Ten years ago, I received a digital media degree from university. Truth be told, a lot of those lessons turned out to be irrelevant, but there is one concept I have remembered to this day—multi-layered audio. Since Clea, my latest project, is an audio-focused game, I can at last put this knowledge to good use.

In Clea, players must listen to audio cues in order to evade the Chaos Servants. At the same time, enemies will listen out for sounds you make. If we blare on top, all of those clues will become diluted. This is why Clea instead focuses on ambience.

Here is a breakdown of Clea’s multi-layered tracks system. Each area in the game may feature one or more tracks. For instance, the top of the clock tower consists of:



While the floor below contains:



Then on that same floor, we have a bathroom:



When we change to another area, the game determines which tracks need to continue, cross fade, or fade out altogether:





Nowadays, when I am out and about, I almost always have music or podcast on. Now that I have implemented this audio system, I would like to pull off those headphones once in a while and learn to appreciate the sounds around me. Every new space is an opportunity to learn.

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