The sound I rejected 15 times
In TinySkate you pump to go faster. Tap on the beat as you roll through a dip and the game shouts PERFECT. Keep the rhythm and it climbs: PERFECT ×2, PERFECT ×4. Tap too early and the chain resets.
Every one of those PERFECT pumps plays a little sound. In a good run you hear it about twice a second, over and over, for the whole level.
That's where the trouble started.
Ding ding ding ding
The first PERFECT sound was a bright little "ding". On its own it sounded great: short, happy, very arcade. But after a few runs it started to grate. It was right on top of the music, it never changed, and it kept going for as long as you kept the rhythm. The better you played, the more it pinged at you.
A sound you hear a hundred times in a row has a very different job from a sound you hear once. It has to feel good on the hundredth play, not just the first.
The sound I rejected 15 times
So I tried a new one. Then another one. Here's roughly the list, in the order I went through them:
- a soft retro blip
- a punchy thump with a click on top
- a rising whoosh with a bit of sparkle
- a muted marimba tick
- an airy puff
- a muffled bubble pop
- a felt thump
- a wooden tail clack
- a funky bass pluck
- a finger snap
- a hip-hop kick
- a DJ scratch
- a 16-bit triangle blip
- an 8-bit arpeggio
- a Neo Geo style "bwip"
- and two chiptune blips built by hand from raw waveforms
Some were too soft and you stopped noticing the beat. Some were too long and smeared into the next pump. The drum-ish ones fought with the music. The cute ones got annoying even faster than the ding. None of them said "PERFECT!" the way the first one did.
And the winner is…
The original. Same ding, just at half the volume.
It was never the sound. It was how loud it was. At half volume the ding sits under the music instead of on top of it. You still feel every PERFECT, you can still hear your rhythm, but it doesn't poke you in the ear anymore. Fifteen-plus sounds later I was right back where I started, and now I know it's the right one.
Where to hear it
- The Park: the opening rollers at sunset are the easiest place to build a PERFECT ×4 chain.
- Backyard Pool: pump the bowls on the beat. One of the pool goals is 10 PERFECT pumps in a run.
- Indoor Park: the wooden mini ramps, then let the speed carry you over the big hump.
I made a Short about the whole thing, with the actual rejected sounds in it: My indie game had one sound everybody hated
Which game sound haunts you? Tell me in the comments on the Short. Happy Halloween!
Play TinySkate free in your browser at tinyskate.com.