearly all of the sound effects are unique, and often required the use of foley to be produced. The sound of the futuristic doors closing, for example, were done with a rolling bowling ball while the sound a turning switch used a garbage truck. The falling platform used the sound of a metal pipe falling, which became a hidden easter egg in subsequent game jam games that I participated in.

I was able to spend so much time making a lot of music and sfx because I was not the only person on my team handling implementation.

Mystical Magica was my 2nd freelance project I participated in as a game designer, in which I learned about this opportunity through Audio Strike, which is VGDC's freelance audio system. My task was simple: create a gameplay track that was reminiscent of the energetic action tracks in anime. The track was required to feature the electric guitar, being its only instrumental parameter. The track I created, Magic, features a suite of electric percussion and synths, the Japanese koto, and the aforementioned electric guitar amongst other backing instruments. After working with the team for a short while, I presented the final version which was implemented into the game by the teams programmers. 

Keeper of Time was my first 3D project as well as the first game I made to use FMOD as the game's audio middleware. The necessity of FMOD came from the sheer complexity of such a long 3D game, and an advanced middleware was determined to provide more ways to immerse the player with audio. Throughout the 3 quarters (roughly 9 months) of production, me and one other audio designer were in charge of composing the music, creating sound effects, mixing, and integration of audio into Unity via the FMOD middleware. The first quarter of the game entailed a mostly hands-off approach to audio from the team, as the game was largely in preproduction (quarter 1 was during the Summer). During this time, I spent my effort learning about FMOD and creating protype music tracks for the game. I tinkered in several FMOD demos and learned a little bit of C# to prepare for the project. During this time, I also created the Original Age of Fire theme, which I had expected to be in the final release. 

The second quarter of the game was the start of production and was when I startred the integration of audio into the game. Along with the other audio designer on the team, we used FMOD to integrate procedurally generated footstep sfx that changed with terrain, coins that played different pitches when being collected in a row, and other more basic sound effects like jumping and fireballs.

During quarter 3, we had to cut down on the scope of the game and the Original Age of Fire theme was forced to be cut in favor of newer pieces of music that would fit the game's new scope. This lead to the result of the other pieces of music in the game, which were made to reflect he somber mood of the game. In FMOD, I created a system for the music where the music would seamlessly transfer to a different track whenever the player entered a new region of the game. I also utalized 3D positioning to impliment sounds that were positonal, such as waterfalls and the ocean.

evelop  is one of 2 games I participated in for the 2022 LCAD Game Jam and was the main game that I worked on during the jam. The premise follows a bunny as it slowly gets corrupted by its toxic environment, which causes it to mutate into a larger, version of itself increasing its jumping power while also its size, hindering its ability to access tight spaces. The song that plays is dynamic, and more instruments are added to the score as the player gets corrupted. The song starts off with just the piano and ochestral instruments, before adding a drum set, and eventually, electric guitars. Unlike subsequent games that I have made with dynamic audio, however, I did not use the FMOD or Wwise middleware and used the default Unity sound system instead. To be precise, the script I wrote in Unity had different layers of the song "turn on" when ever a bunny condition was met. evelop also had a suite of sound effects made for it but were unable to beintegrated due to time constraints. 

Blob... Just Blob was one of 2 games that I worked on during the 2022 LCAD Game Jam, with the other one being evelop. I had agreed to help another team make music and sound effects for their game in exchange for their programmer teaching me how to implement dynamic music into evelop via the stock Unity sound system. The title song was created to encapsulate the no-thoughts-head-empty demeanor of the titular Blob, which I think was accomplished well enough. The sound effects that I made, particularly for the slime, were meant to make the Blob sound fluid while in movement while still being one singular object: more like a round bouncy bubble than a viscous slime. I created the sound effects for Blob without seeing any of the Blob's animations, which did inevitably lead to a slight disjoint between what the Blob appeared to be doing and what it sounded like it was doing. 

Isabel was a 2 quarter long project inspired by Doom and other similar demon, hoard-shooting games. Much like CapeKnight, I was tasked with creating all of the sound effects and music required for the game. Furthermore, I was also tasked with helping implement these pieces of audio, specifically the sound effects. This project marks my first time interacting with the Unity pipeline in any meaningful way, and the first experience I had with C#.

