Breach and Clean

About the game

In the game you clean hotel rooms with the aim of doing it as fast as possible and not get fired due to unhappy guests. Also, you can blow up doors with dynamite.

The game was developed at Castle Game Jam in Örebro (check out the blog to read more about the game and Castle Game Jam) by a team of 9 people, among them Rami Ismail and my co-sound designer Pablo Sorrides Bernhard.

This was made over the course of a 1-week game jam,

where I only had the sound libraries available on my laptop

and my Zoom H4n, so it is a great example on how to be

efficient and creative with very limited resources.

My contributions to the game

Overview of Sound Effects

Original recordings for about 80% of sound effects heard in game.

Made FMOD events for all sound effects except the radio.

Examples of effects made for B&C

Pickup mop

Move mop

Knock door

Locked door*

Open door*

OK cleaned room

Perfectly cleaned room

Clock sound

Toilet flush* (50/50)

Radio jingle x 2 (also sang vocals)

VO for radio

VO for NPC:s (also did VO)

*Used part of/ flavour sound from existing sound library

Notes on Being Efficient

This being a game jam, I had to be very efficient with the sounds I used. I had little opportunity to record high-quality, well-planned and time consuming sounds. For example, there is a set of "whoosh" sounds(about 10 different sounds) that are used for the mop, to pickup the mop, in the menu screen when the player sweeps between locations. And in the explosion effect. And in the the "dispose of trash" - effect. And probably somewhere else as well.

Breakdown of sound effects

Mop sounds

The mop is the player's main tool, and one that really adds to the absurd humour in the game. Therefore the sound had to fit the part. So instead of having neutral, realistic sounds, I went for over the top and exaggerated sound effects.

Both picking up and using the mop utilize similar sounds or sounds from the same batch but different versions of them. In both the cases of the "whoosh " and the "slimy" sound were from the same batches, but the longer versions were used for the "use mop" sounds and the shorter for the "pickup mop" sound.

This was partly due to time restrictions (this being a game jam) but its also for the sake of consistency.

Pickup Mop

Picking up the mop should feel like wielding a sword. It's not just a boring mop - it's a tool to create beautiful, clean rooms and erase all evil goo!

The mop sound consist of four main parts:

A swoosh - made by swinging a wooden stick through the air

A wet, sloppy sound - made by squeezing grated cucumber

A a metal screech - made by slowly dragging a two knifes towards each other, then editing the sound to add more "oumph" and heavy feel

A lot of reverb

Move/use mop

Using the mop is similar to the pickup as it uses many of the same sounds, but it's without the epic reverb and it has no metal "dragging out an epic longsword" sound added to it.

Swoosh (slightly longer)

wet, sloppy sound (longer squeeze)

Door sounds

Without going through doors, there would be little gameplay. It's a set of reoccuring sound effects that need to be clearly communicated to the player.

For the door sounds I had to use sound some libraries. One of them, a standard door opening (handle down, door sqeak) I reused for opening and closing a door, as well for the locked door.

Open door & Close door

The open door consists mainly a sound library sound, tweaked a little to fit the animation and with some added flavour sounds for variation.

Locked door

For the locked door sound I re-used the open/close-door sound effect but cut it to match the animation sequence where the door handle is pressed down and then released.