Behind Scorn’s Nightmare-Inducing Game Audio – with Lead Sound Designer Koca Kastavarac

If you’re looking for a game that creates an intensely sickening feeling of hopelessness and desperation for escape, then check out Ebb Software’s horror-survival game Scorn. It’s like being inside the grim biomechanical world of H.R. Giger’s art, having to choose harmful body augmentation by alien tech in order to survive, and being constantly led on by the possibility of escape and survival even though the remnants of other failed attempts are scattered around you. It’s visually, sonically, and emotionally dark, but the hallmark of good art (be it a film, book, game, painting, and so on) is that it makes you feel something. And you’d be hard-pressed to walk away from this game without feeling its impact on your psyche.

Scorn successfully immerses the player into this oddly beautiful but dangerous alien world through its use of dark and heavy atmospheric sounds and score, the unique diegetic sounds of partially organic machines, and imposing and threatening sounds of frightening enemies.

Lead Sound Designer on Scorn Koca Kastavarac collaborated with sound designers Dragoslav Ostojic, Milan Kovarbasic, and Dobrivoje Milijanovic, composer and sound designer Adis Kutkut, sound designers Jakov Munizaba and Vladimir Kerkez who assisted early on in the project, and audio programmers Dino Duvnjak and Dimitrije Krsteski.

Here, Kastavarac talks about how they created Scorn‘s palette of sounds using a combination of custom recordings and library effects of rocks, ice, vegetables, and metal, how they designed the enemies’ sounds and vocalizations, how they worked around the score (staying away from tonal and bass-heavy sounds) when designing the weighty atmospheres, how they handled technical challenges like adding an occlusion system, and much more!

Scorn – Official Gameplay Trailer | Summer of Gaming 2022

There’s no dialogue in the game! In what ways was that a challenge for the sound team? In what ways was that freeing? Did it allow more opportunities to use sound as a storytelling tool?

Koca Kastavarac (KK): Not having any dialogue in the game had only pros and a few challenges from my perspective. It helped other elements of the mix to stand out and have more prominence. That allowed the soundtrack to be the perfect stage for sound designers, an opportunity that the whole team embraced and used to the fullest extent. There were no worries that the effects would be covered up, and we had the whole frequency spectrum just for ourselves to play with. Not having to think about localization made things easier in the final stage as well.

In terms of storytelling, details in the sound of machines and ambiances served to represent this desolate and barren world inhabited by an advanced civilization at one stage, that’s now ruined and almost empty. That was the biggest challenge created by the absence of dialogue. Other parts of the soundtrack had to assume that role and always remind the player about the state of the world.

The alien machines in the game have a very H.R. Giger vibe, and are a mix of metallic and organic materials. Can you talk about your approach to designing sounds for the machines and components used in the game? What went into your palette of sounds?

KK: All of the machines had to sound like they had not been used for a very long time. Similar to everything else in this world, they needed to sound discomforting and unsettling.

…metal sounds can easily break the immersion if you recognize it to be a plate or a sheet, etc.

As you said, they are a mix of metal and organic materials, so the main sound components used in the design were metal, rock (stone), ice, bone, flesh, and dull hits for start/stop. The metal sound was helpful in giving resonance, which is not easy to get from any other material. It was important not to use familiar-sounding recordings because metal sounds can easily break the immersion if you recognize it to be a plate or a sheet, etc.

For metal, we recorded a lot of domestic things like metal shelves, doors, stoves, and whatever was around. Contact mics proved to be a very good tool for this job. We used Geofons by Lom, which sounds very dramatic when used on something resonant like staircase handrails.

Ice has a weird and unfamiliar sound to most people, so it was great for giving texture to movements, both big and small.

Ice has a weird and unfamiliar sound to most people, so it was great for giving texture to movements, both big and small. We used mostly commercial libraries for that. Cracks by Sound of Italy was the one I’d like to point out.

Bone and rock are great for making grind and crunch sounds. We recorded sounds and also used commercial libraries like Mattia Celloto’s Rocks Momentum.

Flesh and squish sounds were there to give the organic part of the sound when needed. We had a market near the studio, so that was an endless source of vegetables.

That was the usual palette of sounds, but not all machines are built out of just these elements. Every sound designer used their sounds as long as they fit the general concept.

One thing that gave machines a special quality is the intro and outro sounds.

One thing that gave machines a special quality is the intro and outro sounds. There were small, one-second, sometimes smaller pauses between the player entering the interface of the machine and the actual movement of the machine. We integrated some “turn on or off” sounds in those places to glue everything together. They didn’t have a visual cue, so we placed them in the off space and made them sound like they were coming from under the floor or behind the wall. That connected the sound and the picture even more and helped with the player’s immersion.

In the field, we recorded ambiances and some bigger sounds like door slams and furniture hits for bigger bangs.

The atmospheres in the game are dark and heavy. How did you create the tonal/atmospheric sounds? Did you use a sampler or plugins to help manipulate tones and drones so they have more movement and variation? Or, what did your process look like for creating these background ambient drones?

KK: An important direction for ambiances was to leave out anything that sounded like a tone, that part of the soundtrack was reserved for music which was created by Billain and Lustmord. Their tracks were very atmospheric and bass heavy so we needed to make as much of a distinction as possible between music and ambiance.

…we needed to make as much of a distinction as possible between music and ambiance.

We also tried to avoid clashing in the frequency spectrum. It is always easier when you have some elements moving in the picture to which you can hook sound onto. For most of the levels, we all designed some ambiance but for Crater tunnels, Dobrivoje [Milijanovic] did them all and you could feel that you went underground in the deep but also the organic presence of the red vines that were creeping all around you.

