EIRA: ECHOES OF ADVENTURE
Capstone Game
Eira: Echoes of Adventure was a senior capstone project that I worked on as the lead audio designer. Part of a team of 15+ other developers, we created the game over the course of 4 months, and it was released on steam at the end of April, 2020!
FEATURES
TREASURE AND RICHES
A heavy focus on hidden treasures, and plenty of riches to collect.
AUGMENT THE TERRAIN
With use of an interstellar vacuum gun, you can suck up and build with the terrain around you.
ATMOSPHERIC WORLD
A beautiful ambient world to explore, with an equally atmospheric soundtrack.
DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
Being a designer for Eira: Echoes of Adventure was very fulfilling for me as an audio designer and it helped flesh out my development prowess. What was different about it was working on a team of 15+ people; easily the largest project I had been a part of. Below details the development process of what it was like to work on such a large team, and how my contributions as a designer helped create the game.
STARTING FROM SCRATCH
Like so many projects in the game industry, I was brought onto the original development team for Eira after a vertical slice had already been created for the game. The original development team consisted only of 5 people, and after a proof of concept had been created and the project given the a-ok to move forward, 11 new people were added on to the team.
This new addition consisted of many new roles that were brought on to push the game into production. More game artists, level designers, gameplay programmers, and myself as the lead audio designer.
Interestingly though, the team decided that after growing to a larger size, we should scrap everything that was in place for the vertical slice, and just build off of the systems and gameplay that was enjoyable. This meant cutting the level that was there, existing art, sounds, and some interactions.
RAPID DEVELOPMENT
With the game now a framework, we had to work fast and build quick cohesion as a team in order to get back on track. We split into two teams to better organize our size: Content, and Systems. The Content team prioritized everything in the game that physically appeared, and ways to make it fun, while the Systems team worked on all the behind the scenes things to make the game work.
Being an Audio Designer, I was put on the content team. It was my job to make sure all of the game's necessary sounds made it into the build, and also to create original music for the game. As time went on, I also helped the team navigate narrative challenges that sprang up by helping our narrative designer come up with solutions, and I also took a role in generating marketing content as we quickly made builds for Alpha, Beta, and then our release candidate.
MY WORK
At the start of the first sprint, I vowed to create original music for the game. I wanted it to match the game's ambient feel and have a more atmospheric tone than a driving theme. After lots of research into other games and soundtracks, I created the first edition of a main game theme for the levels. It was an ambient track that the player could recognize with melodic moments, but helped create an environment that the player felt part of, using washes and winds.
Shortly after this, I created a title theme that was of a similar vain, but a lot more simplified. The instrument count was brought down to 4, and there was no melody. It was a way for the player to be introduced to the setting but not overwhelmed by a grand theme while sitting on the main menu. Both of these tracks can be found at the links below.
THE TEAM
ANDERSEN PINCKNEY
Product Owner / Lead Designer
MICHAEL-PAUL HO KANG YOU
Lead Marketer / Producer
BRYAN RICHARDSON
Producer
NICHOLAS KLINE
Lead Artist
SCOTT AQUINO
Lead Programmer
JARED CIANO
QA Lead / Systems Designer
ZACH FUGERE
Level Designer
CLAIRE YEASH
Level Designer
ANDREW MACDONALD
Narrative Designer
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TYLER CHAPMAN
Systems Programmer
KARIM ELZANATY
Systems Programmer
JAMES SMITH
Gameplay Programmer
WILLIAM GORDON
Gameplay Programmer
MAX L
Environment Artist
HANNAH GREINER
Technical Artist
WORK
Several of my documents and songs from over the course of development.
Game Tracks
View
Audio Bible
View
Music Research
View
CONCLUSION
Being able to adapt to the challenges of starting from scratch and still trying to make a polished game in just four months really enhanced all of our strengths in communicating and working as a team. Throughout the process there were many conversations we needed to have about scope, and work that still needed to be done, but we managed to successfully execute all of the changes necessary to deliver a product that I'm proud of today.
If you want to read about the full development process and more insights into my work, check out my blog posts in the link above.