Welcome to this new blog about our forthcoming game—House of Ashes! I’m Barney Pratt, audio director here at Supermassive Games. Today I am going to explain our cinematic approach to the music for this game and the series more widely – the scares, the shocks, and how we developed a signature motif that can span space and time.

Each of the Dark Pictures Anthology games has a completely different narrative, and as such has a completely different soundtrack. Whether it is character themes, location themes, subconscious clue giving or deliberate misdirection, the music is the strongest audio element to follow and drive the wider narrative arcs as the story develops.

We use a hybrid system of film and game music techniques to fully immerse the player in the cinematic experience of the Dark Pictures. Each moment of each level has bespoke music cues to precisely frame-match the action, suspense, intrigue, fear or dread not only for that precise event, but also for each related event over the wider story arc. We need to deliver a seamless cinematic musical journey through all of the choices, paths, dilemmas and key turning points of the story.

The style of music originates from the story. For Man of Medan we looked at “youth”, the swaying waves of the sea which dictated the time signature and the fierce, violent brutality of events to come. For Little Hope we took a historical approach, researching the instruments of 1692 New England. These lonely solo instruments played as a lament to the dark times of the Salem witch trials and it was a huge challenge to deliver the cinematic mechanics of a horror game with such a thin and constrained score. The theme for the main character in Little Hope was no exception. Jason Graves, the composer for the series, composed a simple six note motif on an aged piano which in itself offered such a deep explanation of the lead character’s part in the story and clues to the outcome (no spoilers!).

Witchcraft by Jason Graves

First early development Deathloop kick implementation

Here to help explore Colt’s calamitous kick with me is Jérôme Braune, game systems designer.

Braune: In these comparison images, you can see that in an early version of the kick the foot orientation was different and the leg was displayed more in the center of the screen. To free some space and prevent visual noise around the crosshair, the leg position and foot orientation was later moved further to the right. 

Foudral: When we were finally happy with the visuals of the kick, a lot of work was put into making it responsive and easy to use in all si

Hello! Alex here, I’m a designer and the technical lead at 2pt Interactive. As many of you may know, we’re the little indie studio making the challenging, physics-based game Heavenly Bodies.

Ahead of our fast-approaching 2021 release (put it in your diaries, folks), I wanted to take some time to share why we’re so excited to be working with the PS5 to make our passion project.

A quick refresher

For those who aren’t as familiar with it, Heavenly Bodies is a game about cosmonauts, the body, and the absence of gravity. You move the limbs of a weightless, physically simulated space engineer (or two, in local co-op) to assemble and maintain structures and systems aboard a rickety space station. Your assigned tasks will often appear straightforward, but without gravity to keep you grounded, even the most mundane requests will require wit and willful coordination to perform.

Make sense? Okay, Welcome aboard.

Why we love using the DualSense wireless controller

At its heart, Heavenly Bodies has been created with the love for rich detail, physicality, and tactility. We’ve engineered a uniquely challenging movement scheme which lets you manipulate each limb of your weightless body. While (very) tricky at first, these flexible controls paired with physically simulated environments make for a world that begs to be tinkered with.

With a game that quite literally requires you to feel your way through the environments, you can only imagine our excitement with the opportunity to use the features of the DualSense controller. With the triggers used to grasp your cosmonaut’s hands and a chaotic, zero-g environment where bumps and thumps are inevitable, it made so much sense for us to use the adaptive triggers and haptic functions to transport you into the floppy suit you see on screen.

Feel the palms of your hands… at your fingertips

The best way to play Heavenly Bodies is by using your cosmonaut’s hands. You’ll need to grip with the triggers to grab onto objects and to push yourself off walls. The DualSense controller’s adaptive triggers are remarkable at communicating what objects and surfaces are within your cosmonaut’s grasp.

For example, when doing some weeding in the oxygen garden, you’ll feel the delicate stalkiness of dry plants compared to the thick, hard metal framework of the station.

