This month’s issue of Develop Magazine is now available for download. On its heard about section, John Broomhall talks with Develop award winner Martin Stig Andersen, composer and sound designer of Limbo.
GAME AUDIO people are still talking about Limbo. They may be for some time. One leading audio developer recently stated publically they would likely have made a terrible job of Limbo’s audio compared to the treatment by Martin Stig Andersen, who single-handedly created its sound and audio.
Not because they’re rubbish – far from it. It’s just that Andersen did such a brilliant, innovative and thoughtful job. It’s all about vision – or perhaps that should be audio vision. Would you have added a ‘spooky’ stylised interactive orchestral score, a plethora of character emotes and maybe even a narrator? How easily the ‘nothingness’ – the ‘notional silence’ – could have been tromped on and thereby the intensity and involvement diminished.
The brief was ‘not like a video game’, leaving Andersen free to explore some powerful ideas in an environment in which he could nurture them – and he found the iterative experimentation/decision-making process both engaging and inspiring in itself.
Download: Develop 120 – September 2011
DS related article: Damian’s interview with Martin on DS.
i so much agree, Martin didn’t just composed music but managed to create an aural world perfectly matched to the visual atmosphere of the game, a masterpiece in terms of sound design and musical score.