The Great Christmas Toy Machine is an isometric Christmas themed simulation game where the player takes control of a toy workshop on the run up to Christmas. The player is met with letters that request very specific presents and must complete these requests and can earn rewards to decorate the workshop.
This was project was undertaken in a team of four, two people I had previously worked with and an additional member to work on the music for the game. We had five days to complete the project, but with the Christmas period on the approach, we were limited to three days due to prior commitments.
This was my fourth overall project and as a sound designer and third project as a technical sound designer. This project was undertaken in Unity. Further to this, I decided to return to my roots in FMOD as a means to keep my knowledge and understanding of the middleware fresh.
One of the techniques I attempted on this project was to have a randomised loop of instruments. This was an idea previously learned in the Wwise 201 course for interactive music that I decided to adapt for to FMOD in order to have as many variations as possible. Due to the nature of the stems delivered to me, I arranged it in such a way that only the drums and main rhythm guitar played in every possible outcome.
Due to the constraints of the project, not every idea made it to the final build of the game. One such example is that each machine was to have an animation and a sound to match such an animation. The sounds were designed to lean into the light hearted, almost, comedic element of the game using silly sound effects at the end and attempting to make the machines sound clunky and old.
(Click on each of the orange play buttons to hear the sounds)
Print machine
Wood Dispenser
Wood grinder
wood press
Fun facts:​​
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The vast majority of the sounds in this game were vocalised.
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Early planning of the game would've had the player dealing with actual customers in a store front.
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One of the intended ideas that didn't make it to the final cut was to have a random name generator for the letters, names were going to include same quite daft name possiblities, such as, Snickerdoodle Bumblebottom and Goofball Squeakersnoot.