I am part of Freaky Creations, a game development studio that created the first Ecuadorian video game released on PlayStation 4 platform To Leave. We started as classmates and friends from ESPOL university in 2011, and met whole days sharing ideas about games and learning about game development, which is not common in the Ecuadorian educational system.

The team that emerged from the desire to produce an interactive experience is multidisciplinary. We faced many challenges to achieve an optimal communication of ideas regarding the areas that are involved in game development. Thankfully, based on the concepts of game design, we reached a higher connection among programmers, visual artists, and audio artists.

Freaky Creations Team in 2012. From Left to right, Carlos Bohorquez (Music Producer), Roberto Bernous (Music Composer), Pedro Lucas (Audio Programmer), Emmanuel Ayala (Environmental Artist), Estefano Palacios (Creative Director and Game Designer), Ambar Troya (Environmental Artist), Enrique Bernous (Music Composer), Gustavo Totoy (Gameplay Programmer), Javier Ron (Graphics Programmer), Jorge Blacio (Programmer and Game Producer), Danny Camino (Character and Environmental Artist), and Juan Pérez (Game Animator and Environmental Artist)

We entered to the Sony Latin America Incubation Program, that allowed us to have access to PlayStation development platform; that is, the Private PS Development Portal (dev.net), Software Development Kits (PS SDK) which included a PS4 and PSVita devices for development. We were given a working space at the Information Technology Center (CTI) at ESPOL university and a financial support.

For many years we grew in knowledge and generated a considerable amount of content, until we decided what was the right kind of game that we wanted to release, a non-common game that explores in deep a mental condition, more than a game, an experience, that is To Leave.

To Leave

To Leave is based on the next premise:

Harm—a manic-depressive young man in possession of a magical, flying door—seeks to use an ancient, derelict technology to harvest the souls of his home-world and send everyone, and himself, to heaven.

From Freaky Creations Web Page

Taking about To Leave is highly dense because of the elements involved in the game. It is better if a person has the experience and constructs a conclusion about what really means for him or her. However, you can find more information in our web page, and social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube). The game is currently released on PS4, and PC (Windows, Mac, and Linux on Steam. The video below is the Full Release Trailer that was published when the game was published on April 24, 2018.

Personally, my experience in game development started with Freaky Creations. Because of my computer science background and empirical musicianship, I focused on audio programming and worked very close with the music producer and music composers, which led me to learn about music production and sound design for video games, something that was reinforced with self-learning regarding these topics and enlightened my interest in music technology.

Game Audio Development for To Leave

During the development process of To Leave, the full responsibility for the audio experience fell on four people; Roberto Bernous, Enrique Bernous, Carlos Bohorquez, and me. We shaped together the audio experience inside the game. Carlos Bohorquez was the main producer, he contributed with his knowledge and equipment from his company Ermitaño Records. Several times I was in the studio for sessions involving music and sound effects to guide my mates in the requirements needed for the game according to the technology that we used, in the case of To Leave, the implementation was performed in the Unity3D game engine, I was aware of the audio technologies that Unity manages and we worked around the features and limitations of the engine. An informal registration of the final mixing process for the game can be found in this set of Instagram stories.

Besides the technological duties in regard to implement dynamic audio in a video game, I acquired knowledge regarding sound design and music production. I manage tools such as Audacity, Adobe Audition, Ableton Live, and MPC Essentials from AKAI, for pre-processing audio in order to optimize the implementation inside the engine.

  • Carlos Bohorquez(L), Enrique Bernous(C), Roberto Bernous(R)
  • Working session at CTI with the rest of the team
  • Pedro Lucas(L), Enrique Bernous(C), Roberto Bernous(R)
  • Discussions about the audio experience in the game

In terms of programming, behaviors according to the player actions were developed; for example, triggering sound effects in sync with graphical events, dynamic change of music and ambiances depending on the location (cross-fade features), and manipulation of real-time filters (LPF, HPF, Reverb Zones, etc). However, considering that we were a small team, each programmer had to be involved in the implementation of features that were not necessarily related with its area of expertise; for instance, the other programmers and I had to manage gameplay, graphics and general systems, as well as applying techniques for optimizing resources and specific-platform features.

Work Experience for Music Technology Projects

Thanks to the experience earned from working on To Leave, I was able to discover and explore the area of music technology. It started with the development of my undergraduate thesis with the help of Roberto and Enrique, in which I could apply Artificial Intelligence for music generation.

Other projects based on the use of a game engine were AuSyntAR, GSynthSky, a MIDI mapper for Unity, as well as real-time non-musical projects like Virtual Circuits, and an artificial swarm of drones.

Currently, in the field of game development, I am in a new adventure in Aenima Studios. However, I continue constantly exploring, by my own, projects related with music composition, production, and technology. To Leave became a fundamental part of my professional development.