Since The Maw is mostly underwater, how did you incorporate that environmental location into the treatment of audio? The fact that I was working with both sound effects and music for the game helped a lot in making it possible to integrate the two. I enjoy using those type of sounds because they can sneak up on you on an almost subconscious level and add both tension and immersion.
Some ambiences also take on an almost “musical” quality, like a loud hum from a ventilation shaft with a distinct tone. That music muffles when entering the bathroom, like entering the bathroom of a club. Another example is the sung mantra in the guest area. I deliberately wanted them to constantly bleed into each other by using sounds from the environment as “musical” elements, such as fog horns or seagulls. Was there a clear divide between what was music and what was sound design, or did they bleed into each other? Several of Wes Anderson’s films explore a kind of childhood nostalgia, so I was also listening to Alexandre Desplat’s scores for Anderson’s films. Instruments like musicbox and celesta are a given in this area, but I also used electric piano, probably because I’m such a sucker for Vangelis. What I really love about that score is all the conflicting emotions: horror, mystery, love and romance – all side by side.Īs a contrast to all these big, heavy and menacing sounds I tried to find classic “childish” timbres and was looking at lullabies and nursery rhymes for inspiration. These were partly inspired by Bernard Hermann’s work for early sci-fi films and his score for Hitchcock’s “Vertigo”.
The fog horn is essentially… a horn… so because of that I ended up doing brass arrangements (trombone and tuba) for several cues. I wanted to use the fog horn as a musical element that also existed in the game world. I was also experimenting a lot with classic “maritime” sounds like accordion and fog horns. They are true virtuosos in the industrial genre! For references I was constantly coming back to tracks by Einstürzende Neubauten. Using sounds from everyday objects in a musical context like this is quite common these days. So I played around a lot with metal sheets and springs, going for a quite dirty, industrial sound. I thought of The Maw as a kind of instrument in itself with all its bangs and creaks coming from its huge metal hull. I knew from the start that I wanted to stay away from the classical orchestral score and instead home in on the more surreal qualities of The Maw to find a tight integration with the environment and story. Most of the music in Little Nightmares is played during enemy encounters or important story events. All disciplines need to be in sync about it. Doing this kind of thing in a game requires a lot of work since it radically affects gameplay. An inspiration there was Robert Bresson‘s “A Man Escaped” which is about a guy trying to break out from a prison, and in a lot of the scenes the main character (and the viewer) is trying to figure out what the guards are doing only through off-screen sounds. An example would be really creaky floors that attract enemy attention. Each sound should have a clear function and when possible also give vital information or clues about what was going on in a scene. I also wanted the sound effects to have a prominent role and not just work as mood enhancer or something to accompany the visuals. It’s the kind of ambiences that lie in the borderland between music and sound effects. Silent Hill 2 also does this really well – unsettling ambiences help to constantly keep you on your toes. David Lynch‘s “ Eraserhead” has an amazing industrial soundscape – even the interior shots are accompanied by industrial tones which gives the whole film a claustrophobic feel. The Maw is not a friendly place and I wanted to convey this a lot via ambient sounds. What were some sound design and music inspirations for your work on Little Nightmares ?
So the first few times when she eats, the music has a quite subtle and mellow tone, and for the final scene it morphs into something completely different but still retains the same basic musical motif. The events where Six gets hungry are key moments in the game, and we tried to find a musical motif that evolves each time she has to eat. Instead we tried to convey the shift through the music. Towards the end when Six becomes more powerful, animations change a little bit as she moves in a more confident style, but we didn’t do that much with the player sounds. Just the simple fact that Six is barefoot adds a lot to the feeling of being small and vulnerable, and we tried to emphasize that contrast by mixing quite distinct footstep sounds with heavy background ambient sounds – especially in the first part of the game.
How did you get the sound design to reflect her small size but slowly developing into more feral/creature tendencies as the game plays out? Six is a young girl in a yellow raincoat, creeping her way through The Maw.
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