Isabel features a main title theme, 3 main battle themes, a boss theme, an end credits theme, and a level select theme making it, to this day, the game I have produced the most music for. The original vision for the core music (being title and all battle themes) was to make the music in the style of Doom, utilizing heavy metal instruments. However, I decided to try a slightly different musical style, which focused on electric distortion guitars backed by more conventional orchestral instruments, like the violin. Isabel Type B, which was the last song composed for the game was considered to be a large step in skill improvement according to those who worked on the game. It features a perfect blend of electric guitar and orchestra to fully enhance the demon-slaying atmosphere. Neotide: Isabel was originally going to have vocals, but they were unable to be implemented due to time constraints.
As far as sound effects go, many of the sound effects used for the firearms in the game were foley based, as I did have access to a decent amount of replica firearms that I could record sounds for. A notable exception to this was the shotgun reload sound effect, which, rather than using a replica firearm, I used a Nerf Blaster which was then spliced and mixed to sound like a shotgun. Most of the other sound effects were made from scratch, with a few being derived from online libraries.

In Unity, I was tasked with directly importing sounds into the game, mixing their loudness in Unity itself, and implementing sound effects when I could. I had to work together with the programmers as they taught me how to implement sound into Unity using C#. The work I did in tandem with the programmers on my team laid the groundwork for me fully implementing sound in games down the line.

Paradise was the 2nd game project I participated in and also my first paid commission and first freelance project as a game designer. I was hired to produce between 2-3 songs as well as all the necessary sound effects needed at the time that I was hired. The game was (and still is) intended to be an ongoing project, and I chose to continue designing for the game free of charge after my initial contract was fulfilled.

Designing the sound effects for this game gave me my first experience with foley. Many of the sound effects needed for the game, such as the dropping of ice cubes into a cup or the shaking of a drink, were easy enough for me to recreate using items I found around my house, and as such, I found it as a good opportunity to learn the ins and outs of foley. At the time, I did not have a proper microphone to record audio (nor the technically prowess to enhance sound/remove background noise) so all foley in this game was recorded with an iPhone 11 microphone in an empty room in my house. Other electronic sounds, such as the various UI buttons were made in Musescore 3, and the rest of the sounds were found on online libraries. This game really taught me about the sound effect workflow, and that sounds can be derived from many different sources. It also made me realize that online libraries are powerful resources that I could use to enhance my range of production.
The music of this game was meant to be ethereal with jazz undertones, a requirement that was changed slightly with time. The song that I made for the title was one of my first experiences with synths and also one of the first 4 chord songs I have produced. 

A major aspect of this project was working with a commissioner, and being able to take more feedback. because this project is not on a tight schedule, it allowed me to carefully refine my work and take multiple revisions to perfect a song or sound effect after receiving feedback. This game was also the first (and to this day, one of the very few) games where entire songs were scrapped in favor of creating something new to fit the theme of the game better.

CapeKnight marks the beginning of my game-making journey and I joined the project 4 weeks into the 10 week quarter. I was given two things immediately upon joining the team: A list of music needed, and a list of other sfx assets needed. At the time, I had no experience making sound effects to any capacity. Furthermore, both the music and the sfx had to be in a retro 8-bit style, which was also forign to me.

My original plan was to compose the music first. I decided on using Famitracker to create the chiptune music, but realized that it would be too hard to learn in the time period. I settled on composing the music in Flat, then exporting the midi file to GXSCC, which allowed me to complete the music portion of my tasks in a timely manner. My inspiration from the music came from the Kirby franchise, as well as other fantasy franchises. In particular, the in-game theme was heavily inspired by Blazing! From Kirby's Return to Dream Land. The goal with the music was to match the upbeat, adventurous tone of the game, while maintaining the retro feel to match the graphics.

I had no plan going in for sound effects, and nearly all of the sfx that made it into the game were a direct result of me fiddling with the tools and experimenting with them for the first time. BFXR was an excellent, 8-bit orientated, tool that allowed me to experiment by letting me utilize its randomizer function as a base for sfx then letting me adjust them. Famitracker made a return and I was able to make some of the sound effects there. I chose to do this because while Famitracker does have a higher learning curve, it allows for a finer level of customization and I had felt that learning how to make short sfx was a great way to learn the program. All sfx were later fine tuned in Audacity, which was also a new program I had learned. 

It should be noted that all audio assets in this game are completely orignal.

At this time, I was also introduced to the collaberative efforts of my team. Unfimilair with Unity at the time, I had to work with the progammers on the team to impliment the music and sfx in the ways that I had envisioned. This required several of the sfx to be adjusted in order to more appropraitely math with timings and animations in the game. Furthermore, the team lead had also granted me access to the Github repositiory and Unity project, which gave me my first look at the Unity UI. 

All in all, this fitst project was an excellent steppingstone into the world of audio design in games. I was able to learn how to both compose music and sfx for a game, as well as how to work with the team to impliment said sfx.