The start of a four-player race: the grannies on their scooters climbing a heap of yellow discs, the countdown on the television behind them and each player’s portrait and name tiles in a corner

Sole audio designer: the MetaSounds engines, pickups and power-ups, the grannies’ voices and the mix.

Watch the run (2:02) Play on itch.io

A couch kart racer for up to four players: grannies on mobility scooters race over a course built from household objects in a living room.

2025, twelve weeks at Howest DAE, a six-person student team. Unreal Engine 5, MetaSounds, Blueprints, REAPER.

Betsy’s run, menu to win screen

  1. 0:00Menu

    Buttons have hover and click sounds, over the menu music.

  2. 0:17Intro

    The intro cutscene plays over separate music and can be skipped. Then each player joins and picks a granny.

  3. 0:54Countdown
  4. 0:58Race

    Betsy’s engine runs under the whole race, and the commentator names every item.

  5. 1:44Win

    The win screen plays a victory fanfare, the win music and the commentator’s line for the winner.

MetaSounds engines and pickups

Each kart runs a separate engine sound driven by its speed, throttle and load. I smoothed fast control changes, so the pitch follows the kart without jumping. Hear it from 0:58.

All 17 folders in Audio/Sounds

The MSP_MonoArray MetaSound graph in Unreal: an array input into Random Get with No Repeats 1, a Wave Player, and a Random Float from Pitch Min and Pitch Max into its Pitch Shift

Pickups and power-ups share one MetaSound patch, MSP_MonoArray. Each time it plays, it picks a file from its array, never the same one twice in a row, at a random pitch within a set range.

MS_Pickup layers two of these players into one stereo mix; MS_Powerups feeds a single one with CreamPiePickupSounds and also writes it to the AB_Ducker audio bus.

MSP_MonoArray MS_Pickup MS_Powerups

Mixing four players on one screen

A four-player race over a row of fans, each player’s portrait and name tiles in one corner of the shared screen

I sorted the sounds into three priority tiers with concurrency limits. In a pile-up, kart feedback, major crashes and pickups keep priority, and distant engines and minor sounds give way first.

Master, Music, SFX and Voices each have a Sound Class and a class mix. Distance falloff comes from four shared attenuation presets: characters, deaths, ghosts and jump pads.

Sound Classes Class mixes Attenuation presets

Jam slows a kart down and fans push it on. A zone plays its sound once, when the first granny enters, however many follow, and fades it out when the last one leaves. Hear the fans from 1:16.

The rest of the mix ducks under the commentator’s lines.

The grannies, voiced by the team

Gwen’s intro in the trailer: her portrait and the tiles G W E N beside her on her scooter Penny’s win screen: her portrait above the tiles PENNY WINS, with the other three players in the corners

I recorded the team performing the grannies. Each one has a line when she is picked and another when she wins. The game varies the recordings and leaves time between reactions to limit repetition.

In the run, Betsy is picked at 0:50 and wins at 1:44.

  • Ruth
  • Betsy
  • Patty
  • Gwen
  • Penny

Made as Creaky Wheels with Ádám Knapecz and Steven van den Hoven (development) and Ioanna Efthymiadou, Freya Lesschaeve and Roeland Van Sichem De Combe (art). Final devlog Trailer on YouTube