This article was originally published by Rubén on Medium, and you can find more of his writing here.

Introduction

During the last years, I’ve had the privilege of collaborating once again with Nomada Studio on our latest game, Neva, which was published just a few weeks ago. Neva is a 2D platform/action/puzzle game that follows the journey of Alba, the main character, and her wolf companion. As they navigate increasingly different situations, their bond deepens and evolves through teamwork and mutual support. This project has been incredibly special and rewarding to create, and today, I’m very happy to share with you some insights into the audio direction.

The Creative Direction

This is a great starting point to get familiarized with Neva. I reached out to Conrad Roset, the Creative and Art Director for Neva, for some key insights into the project’s creative direction, and he shared the following points with me:

• Art: Nomada’s identity is defined by the fusion of art and music in a unique way. In Gris, this synergy was expressed through color, while in Neva, it could manifest through executions or chases.
• Narrative: The game explores the complex relationship between a mother and her child, portraying the emotional bond from both perspectives — mother to son and son to mother.
• Traditional Art and Animation: Conrad aims to highlight the artistry in the game, encouraging players to appreciate the visible lines, splashes, and brushstrokes. He wants to convey that Neva is crafted by human hands, emphasizing its artisanal nature over realism.
• Quality over Quantity: While Neva is a shorter game, it is meticulously polished. The studio prioritizes refining the experience over adding content.

The Sounds

In total, a group of 4 sound designers and one VO actress worked on the audio of the game. The technology we used was Unity + Wwise, and in total +4640 sounds were produced, including 449 distinct ways of calling out to Neva (multiple dogs were auditioned for this role!)

Audio Team

• Jordi Bosch — Sound Designer
• Cristina Peña — VO Actress (Alba)
• Jaime Bermúdez — Sound Designer
• Gabriel Granda — Sound Designer, VO engineer
• Berlinist — Composers
• Roger Mendoza — Lead Producer and Programmer
• Albert Boguñá — QA
• Coco, Jacko — VO Neva
• Rubén Rincón (me!)— Audio Director and Sound Designer

Gabriel Granda, Cristina Peña and me recording voices for Alba!

The Audio Direction

Neva required a fresh approach to audio design. In Gris, music, art, and animation served as the primary vehicles for storytelling, but Neva called for a stronger presence from the audio design. Here, the balance between music and sound is more evenly distributed than it was in Gris, where music took center stage in the audio experience. Additionally, I wanted to explore a different creative direction with Neva, taking some creative risks to enhance the experience. Based on this vision, the audio direction for the project can be broken down into the following key points:

• Player’s experience: The focus is always on enhancing the player’s experience, aiming to tell the story through every element of sound.
• Strongly influenced by asian percussion
• Strongly influenced by Asian films instead of other games. Some references are The Handmaiden, Decision to Leave, In the Mood for Love, and Princess Mononoke.
• Audio experience to feel as much soft and delicate as possible
• Character Expression: While Alba only utters Neva’s name, we aim to convey a wealth of emotion through this, incorporating a rich variety of sounds for movements, attacks, breathing, humming, and more.
• Main tools: Tremolo, granular synthesis, sampling, pitch shifting, convolution reverb, and delay.
• Musical sound design: Inspired by Nintendo’s approach to audio, the design focuses on deep multilayering and a rich array of variations.
• Dynamic Range: The audio features significant shifts in volume, with exploration and puzzle segments sitting around -30 dB LUFS, while combat scenes peak between -19 and -17 dB LUFS.

The Voice Over

“How to transmit as much emotions as possible with just a single word”  - Yahoo Answers

To understand the bond between Alba and her wolf companion in Neva through voiceover, we need to explore how each character expresses themselves through sound.

During the game, Alba speaks only one word throughout the game: “Neva.” This means that we needed to communicate different emotions and situations with just one word, supported by grunts and other gestures. In this case, the variations in voiceover performance by Cristina Peña were crucial to this communication. The way she brings Alba to life and how is communicating so many things by saying so little is outstanding. In total, we recorded more than 700 VO calls to Neva and more than 45 actions (running, climbing, atacking, etc…)

On the other hand we have Neva. Neva evolves during the game, and there’s 3 states: Puppy: Requires care and attention, Young: (she doesn’t like to listen to you that much) and Adult: A mature companion who knows you well and instinctively protects you. We needed to convey these personalities through a range of vocalizations, including barks, growls, whines, and moans. Apart from that, Neva features additional gestures that express her state, such as smelling, curiosity, readiness for action, and sleeping.

