Behind Blind Drive’s Essential Game Audio:

How successful would you be at driving blindfolded? The game developer Lo-Fi People has made it possible to find out (in a safe way, of course!) with Blind Drive. Here, we talk with Giori Politi of Lo-Fi People to learn more about the game, how sound is used as the driving force behind the gameplay - and the challenges and possibilities of designing sound for an audio-based game:

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Interview by Jennifer Walden, photos courtesy of Lo-Fi People

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Blind Drive is a dark-comedy, immersive action game that puts the player behind the wheel of a car and forces them to use their hearing to stay alive. That’s because in this game the player is essentially ‘blindfolded.’ There’s very little visual feedback. It’s even recommended to play the game with ones eyes closed.

The rules start off pretty simple: hit a car, lose some health. But there are bonuses to regain health, too — like hitting bicyclists, ice-cream trucks, police cars, and more! Hence the dark comedy part ;)

But the game progressively gets crazier and crazier… (you really have to experience this one for yourself!)

The masterminds behind this acclaimed game are Giori Politi (who handled Blind Drive‘s Game Design, Sound Design, and Level Design) and the team at Lo-Fi People. Their efforts have been rewarded with several award nominations, include one for an ‘Excellence in Audio’ award at the upcoming Independent Games Festival, happening July 21st at GDC.

Here, Politi talks about developing the initial idea, designing the levels in terms of sound, the challenges they faced in created an audio-driven game, how they handled different processing for different environments and situations (like underwater driving, and driving with the windows closed), how they crafted an optimal headphones mix, and more!

Blind Drive – Official Trailer

In Blind Drive, you have to use your ears to avoid hazards and find bonuses (like hitting pedestrians). How did the concept for this game come about?

Giori Politi, sound designer/game designer

Giori Politi (GP): The idea of the game started as a simple concept — what would it feel like to drive a car without seeing anything, using only your ears? Is it possible at all?

I immediately made a quick sketch of the idea using MaxMSP and showed it to my colleague Doron Terre (who handled Game Design, Screenplay, Programming, Animation on Blind Drive); he thought it was kind of cool so we set about developing this thing.

The original idea was to make a site-specific installation — inspired by projects like Robin Arnott’s Deep Sea — and place people behind a real car’s dashboard. It’s a familiar everyday situation but this forces players to re-experience it in an entirely new light while also helping them to discover that their ears can do things they never dreamt of.

Very quickly it started to get the shape of a more playful experience and so we decided to go full-on video game with this. We sketched a few levels and scenarios and started to fool around with ideas.

The combination of those two themes — sound-based arcade driving + interactive narrative podcast — is what shaped the direction of the game.

At the same time, we needed a way to introduce the gameplay to players somehow and connect all the levels into a coherent whole and this is how the narrative part of the game came about.

We drew inspiration from our love of 90’s crime-comedy movies such as Pulp Fiction, Snatch and The Big Lebowski and added a radio play/audiobook/podcast-style story that plays out over the phone.

The combination of those two themes — sound-based arcade driving + interactive narrative podcast — is what shaped the direction of the game.

‘Blind Drive’ Creators Giori Politi and D. A. Terre at Lo-Fi People

Can you walk me through your approach to designing each level in terms of sound? (Did you start with the dialogue record? What were your next steps?)

GP: Dialogue was actually the last thing we added in the process.

Most levels started out with us thinking about a game mechanic or a scene we wanted to try.

For instance, how would you dodge bullets by sound alone? Or what would a police chase game-boss be like?

Then we started sketching these mechanics with the basic sounds needed without overloading it with any unessential information. We would then playtest these levels with family and friends, checking if the main idea actually works.

…we started sketching these mechanics with the basic sounds needed without overloading it with any unessential information.

To be honest, many ideas fell flat at this stage, mostly because they needed a long explanation in order to play them, and we wanted the game to be fast and snappy.

After finalizing the mechanics, I went on creating the sounds needed for the level itself. Every level had its own requirements: the ambience layers, the enemies, damage sounds, etc.

