Spacial Delivery or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Making Games

Hello and welcome to my blogpost! My name is C. Harrison Skinner, I work on Spacial Delivery as a game designer, level designer, sound designer, and artist. I have been apart of Half and Half Studios and Spacial Delivery since the beginning. Throughout the development process, I've faced some great challenges on the way to making this a game.

One of the greatest challenges was finding the right way to mix the sound effects well. We first had to figure out what kind of feel we were going for with the sound design of the game. The fist ideas when it came to sound effects and music was to have very high-fidelity and realistic sounds while also having a two-part soundtrack. The idea behind the music being that the menus and intro to the game would be very calming and relaxing synth-type music to calm the player and lull them into a false sense of security and then hitting them with intense music that would normally be found in racing games and bullet-hells. We wanted to startle the player and add to that sense of intensity and urgency upon playing the game.

It was only after the first week of playtesting that we figured out that the two-part music system was not going to work. The game is already hard enough for some players and the combination of many enemies on screen and intense drum and bass music made it borderline unplayable. We then decided that normal space-y calm synth music would suit our game well and be more consistent with the visuals of the game.

When it came to sound effects we first wanted realistic sounding effects for our game, but ran into two big problems: some of the sound effects were very clear while some were very distorted and low-quality. In addition, some sound effects could not be easily heard over the music. Our solution was simple: make all the sound effects sound arcade-y and 8-bit while keeping the music high-quality.

The problem then came from making the sound effects sound arcade-y without making the sound effect unrecognizable. I legitimately spent four weeks tinkering with sounds until I found a setting that was just right!

Overall, making this game was incredibly hard while still being rewarding. I'm very happy with the work that I did, but I know that I can do better for the future and will always improve. This game has taught me a mantra that I repeat every time I do anything: Be Proud, Never Satisfied.