Contributions:
Sound Design - Weapons, Utilities, Impacts, Rewards, UI
Music - adaptive soundtrack, title theme music
Post production - foley, sound design and music for promotional material
MekaMon, developed by Bristol based Reach Robotics, is an intelligent gaming robot at the intersection of augmented reality, robotics and gaming. Real-life robots are controlled and viewed in AR through smart devices, and made to battle each other in arena-style matches.
Lab Grown Audio was responsible for developing the entire MekaMon soundworld, designed and integrated all in-game sfx and music and produced audio for many of the company’s promotional videos.
Sound Design
The soundworld was a key way of communicating MekaMon lore to the player. The near-future sci-fi sound design during gameplay also had to reflect the size of the robots. Weapons and impacts had to sound small but mighty!
For movement, I recorded all the servo sounds of the real world robots animations and integrated these sounds into the virtual animations to help bring the AR robots and gameplay to life.
Gameplay is also packed full of feedback, UI and reward sfx to make the battle experience more engaging and communicate key information about the robot’s health to the player.
Here you can hear some of the sound design during the development process (doesn’t include projectile or impact animations)
Music
Pre-battle music for the main menu
The menu music stays very much in the electronic realm to reflect the MekaMon’s world. It’s understated but has depth, helping to build tension pre-battle. The tiny rhythmic glitches and neuro bass swells tie in with the robot sound design and help keep the gameplay experience cohesive.
In-game music is more upbeat with breakbeats and drum fills keeping momentum going through the arena style battles.
Other in-app music includes for the lore video, which accompanies a comic style backstory of how the MekaMon came about:
Music for MekaMon promotional material is higher impact and uses robotics sound design to help fit the marketing around the soundworld of the gameplay itself.
