Paralives with Andrei Castañon

Let's go for a drive! We recently met with Michele Postpischl from Mushroom Sound to explore the making of Funselektor Labs Inc's fantastic off-road driving game, over the hill. We talk about a whole lot of topics ranging from the Italian gaming scene, the realities of developing indie games and of course, game audio. Michele was extremely generous in painting a picture of his approach sounding the game while ensuring things remained manageable and in-line with over the hill's development philosophies. From a heavy reliance on foley recordings to mimic wheels on surfaces, to how less lead to more when it comes to engine sounds and so much more, we dive deep into how the game achieved its very deliberately evocative tone. Buckle up, and hope you enjoy!

In this episode, we're taking you to the battlefields of WARDOGS, the brand new tactical shooter from UK developper Bulkhead Studio. We met with audio director Sean Garavan and Albin Jansson from SweejTech who helped build some of the technology powering the game's sonic presentation.The game's just entered early access about a month ago, and so we thought it'd be interesting to get a better sense how things are going behind the scenes.We talked a lot about how the team has managed to meet player expectations, especially given the type of game they're creating. We also dove deep into the inner-workings of how early access has them approaching the evolution of the game, how they're reacting to player feedback, what ambitions they had before launch, and what they've got their aim on for the future of WARDOGS.Hope you enjoy!

Ready to go on an adventure? In this episode, we're taking you to mythical lands as we're chatting with composer Patrik Jarlestam about his work on Iron Gate Studio's Valheim.The game got its big 1.0 release back in September, so we thought it was a good time to talk with Patrik about his experience and how it evolved throughout the past 5 years of early access.We took a deeper-dive than usual when it comes to the nitty gritty of writing music here as Patrik took us on a journey that shed light on his interpretation of Viking music, how he came up with a tone that was inspired by nature and Scandinavia, and obviously so much more.Hope you enjoy!

How do you remake something as monumental as Halo: Combat Evolved? Join us as we sat down with Becky Allen, Sun Kim and Ryan Schaad from Halo Studios to hear about their story and how they approached this from the audio-perspective. This episode was recorded and scheduled to release before yesterday's layoffs impacting the many devs, including our three guests, at Halo Studios and across the XBOX umbrella.The whole situation got and I to think about whether even releasing this episode made sense. After checking in with Becky, Sun and Ryan, we all decided that it was best to move forward and to celebrate their work through these difficult times.Our goal will always be to shine light on the people and on their work creating the games we explore. This episode is no different. The context is sensitive, and so we're hoping to inspire and spread some positivity across the global game development community throughout these difficult times that keeps on delivering brutal blows to the entire industry with this episode. In the spirit of focusing on the bright side, we're humbled to be able to showcase the awesomeness of our guests for this Halo: Campaign Evolved episode, and we're sending all of our support to everyone that's been impacted.Taking a classic and modernizing it has to be a daunting challenge, so we spent a lot of time picking our guest's brains on the kind of thinking and philosophies they adopted when bringing this project to life. With 25 years worth of design and technical evolution between the original and this shiny new remake, the team had to assess what would work and what was best left untouched to ensure that the game felt both like a modern AAA 2026 game, while staying faithful to its source.Becky, Sun and Ryan were extremely generous sharing their many insights on all things audio. This was our first time covering the production of a remake, and so we both learned a lot from our conversation. This is a topic that isn't often talked about, so we're absolutely thrilled to be bringing it out to you all.As usual, hope you enjoy!

Number 20! We've reached a big milestone and wanted to take this opportunity to do something a little bit different. We met with Em Halberstadt and Nicholas Zhang from A Shell in the Pit to talk about their work on House House's latest game, Big Walk! This episode is really special as it's our first time chatting with our guests from within the game we're exploring! This led us down a bunch of unexpected paths that were absolutely a joy to dive in. Em and Nicholas gave us a peek behind the approach they went with to sound the game, how they gathered sounds that balanced the grounded and whimsical, how they wrangled the unpredictable with the in-game proximity chat system, and so much more. Hope you enjoy!

In this episode, we're joined by Andrei Castañon to talk about his work on the early-access life-simulation game, Paralives.Since Andrei is the sole audio developper on the game, he's had his hands on all things audio. He very candidly took us across on a journey sharing his experience joining the team, composing the score, designing the sounds, facing the many challenges that come from sounding a cozy life sim, creating the in-universe language, and a whole lots of insights on the realities of the indie game dev scene.Hope you enjoy!

For this episode, we got to meet some of the fantastic folks from Sony Interactive Entertainment who helped shape the amazing audio from Housemarque's latest game, Saros.Loïc Couthier, Lewis Everest, Lewis Barn, Fabio Liutina, Pete Reed and Juuso Tolonen all sat down with us to chat about the work they've put into making this cosmic-nightmare-bullet-hell such a wonder to listen to. We dive into their approach at designing sounds for UI, weapons, enemies, environments and bosses through a set of pillars that aimed to keep things cohesive, how they made use of Sony's DualSense controllers features to the fullest, their use of 3D audio technology, and so much more.The team was extremely generous when it comes to sharing the nitty-gritty details on their workflow and the likes, so perhaps this is one of our most in-the-weeds episode so far!Hope you enjoy!

This next one is surely going to put a smile on your face! We met with Raffaele Presciutti from TT Games to chat about the work that's been put into bringing Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight to life!Our conversation explores the many intricacies of designing the sonic experience of a Lego game set in the world of Batman. From defining the tone, level of realism, and slapstick of the aesthetics, all the way through the technicalities of bringing Gotham City's open-world to life, we cover a lot of ground here! We also talk about vehicle sounds, the role of music, and a whole lot more! Time to turn on the Bat-Signal!Hope you enjoy!

We're travelling back in time for this one. We recently met with Damian Czajka and Patryk Scelina to talk about their work on the recently released first-person-shooter, Mouse: P.I. for Hire from Fumi Games!We dive deep into how they managed to deliver an experience that feels like a love-letter to speaking cinema's early days, detective fiction and classic rubber hose animation! The team did a ton of research to ensure that the experience delivered an authentic feeling that feels modern and highly polished. We chat about balancing the level of sound degradation, working with clichés and expectations, crafting memorable musical themes, using props and tricks from the past to create memorable sound effects, and so much more!Hope you enjoy!

Get ready this is going to make you hungry as we dive deep into the lovely Dosa Divas!We're joined by Chandana 'Eka' Ekanayake, game director and co-founder of Outerloop Games, Anne-Marie Weber, sound designer and Ramsey Kharroubi, composer on this spicy narrative turn-based RPG as we explore a lot of topics we haven't tackled yet on the show.We talk about the realities of making games as an indie studio in the current state of the games industry, the importance of representation and VO casting. We obviously also talk in-depth game audio topics like researching tone and aesthetics in music and sound design, iterative designs, collaboration amongst various disciplines, foley and props recording, and so much more!Hope you enjoy!