“See No Evil is a unique isometric puzzle game about sound manipulation. Sometimes, the world seems darker with your eyes open.”
Hurrah! For the past few months I have been working on the music and sound effects for a beautiful puzzle game called See No Evil. After being one of the fastest titles ever to be successfully greenlit on Steam, it will be released for Windows and Mac on August 26th.
In the mean time, the full soundtrack from the game is now available to stream and download from Loudr, Spotify, and iTunes.
I just finished working on the music and sound effects for a run of six adverts being broadcast on Abu Dhabi TV, a few of which are available on youtube too!
Just beginning week 3 of my time making music / noise at Hope Street It’s been a varied few weeks to say the least involving:
– a melodica / folk inspired play based on Star Wars
– a failed attempt to play Star Wars on the piano
– a groovy skiffle band
– tea and cakes
– research into a show that combines Jane Austen with climate change
– two broken guitar strings
– a rare outing for my ukelele
– more tea and cakes
I don’t think I’ve ever been in a room with SO MANY talented people. It’s wonderful to turn up to work every day only to be constantly amazed and inspired. It’s going to be a fun few months!
For the next five months I’ll be joining the ‘Hope Street Limited’ team as musical director. Every year they put together a team of young(ish) artists who will then create a variety of theatrical installations, collaborate with other Liverpool based organisations, and also run workshops in local schools. I’ll be writing all sorts of music in all sorts of styles for the different projects so it should be lots of fun!
As well as that I recently finished working on an ad campaign for the Department of Transport in Qatar. We created six short animated adverts aimed at children to teach road safety in a fun and engaging way. I wrote the music, created the sound effects, and did the final mix for all the ads so it was quite an intense workload but we’re really pleased with the results.
The last few weeks have been rather exciting not only due to GDC but also because we (Studio Kontrabida / Alter Ego) have just finished the pilot episode for Torkaizer! After months of concepts, planning, and revision after revision all the loose ends were tied together last week.
Although the pilot episode isn’t available online yet (although is likely to be uploaded eventually), it was unveiled at this years Dubai comic-con and we were totally overwhelmed by the positive reaction to the episode. Even though it is just a short pilot, hopefully it gives a good teaser for the potential of the series. We’re definitely hoping there will be an opportunity to create a full length series.
I provided the music, sound effects, and final mix for the pilot which was a LOT of fun to do and I can’t wait to share the finished episode online. But in the mean time, check out the trailer above which has some early versions of the music and sounds that are featured in the final pilot.
It’s always incredibly satisfying to start working on a project in it’s infancy and see it slowly take shape. This game was one of the very first I started working on professionally back in 2010 and with that it carries an almost nostalgic quality; reminding me of how much of a dufus I was back then but also the pure excitement of getting a piece of music you have written to appear in a video game. But, the game still hasn’t been released. Nope, I wasn’t kidding when mentioning a game ‘slowly taking shape’. For various reasons Deadwood had to be postponed for a number of years, but given the subject matter of the game, coming back from the dead doesn’t seem too inappropriate here. So, we’re powering ahead with the game and hoping to get the full version released in late 2015. Still a long way off, but it means there is plenty of time to finesse the soundtrack and create much more dynamic music. In the mean time, Steamroller Studios has released an early prototype of the game (links above) to coincide with these year’s Game Developer’s Conference.
I actually created quite a bit of music when the project was originally being developed, in 2010. So it has been very satisfying to go back to these ideas and give them a new lease of life applying everything I have learnt over the past four or so years. In fact, I’m tempted to write a little blog post perhaps later on this year with samples of the old and new music laid side by side, warts and all. But that is another blog post for another day.
Luke Thomas 