Sure, a game can have the most amazing graphics, great game mechanics and be really good. But according to us a game isn’t complete without awesome sounds and music.

Although, we have yet to finish all our sounds for Mail Delivery Boy, we have learned a lot along the way which we would like to share. So here we go: Stuff to do when recording sounds!

Start by thinking about how your game should be portrayed. Make sure you have a clear view of which category you want your game to be put in. The style and type of sounds should be thought through carefully with the game category in mind. If you have a cartoony or goofy child game you probably want a different set of sounds than if your game is a horror or oldschool game. The sounds enhances the experience of the game, so making good sounds and having a good sound profile is crucial.

Become familiar with your favorite sound editing program. We use Audacity because it’s really easy to use and have a great noise reducer (yes, it’s free and open source too ).

Record… A lot! It takes time to go through all the material, but it’s better to do 10-15 takes and end up with one you like, than to end up having two bad ones.

When recording sounds; use anything and everything. A shoe, an empty bottle or just your own voice can make wonders (we’ve used this a lot). And if you can’t manage to get the exact sound you want, you can also modify it later in your audio editing program.

If you want you can use computer generated sounds. They can sometimes sound quite artificial, but if you’re lucky you might find a couple of sounds which fits your game perfectly. Here are some links to a couple of sound generators.

Remember, finding the perfect sounds is actually quite hard and requires a lot of time. But if you put enough thought and time into it, you will end up with a game feeling way more polished and awesome than ever before!

Good luck on your quest of finding the epic sounds for your game!
Jonas Bergström
Freddie Pettersson
chillbro studios