InVivo's Audio Management Systems

The sound design in horror games plays a crucial part to the player's experience. Besides the visuals, audio is what makes the environment come to life.

At InVivo there are two sound categories which are distinguished, based on their functionality: ambience and all the various sound effects (SFX).

Ambience are all the environmental sounds, like the computer's screen buzzing, flickering lights, gas steams etc... that a player expects to hear inside an abandoned hospital, thus, creating an overall spooky feeling and immersing the player into the game.

The remaining SFX can be heard, when an action happens. These SFX include player footsteps, panel button sounds, padlock wheel rotations etc...

Since there are many SFX that are triggered in our game we had to come up with a solution to reuse audio game elements, instead of creating and destroying game objects at will. Using a technique called Object Pooling we created a bunch of sound game objects and used them when it's appropriate. Imagine having a bag of items, where you get an item when you need it, and you put it bag after use. Thus we avoid the constant creation and destruction of audio elements, which can have an overall performance increase.

Until next time...

Behind Invivo's Narrative

In order for us to really make Invivo the immersive experience we envisioned it will be, we have spent countless hours dishing out some great ideas on what we'd really like the place to be.

Starting from the very first seconds, all the way to the ending credits, the world is a culmilation of hard work, expressing a unified vision, all  concluding in one single sentence: "This is really, really sick"!

During the pre-production phase, the task ahead seemed quite difficult, as we had to overcome the lack of any graphical representation and create an accurate pitch, for a story that could, in the end, be properly presented to the audience. Basic questions, like "who", "where" and "why" had to be answered in a cohesive manner, so as to facilitate both the narrative as a medium of expression and create the appropriate level of immersion to the player.

After all the core elements had been sketched out, we proceeded with creating the world in detail.

Along with the progression of level design and set dressing, we traversed the dark, twisted hospital corridors, rooms and laboratories,  giving birth to what would make everyone love - and hate -  to be engaged with the hospital and its story, by implementing every bit of our vision in such a manner, that it will be seemingly - and disturbingly - natural.

We hope that, when you get to experience what we really have in store for you, you will be as enthralled as we are!