Then we would tie everything to the story, writing and recording the dialogue lines. Each dialogue — apart from revealing more of the main plot — had to serve as an introduction to the level, explaining what the player needs to do.

Lastly, we added all the foley and glued everything to the car’s sound itself.

What was the most challenging level in terms of sound design? Why?

GP: By far the most challenging level to design was the last level of the game.

*Spoiler alert*

In the last level Donnie (the protagonist) is driving through the bad guys’ headquarters base. All the while he’s being chased by a helicopter that’s shooting at him, mafia goons shouting and shooting all around, dogs barking, sirens blaring, kamikaze boomers passing at high speed… and if all that wasn’t enough, Donnie’s Grandma is standing on the car’s roof, yelling profanities and holding a bazooka trying to take down the helicopter.

It’s a full-on action scene with many details playing altogether. Just about everything is important and must come across in order for the situation to be understandable and for the level as a whole to be playable.

Just about everything is important and must come across in order for the situation to be understandable and for the level as a whole to be playable.

This was a hard level to mix. It’s a loud and long one, and as it’s the hardest one in the game (players tend to crash there a lot!), we had to find a way to keep the tension high for quite a while without tiring players’ ears.

Finding the right balance between the different elements was challenging. In real life, imagine you have a car’s engine going at full speed, a helicopter circling over your head, and your Grandma is on the roof yelling orders at you (well, not a real real-life situation…), you will simply not hear her voice. If this was a movie scene (and this scene is actually inspired by the end scene of Tarantino’s Death Proof), we’d just pump up the dialogue level and it would feel very natural. In our case though, if we had increased the dialogue level too much, it would have felt like Grandma is in the car with you, so we really had to fine-tune those things.

This was a general theme throughout the game: striking a balance between sound realism and playability.

Did you have a favorite level to design? (And is that your favorite level to play??)

GP: The last level, aside from being the hardest to design, was also my favorite.

I had a really good time recording the foley for this level, going on my car’s roof to perform Grandma’s footsteps and impacts as she falls down when the car gets hit. This particular sound is one of my favorite sounds in the game; it somehow turned out very realistic and every time I play this level and hear her footsteps, I jump a little thinking someone is walking above me.

I had a really good time recording the foley for this level, going on my car’s roof to perform Grandma’s footsteps and impacts as she falls down when the car gets hit.

There are some other sounds in this level that were really fun to create, like spatializing Wilkins the Cat as he flies around your head every time the car gets hit, creating the kamikaze bomb effects as they hit you and make everything sound blurry and generate a high tone ringing in your ear, designing the satisfying moments when Grandma shoots her bazooka and hits the helicopter, and many more. We really went wild with this level!

Also, recording Grandma’s lines with the great voice actress Gani Tamir was a lot of fun; she really nailed it there.

Another level that was really fun to design was the underwater one as it’s very different from the rest of the game. Finally, I could make some quiet sounds that can be heard clearly without the need to compete with the roaring engine.

As for my favorite level to play, I think it’s the Vanilla Abe one with the crazy shotgun-firing farmer. It keeps challenging me every time, no matter how many times I play it.

The player experiences different environments and situations, like underwater driving, and driving with the windows closed. Did you create a plugin processing chain to treat all the exterior elements in that level, so that it had a consistent sound? Or, how did you handle that?

GP: In the case of the underwater level, all the sounds were pre-processed in the DAW because they are unique for this level and not shared with any other levels.

For levels such as the windows or the tunnel, there is indeed an effects processing chain in real-time as there are many sounds shared with the rest of the game.

For levels such as the windows or the tunnel, there is indeed an effects processing chain in real-time as there are many sounds shared with the rest of the game.

Each mixer group is handled a bit differently so we have control over the master mix. We have separate mixer groups for external ambiences, external car sounds, internal car sounds (that mostly stay unaffected), enemies, damage, etc. All these groups get slightly different treatment but share the same effects chains for uniformity.

Binaural car-pass recording

What format did you mix in? The sound is optimized for headphones, and that’s a really critical part of the game! Can you talk about your use of the surround space, the challenges and opportunities this game afforded you in terms of spatialization?