And this scrunchy piece of paper? You can bet it feels scrunchy.

Email us at PSPodcast@sony.com!

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This week the team celebrates 5 years of PlayStation VR and shares more games they almost missed out on.

Stuff We Talked About

• PlayStation VR
• Sheepo
• Moss 2
• Jackbox Party 8
• Jett: The Far Shore
• A whole bunch of games we almost missed out on

The Cast

Sid Shuman – Senior Director of Content Communications, SIE

Tim Turi –  Manager, Content Communications, SIE

Brett Elston – Manager, Content Communications, SIE

Read more

Last week, we asked you to take a stroll through the moonlight of your favorite games using #PSshare #PSBlog. From moon-soaked portraits to nights out on the road, here are this week’s highlights: 

Gamography_ shares a side profile of Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn.

dee_danya shares Dani making a daring dive in Far Cry 6.

Jin rides his horse through a field under the moonlight in this Ghost of Tsushima share from foxghost181.

ZacheryyyEduard shares Deacon hitting the road under the crescent moon and stars in Days Gone.

Amianan_NiRaGuB shares Eivor’s raven Synin seemingly grip the moon in its talons in this Assassin’s Creed Valhalla share.

mett981 shares Ratchet gazing towards the cosmos in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.

Search #PSshare #PSBlog on Twitter or Instagram to see more entries to this week’s theme. Want to be featured in the next Share of the Week? 

THEME: PlayStation VR
SUBMIT BY: Wednesday 9 AM PT on October 20

PlayStation VR turned 5 this week! To celebrate, share moments that shook your reality from a PlayStation VR game of your choice using #PSshare #PSBlog for a chance to be featured. 

Jett’s out now, it’s resonating, and we’re thrilled. It’s the latest videogame from Superbrothers A/V and Pine Scented, it was co-created for years by two full-time people and composer scntfc, then bolstered by an all-star Jett Squad of contributors. It took a village to get Jett done, and we’re all immensely proud of our efforts together.

Jett is my second video game as director, writer, art director, and music coordinator, among other roles. Unlike Sword & Sworcery, Jett is grandiose, with depth and breadth, intricate, and byzantine.

So, I had a pretty heavy workload for a while there. However, an advantage of being at the intersection of those roles is the opportunity to try to craft something very distinct, in keeping with the Superbrothers A/V approach.

The Superbrothers A/V approach goes roughly like this:

1. You start with a vision, and a vibe.
2. You marry the picture to the sound, get them to stew together.
3. You get it to move right and feel right.
4. You present a world with intriguing narrative concepts, with credible naturalistically-proportioned intelligent characters with heart and soul, who have interesting concerns.
5. You choose your moments, intimate or epic, a few here and there, and you get those exactly right.
6. Nested within all this, you figure out a design that supports that vision, and that vibe.

Foundational to creating a distinctive vibe, and powering Superbrothers A/V’s approach, is audio. Sound and music, and how they fit. Getting the spirit of the music and sound right is essential, as music ends up being foregrounded in our videogames, often becoming almost the primary text.

For Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP we collaborated with Toronto composer, maestro Jim Guthrie, whose immediately appealing and memorable score accounted for so much of sworcery’s magic. 

As an album it found its way into headphones and speakers around the world, and resonated.

This time out, for Jett, we were so fortunate to have on deck the brilliant Seattle-based composer scntfc since day one, with whom we collaborated for years. 

Play Video

C Andrew Rohrmann, known in the biz as scntfc, has since composed beloved scores to several video games, most notably Oxenfree. However, scntfc’s first videogame contribution was to Sword & Sworcery back in 2010.

On Sword & Sworcery we had the idea for a “number station transmission” and we were put in touch with scntfc, who cooked up some relevant audio in his laboratory, audio that ended up in Sworcery’s “moon grotto” as well as at Sworcery’s memorable fi