Wwise Limbo Project

Gameplay capture of LIMBO with original sound design

Credits:

Sound Design & Implementation - Brian Speise

Project Description:

The Wwise Limbo project is well-known by sound designers and composers seeking to build game audio skills. The purpose is to rework the original sound design of the game, LIMBO, and learn the Wwise middleware tool in the process. For this video, I essentially stripped out the original LIMBO audio in Wwise and replaced it with a combination of my own sounds and library sounds. Of course it's never that easy - I had to debug a host of implementation issues and find creative solutions to fit my sounds into the game.

Sound FX Breakdown

The sound assets I used are a combination of my own original sound effects and sounds from third-party libraries. All sounds were implemented by me in Audiokinetic Wwise.

UI Sounds - My menu UI sounds are 100% original. I used a recording of a clock ticking as the basis for them. I also added a significant dose of reverb and some additional processing.

Boy Efforts - As the Boy runs, he starts to breathe heavily. His breathing efforts were completely recorded, designed, and implemented by me.

Ambiences - 90% original. There is a recording or two of wind blowing that I pulled from a sound FX library. The remaining ambiences were recorded by me.

Foley - 90% original. I field recorded most of the footsteps myself in the San Bernardino Mountains. I recorded various cloth and prop sounds in my home studio. I was missing some materials for the Boy's footsteps (like the wooden boat and the water), so I pulled those from libraries.

Additional FX -

Gore:  100% original. When the corpse gets chomped by the bear trap and the Boy is crushed by the boulder, I implemented bone breaking and squishing sounds. I had a lot of fun playing with fruit pulp and destroying bell peppers and celery for these sounds!

Bear Trap:  My bear trap shutting sound is a combination of a few library effects (one of an actual bear trap and a coyote trap).

The Flies:  The flies that congregate around the corpse hanging above the bear trap are library sounds. I really enjoyed figuring out how to implement my fly sounds so that they created a seamless "swarming" loop.

Boulder/Tree Falling Sequence:  100% library sound FX. This sequence relies heavily on sound design, so I spent a great deal of time trying to create punchy and well-implemented impacts.