Baacadia is an exploration puzzle game that transforms shepherding into an epic journey across an untamed world. Capture sounds then play them back and watch the world respond. Guide your herd through an alien landscape by observing and communicating with its mysterious flora and fauna through the power of sound.

Baacadia was developed as a capstone project at USC with contributions from over 50 students across USC, Otis, Berklee, and Cal State Fullerton.

For this project I:

  • Designed a fully diegetic spatialized music system to create an alien world of sound in Unity with Wwise
  • Created a MIDI based procedural music engine syncing voices across multiple gameobjects for spatialized sample accurate playback with dynamic chord and tempo changes
  • Developed a callback system to synchronize visual feedback to individual notes from the music engine in collaboration with the art team

Baacadia mixes its score and sound design together creating an interesting sonic environment. MIDI based motifs play through a custom MIDI based music engine triggering instruments made by our sound designers in Wwise. The music engine provides tempo synchronization across multiple emitters allowing for individual notes to be spatialized. A great example of this is shown at the waterfall where motifs are played across multiple lilypads supported by visual effects triggering with each note (9:37).

The music engine supports dynamic tempo and chord changes based on the player’s progression. During the ascent sequence the music speeds up as the player approaches their objective at the top of the canyon (4:38).

The base ambient pad of Baacadia mimics wind and is entirely procedural; random notes are selected from several pentatonic scales that define the current chord and are played back using Synth One adjusting a filter on white noise (0:30).

When Scout plays sounds around the Noise motifs are altered procedurally removing notes, stretching phrases, and repetition short segments. Additionally the source of the noise mimics the motifs that Scout plays creating an unsettling call and response alluding to Scout’s interactions with the flora and fauna of Baacadia (18:26).

Baacadia’s creeks use spline emitters to ensure smooth coverage across the entire length of the waterway. Inspired by Ghost of Yotei, two moving emitters also follow the length of the spline to simulate the flow of the creek. Water throughout Baacadia also features dynamic splashes based on velocity and drips when exiting