To create Neva’s unique language, we recorded three different dogs and supplemented these with various sound libraries to avoid over-stressing the animals. The key to communication between you, the player, and Neva lies in a system we built in Wwise. This system is structured around Neva’s current life stage (puppy, young, or adult), her distance from the player (close or far), and specific gameplay moments.

This is what happens when you call to Neva in the game. A single event is called in Wwise.

But then, let’s take for example the puppy stage:

All those emotions are gameplay scenarios

And if we take a look to the big picture:

This is mental

We developed a range of possible scenarios in the game — such as happy, sad, tense, and more — each with multiple variations featuring different performances by Cristina. To keep the audio fresh and prevent repetition, we also randomly play whistles recorded by Gabriel. Here’s how this setup looks like in Wwise:

Naming convention is my passion

As you can see in the image above, for instance, when Neva is a puppy and at a far distance, the “Far” state includes eight sound variations and three whistles. Similar amount of asset can be found in other random containers. The logic we’ve implemented in Wwise follows this structure:

• A switch controlling the “type” of wolf
• A switch controlling the distance
• A switch controlling the gameplay mood
• At the beginning the distance switch was controlled by an RTPC
• However it limited some cases, so we hard coded the values and stop using the RTPC

And this is how you feel them in game:

The Transitions

Something I wanted to emphasize in Neva is the transition between exploration, puzzles, and combat. To achieve this, we utilized not only dynamic range but also sound design.

Drawing inspiration from films like The Handmaiden, we aimed for seamless transitions between these moments in the game. The idea was to keep the experience as smooth and linear as possible, strongly influenced by movies rather than games.

To achieve this, we employed various trigger areas featuring different versions of the same ambient sounds, alongside stingers triggered at precise moments and extended tails for certain audio elements. On the other hand, I wanted to highlight the contrast between exploration and combat, which is why the jump in loudness between these moments is intentionally abrupt.

The Sound Design

To keep this article concise, I’d like to briefly highlight a few key elements in Neva’s audio experience, such as leitmotifs and other distinctive sounds.

• Bosses: Boss fight start and last hit sounds are the same in every boss fight. With this we keep players familiarized with the different gameplay moments.
• Each regular enemy presents as a slightly modified version of the basic monkey sound.
• Boss queen has signature sounds along the game: The sword, some stingers, etc…
• Percussive sounds: Key actions such as recovering health and interacting with the UI are accompanied by percussive audio elements. These sounds, which also feature in layers like stingers and intros, are also integrated with the overall musical style of the game.
• Collectable and tombs change pitch depending on music tonality per level (strongly influenced by Nintendo’s games!)

Conclusions

Neva represents a significant step forward compared to Gris, with improvements across the board. The studio has decided to follow their ideas and instincts. The studio chose to trust its instincts and creative vision, and I truly believe we have delivered something both beautiful and deeply heartbreaking (which kinda is the signature of the studio, making you cry, isn’t it?) Regarding audio, the animation, art, programming, and QA teams have been incredibly supportive throughout the entire process, fostering a strong sense of collaboration, and I feel deeply grateful for the opportunity to be part of this project and for the chance to embark on this journey once again with the lovely team at Nomada. I’m also thankful for the chance to collaborate with more audio colleagues and am happy with the creative direction we pursued.

Video games are such a unique artistic medium. You spend years pouring your love and effort into a project alongside a talented team, eagerly anticipating how players will connect with your work. Then, the game is finally released, and it feels as though a small piece of you has been shared with the community. And then you move on. Yet, there’s still something deeply moving about this experience that resonates within me regarding my work.

Thanks for reading and thanks to all of you who have played Neva.

This is the written version of my presentation from the latest Wwise Up On Air streaming. If you’d prefer to watch the video, feel free to click here!