Sound Design Games #1 - Noise and timing - RPGs

This will cover a lot of different type of RPGs and the type of content for said RPGs. Also specific games because not every game falls into these cats.

Turn based RPGs

For turn based RPGs you can do a lot of noises without causing many issues for the given game/ gameplay for the players to go through and keep the experience still enjoyable without failing the main sound design of course.

This is because actions are taken up into turns and not having to worry about the input aspect as much.

Action Turn based RPGs

Oh boy; this is a... complicated subject due to me not playing many ATBRPGs expect a handful and only being the FF series. To cover this as the best as I can this genre relies on two styles of focus for it's given gameplay.

Presentation so things sounding good and being smooth to the ear being quite important, the sound design from the game series tickling my brain as a good example while I haven't played any bad ones, I could imagine added sounds not playing well to the ear and being in a plentiful amount.

When you have it where enemies could perform many moves/ quickly pump out actions, having annoying and or bad sound design can hurt a game even more, that's a given but what if I could told you, improper timing of a sound matters more than bad sound effects?

That because turns are going on in a non turn order and being action based, what your ear focuses on and or what is louder needs to be focused on, making it important for audio balancing and how clear the sound is landing.

So for ATBs it's important to have a balance and well timed sound design. When playing your game, you should count the amount of time the sound is going for and when playing said game, play the same encounters over and over along with dealing with said sound being in a clear enough volume for you to hear and ask yourself, "am I sick of this yet" and see how your different menu-ing/ grabbing another action to perform sounds next to another sound element.

That being said, if you can; avoid as much sound noise and focus on concise noise and well timed noises.

Action RPGs

I'm just going to use Dead Cells as an example for this because it's just easier; in a game like Dead Cells, you have it where the noise complexity is small at first, not too many sounds and actions going on expect in overwhelming encounters along with the muffling of sound as you open your menu or even looking at the scrolls to see what you're going to be taking.

The sound is made clear when the enemy is charging up their attack (most of the time) and going to come down to strike, you're given iconic sounds that are hard to miss and as the difficultly goes up, the number of actions you need to perform along with your tolerance for said noise mess goes up for said game.

If you are going to do complex noise systems, make sure to make iconic sound design and build up to such a level of noise to be dealing with; otherwise players will be overwhelmed.

Zelda RPGs

Have iconic sounds, things that match to the region and culture you build; if you're going to be culture focused and give things life like the Zelda franchise then really lean into it; you don't have to go overboard but just enough where it makes a difference.

Now what not to do

These will be games/ genres that did it bad. The examples will be added onto later.

FNAF World

The noise complexity/ amount being for the gameplay you have it where you explode the players ears with pretty visuals, sounds, etc! You pump it out non-stop and don't make it stop until everyone drops!

No in all seriousness, please understand your audience/ customers are likely going to be overwhelmed if you throw them head first into the water, though at the same time it is a filter for players who can't handle said things.

I'm not someone who gets overwhelmed by pretty visuals/ colors but this just over did it for me.

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