2025 · Audio-led psychological horror

Shadow Frames

A horror game set in one abandoned pub, where the player finds changes by ear. As sole audio designer, I built the sounds that announce and locate each change.

Sole audio designer · 4 months · Wwise · Unreal Engine 5 · C++ · REAPER

Gameplay Trailer

Gameplay with the spatial mix. Headphones recommended.

Sound design and implementation

I handled sound design, voice recording, implementation and mixing. The finished game uses over 200 Wwise events, with mix changes driven by the player’s actions and the enemy’s distance.

The project brought together students from Howest DAE, RITCS and the Royal Conservatory of Ghent.

Alert, localisation and confirmation

The player finds changes in the pub without on-screen markers. Each anomaly has an alert, a directional clue and a confirmation sound.

The pub bar counter with bottles on the shelves, a candle and a microphone stand

01

Announcing a change

A short, non-directional alert signals that one of ten objects has changed.

The pub stage under one spotlight, with an upright piano, an acoustic guitar and an accordion

02

Locating the object

The changed object emits its own spatial sound. The player follows it through the pub.

The view through the Polaroid: a rounded viewfinder over a lit table of bottles and candles, with the shot counter in the corner

03

Confirming the photograph

Raising the camera lowers the pub ambience and brings breathing and hand movement forward. A reversed whisper confirms the shot.

Mix priority during an anomaly

The mix reacts to the enemy’s distance, the raised camera and which anomalies are active. When too many sounds play at once, music and ambience give way. The clues, the camera and the enemy stay, because those are the sounds the player is acting on.

Mix priority schematic. Bar lengths illustrate the hierarchy, not measured levels.

Fixes from weekly playtests

The enemy sound switched on and off near one particular distance. Footsteps failed when parts of the level moved. And raising the Polaroid camera was easy to miss.

I stopped the enemy sound from flickering, made footsteps follow the actual floor material, and gave the raised camera its own mix state.

Developed Polaroids pinned to a board and connected with lengths of string

Every confirmed photograph goes on the board.

Audio settings in Unreal and Wwise

I exposed floor, anomaly and enemy settings as Unreal Data Assets, so designers could tune them without changing code. Wwise holds the bus hierarchy and the curves that control the mix.

Master Mixer Hierarchy in Wwise

Wwise

Bus hierarchy

Audio layers are grouped for mixing and priority control.

Unreal editor content browser showing audio DataAsset configurations

Unreal

Designer controls

Each configuration can be edited in the Unreal content browser.

RTPC curves and game states in Wwise

RTPC

Curves and states

RTPC curves and states respond to distance, the camera and active anomalies.