Friendshrimp (Sound Design)
My role in Friendshrimp was as a sound designer, and I had a blast working with the dev team to make a bunch of bubbly, swishy, underwater sounds. Sound does so much to make a game come to life, and as my first project that was devoted solely to sound design, I had the opportunity to explore this powerful tool for storytelling with an excellent team. Also I got to use a rubber ducky for a couple sounds :)
Below are a few isolated sound effects.
Merlin’s punch is the most important sound in the game, so I put a lot of effort into making it feel satisfying.
But what is a punch without something to hit? I used a rubber ducky to make the starfish sound cute, bouncy, and rubbery when you punch it!
One of the most fun things I got to make were the sounds for the hermit crabs. This is as it shuffles up to poke you!
And if you break the hermit crabs shell, it runs away!
The sound of Friendshrimp would be horribly incomplete without Humphrey, the hapless academic and narrator of Merlin the Mantis Shrimp’s adventure (acted by the redoubtable Iain Nicklin). Our VO recording setup was pretty bare bones, so there was some sound cleanup to do as I edited these clips, but Iain’s fantastic performance as Humphrey sounds wonderful regardless. Here he is introducing himself and the objective of the game.
A la The Stanley Parable, Humphrey responds to your decisions as a player. Here’s what happens if you stay still.