I did another Ludum Dare game jam—same Sleepy Donut team minus one sound designer and with a different artist, Noel-Tien Nguyen. It was, once again, awesome. And we are, once again, quite proud of the results. A 3rd place in audio out of almost 2,000 submissions is pretty mind-blowing. We’ll take it! Plus top-5% rankings in several other categories.
In this great little game you are an agent of death, doing what agents of death do—sitting at your desk in your office, living out your mundane existence micro-managing the lives and deaths of countless humans. And hoping to do it well enough to not get fired.
As sound people, we love ear candy and audio easter eggs. So we made sure you can just sit in the start screen and enjoy yourself for a good five or ten minutes. There’s lots of office activity, some frumpy music, and some overworked reapers discussing office politics, broken fax machines, dating… you name it. This bed essentially continues once the game starts, but eventually plays second fiddle to the score, which grows out of the cheesy office music and morphs into a big bad electronic synthy groove. All the while, sound design goes beyond just being aural scenery and world-building, of course, and helps you process things as the speed and difficulty increase. And hopefully also gets a few laughs. My favorite sound effect might be one of the most subtle—the sound of the printer printing out your marching orders. Our sound designer David D’Agostino designed it to have an eerie, ghostly quality and I love it.
Anyway… have a go at it! You can play it online or download other versions of it on Itch. Or to see a whole bunch of player feedback, or access the source code, find it on the Ludum Dare site.
Happy gaming!