September 29, 2026

Every sound is made by code

None of the sounds in the game are recorded, they're all synthesized. There's a small tool in the project with a recipe for each one (digging, a drip, a bird call, rain, a tunnel collapsing) and it writes them all out as audio files, 73 right now with 11 of those being loops for things like night, rain and being underground.

Waveforms of six of the game's sounds: digging, a drip, bird call, collapse, heavy rain and night — Six of them drawn out, up to the first 4 seconds of each. The bottom two are loops.

It also means the sounds are part of the source. If I want the digging to be drier I change a number and regenerate it, and the same recipe always writes exactly the same file, so I can see in a diff when a sound changed.

In the game the quiet routine sounds share a small pool of voices so that 200 ants digging doesn't turn into noise, and they thin out when you speed the game up.

I'm not sure about all of them yet. The bird call and the crickets at night are probably too harsh and I haven't spent real time on levels, that needs an afternoon with headphones.