GP: We mixed the game in stereo as it is indeed meant to be played with headphones. I had many different headphones on my desk while mixing the game, ranging from high-quality ones to cheap earbuds as we had to make sure all important information was delivered no matter what.

In terms of sound spatialization, getting this right was the key challenge of the entire design.

In terms of sound spatialization, getting this right was the key challenge of the entire design. There were three main techniques we used for this.

The first group was mono sounds that went through a binaural HRTF filter. This includes the car’s engine, other cars and enemies, impact and special effects sounds, and of course the dialogue.

They were all spatialized and pre-processed in the DAW, mostly using the great sounding DearVR Pro plugin, and with some custom IR I took in my car in different setups and positions. For instance, the little music parts we have in the game (composed by the amazing Ariel Mann) all went through an IR captured from my car’s radio.

…the little music parts we have in the game (composed by the amazing Ariel Mann) all went through an IR captured from my car’s radio.

The other group was sounds that I recorded using binaural microphones and a dummy head setup in my car. This was done mostly for the foley and for some effects. This is a rather simple technique that turned out to be very effective for the situation and gave us the most realistic results.

Lastly, there are a few sounds that were spatialized in real-time in the game’s engine, mostly the boss fights as their movement in the game is more dynamic and unpredictable (e.g. the helicopter, the police cars, and the gunman).

To glue everything together in the audio engine, we used a few different reverb zones such as open spaces, building reflections, etc.

The voice of the main character is always played in mono and never gets any movement. The idea behind it was that this is the player’s point of view, this is ‘your’ own voice and it should be played inside your head. I wonder if this really comes through in the end result.

Binaural Impulse response recording

What game engine/audio engine did you use to build this game? Were there any technical challenges to working this way?

GP: We used FMOD for this game and it was a great pleasure to work with!

Originally when we started working on the game, Doron was programming a custom audio engine in Unity, but halfway through the process we switched to FMOD and never looked back.

We also used FMOD to send information back into the game’s engine to drive animations, haptic feedback, and some other cues that are responsive to the sound.

As Blind Drive is all about sound, FMOD really stands in the center here in the technical sense.

We wrote a few custom scripts for it but we mostly used all the normal built-in features and plugins.

Like any other project, there were some technical challenges and we kind of pushed FMOD to the limits here. We were running quite a lot of channels and effects simultaneously, and using everything FMOD had to offer on the logic side.

We also used FMOD to send information back into the game’s engine to drive animations, haptic feedback, and some other cues that are responsive to the sound. This was less straightforward and we kind of had to hack this a little bit, but all in all, it was exactly what we needed.

What would you want other game sound pros to know about your work on Blind Drive?

GP: The biggest realization working on this game was that designing sound for an audio-based game is very different from designing sound for a “normal” video game.

On one hand, you are not constrained to any predefined image or animation so you have the freedom to imagine and create any scenario you’d like from scratch.

On the other hand, every little tweak you make in a scene or a level — adding a sound, filtering, changing the level or timing of a sound — has a huge impact on the gameplay itself and can change the difficulty quite a lot.

…designing sound for an audio-based game is very different from designing sound for a “normal” video game.

Another thing that we had to deal with was Bluetooth headphones and the audio latency they introduce, especially on mobile devices where Bluetooth headphone users are about half of all players.

For most games, this mostly means the sound will be a bit out of sync, which damages the experience, of course, but doesn’t kill the game. In our case, where you must control the game by listening to sound only and, in most cases, have to react very quickly as well, it had a huge impact on the game.

Another thing that we had to deal with was Bluetooth headphones and the audio latency they introduce…

When we started working on the game a few years ago, Bluetooth headphones were not as popular as they are today and when we got closer to releasing the game and realized we had no choice but to deal with it, it kind of freaked us out.

What we did, in the end, to get around this was to make a latency compensation option in the menu which basically shifts the whole timing of the game mechanics forward to allow players a bit more time to react until the sound reaches their ears. The latency is still there — things are actually happening before you can hear them, which is not exactly optimal — but at least it is playable and not very noticeable if you don’t know what’s going on under the hood.

A big thanks to Giori Politi for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of Blind Drive and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

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