Geiger Cubes is a relaxing FPS playground made for Ludum Dare 49 by Samuel Hollywood-Summers. Shoot some cubes and enjoy the scenery and sounds. Either make your own objectives, or bask in the absence of a task list.
Controls
WASD to move
Click to shoot
Escape key to quit
Controllers might also work, but this is not tested (let me know).
Post-Mortem This is my first game made in Unreal, and to those of you familiar with the engine, it closely resembles the First-Person template, with some changes, additions and improvements. My intention going into the jam was to familiarise myself with the engine, and to play with the new MetaSounds featrure in UE5. I have achieved those goals, and also managed to build a working game, with sounds for all events and interactions featured.
Playing with MetaSounds was great fun. My initial plan was to make an interactive music game, and make extensive use of MetaSounds for this. My priorities, and what I needed to spend time on, changed throughout the jam, and so this did not exactly come to pass (the game design in particular), but the background music is made in MetaSounds from a handful of guitar strum samples and the synthesis capabilities of this new engine feature. Other SFX (including the weapon fire and the stone sfx) also make use of synthesis in the engine, in combination with my designed sound assets. Every sound is implemented with MetaSounds.
All sounds were recorded during the jam, or were edited from library material to make new, derivative sounds during the jam.
I was glad to implement a few last minute polish tasks, such as a custom crosshair and an escape key command to end the game, which is always a great quality of life feature I try to add during jams.
Considering this is my fourth solo jam, and my very first time creating anything in the Unreal Engine, I am very pleased with the outcome, but I do want to explore the possibilities for both generative music, and interactive music, in MetaSounds, to a much deeper level than I could manage during the jam. I would also appreciate your feedback and suggestions, so please do leave feedback in the comments section, or reach out.
Not familiar with unreal engine or its metasounds feautre and technicalities of it, but the background music is nice and relaxing and its aslo what i paid attention to, since you said yourself sound was priority not the gameplay.
This is a cool prototype and for me, felt like a proof of concept for a relaxed, exploratory adventure game, that focused on ambiance and sound design :) I would love to see a little puzzle game with this rubberball-shooting gun with some platforming, exploring a nice little floating island to chill vibes in the background :)
This was such a relaxing experience! While I know little about MetaSounds, I did really like the sound design of the game. The music was relaxing, and I liked how different materials had different sounds (especially the metal cubes, they sounded very authentic). I liked the sandbox of the whole thing. I understand that there was little game design since that was not your goal, so I would love to see what you come up with once you've gone into the depths of this new tool (?) !
Unfortunately I only have a Mac. But I watched the video clip. I love the sound: very juicy. The "pop" of the gun and the collision sounds are great! And nice and calm music. The graphics look very good. Nice "mate reflective" walls.
@binary-systems There are a bunch of short impact sounds per block type. On a collision, a random file from a selection is played, with some pitch randomisation and with volume tied to the velocity of the cube at the moment of collision. The stone block also has a low thud element added through sine wave synthesis in MetaSounds. So that you don't get too many sounds triggered by all the physics collisions, once a sound is triggered, another one can't be played for a certain amount of time, which I have randomised between 0.1 and 0.2 seconds. This randomisation helps the sounds feel natural rather than rhythmic or artificial.
Cool game. I also use Unreal Engine and I really glad that others use this Engine for the game jam as well. The music is nice and fits well to the game. It was fun to play
@ninjacatz Yeah, have you read the description? I modified the first person template, adding textures, sounds (the main focus) and music, and adjusting the mass of some cubes. My intention was to learn Unreal and MetaSounds, focusing on audio triggering, procedural music and using a combination of designed sound effects and synthesis within MetaSounds. No focus on gameplay this jam.
Congrats on learning new softwares ! It's always hard to take the first step. It's a bit sad that the shooting sound is too present (as it deflect our attention from the calm soundscape/ambiance/music behind and barely ear the reaction sound which seem more important).
Very cool demo. I have not got into unreal myself but this is super cool. It did make me sad that I couldn't get a good framerate with my gfx card. Looking forward to seeing what you do in the future.
Interesting sound experiment, congratulations on learning MetaSounds in Unreal. It is worth noting that the cubes emphasize the immersion not only with sound but also with weight. You asked for the feedback so here it is:
I think this space can become a kind of Interactive DSP Sound Lab:
You could implement various objects that can be fired with different acoustics / weight / material etc. The ability to turn off the music to experience pure acoustic tests of collisions of various objects or the music is in the center playing from source that you can move around into another objects.
Happy Unrealing 🎵 It was pleasant experience for the 👂 👂
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I love the sound: very juicy. The "pop" of the gun and the collision sounds are great! And nice and calm music.
The graphics look very good. Nice "mate reflective" walls.
You asked for the feedback so here it is:
I think this space can become a kind of Interactive DSP Sound Lab:
You could implement various objects that can be fired with different acoustics / weight / material etc.
The ability to turn off the music to experience pure acoustic tests of collisions of various objects or the music is in the center playing from source that you can move around into another objects.
Happy Unrealing 🎵 It was pleasant experience for the 👂 👂