The challenge with ambiance was to make them sound empty like room tones but also interesting to accompany fantastic sights and architecture. Most of the game is happening inside so the loops could be made from basically anything as long as it didn’t have much content going on. I used some light wind and breeze recordings but layered and exported through a reverb that matches the visual.

I used some light wind and breeze recordings but layered and exported through a reverb that matches the visual.

EQ is also a great tool for this need; you can use it to change the resonant frequency of the room tone and give it a different character that way. Several types of ambient spot sounds that were available, thanks to our programmers, were basic FMOD Scatter Instruments, 3D emitters, and sound-emitting splines.

For those that did not have any visual reference, each sound designer put something he imagined could be heard in that place. For one room, distant car pass-bys were used but also processed and exported through a reverb.

So I would say we used mostly recordings and automation in Reaper on plugins to give variation and modulation.

What went into the sound of the ‘enemies’ that players encounter in Scorn? For instance, the Parasite, the Cyborgs, Workers, Floaters, and Brutes?

KK: For creature vocals, we mostly used animal calls as the base layer. We tried a lot of different things, but some of them were very tricky to pull off because some creatures did not have a mouth or any holes in their head, so we had to imagine where the sound would come from.

…some creatures did not have a mouth or any holes in their head, so we had to imagine where the sound would come from.

Parasite had a layer of pig squeals that gave him a visceral component. His voice and foley were designed by Dragoslav [Ostojic], and he did a masterful job of transferring the horror of Parasite’s existence to his voice. Also, his movement foley makes us feel very uncomfortable.

Cyborg was very mechanical compared to all the other enemies, and Milan [Kovarbasic] gave him those clunky, creepy sounds that are going along nicely with the fight. Frightening footsteps give a rhythm to the scene and always remind you that he is there. His sounds were very much in tone with the whole last level, which had a more sophisticated tone. He didn’t have any clear vocalizations, so most of the sounds were made from props and random objects. There was a gremlin-like voice for the creature in the jar that was controlling it, but it was scrapped and didn’t make it into the game.

Frightening footsteps give a rhythm to the scene and always remind you that he is there.

The “Chicken” had some seal vocals in its voice, and Adis [Kutkut] designed that recognizable shriek. His calls turned out pretty well; they are a strange mixture of some familiar sounds but also something very strange.

The Worker was the tricky one, and I think everyone gave a contribution to his sound. Only the really weird sounds connected with him. A cat eating food and insect sounds were used to produce his vocal calls among other things.

Did you have a favorite enemy/creature to design? Why? What went into it?

KK: Moldman was my favorite one to work on because he was fun to design and the sound matched the visuals perfectly. Initially, I tried using animal sounds for his vocalizations, but it was challenging to find enough recordings to cover all of his states and emotions. So, I ended up performing all of his vocalizations based on his animations.

To create his voice, I closed my mouth and contracted my neck muscles to force the air to make a sound.

To create his voice, I closed my mouth and contracted my neck muscles to force the air to make a sound. This effort gave his voice the needed sense of suffering that you see immediately when you look at him. The idea was to have several emotions conveyed through the prism of his constant suffering.

For his body foley, we emphasized his dry and almost broken body. We also used the volume of his vocal track to blend in the amount of facial cramp animation over his animations, and the loudness of his breathing drove the blend of nostril movement. Although these details may not be noticeable to everyone, I believe they have an impact on those who do notice them.

What was your biggest creative challenge in terms of sound for Scorn?

KK: Several challenges come to my mind so I will just mention them all.

Creature sounds should be threatening and aggressive so they could help the narrative and gameplay to build tension with the player, but at the same time, the director’s note was to not include any monster and dinosaur sounds to avoid any generic tropes.

They were all part of the same world but each had a unique visual design, albeit made of similar materials.

Not being too repetitive with machine sounds was a problem as well. They were all part of the same world but each had a unique visual design, albeit made of similar materials. We wanted to follow that up with unique sounds but when you are using the same palette of sounds, things quickly start to sound similar. For most of them, I think we did manage to make them sound unique and with different resonant frequencies.

Another challenge was to give life to a dead world — imagine what could be heard in the distance or behind walls.

Another challenge was to give life to a dead world — imagine what could be heard in the distance or behind walls. Apart from the fact that everything needed to sound unknown and strange, we also needed to invoke uneasiness and tension in the player. So we had to use the basic psychoacoustic rules like using the bass to build tension and short, high sounds to invoke fright.

In short, assets needed to be shaped in the frequency spectrum to serve their purpose no matter the content or sample used.

What was your biggest technical challenge for sound?

KK: As with the creative side, there were several challenges.

The fact is that for the majority of the team, it was our first big game. We had to learn a lot and believe in ourselves in the process.

Keeping consistency on the implementation side was tricky; a lot of the machines were unique. For each one, there was something different that brought its own parameters and implementation style.

…we realized that we needed to have an occlusion system but there wasn`t any available that could be implemented in our project.

At some point, we realized that we needed to have an occlusion system but there wasn`t any available that could be implemented in our project. Dino [Duvnjak] rolled up his sleeves and with a bit of a back and forth, we had a system that attenuated volume which was adapting to level layout.

That system also brought some complications because we needed to feed occlusion values to every event attached to some NPCs. So to make things controllable, we figured out how to put most of the NPC sounds in one event and make it possible to profile.

Overall, what do you want players to take away from their sonic experience of Scorn? What do you hope sticks in their minds when they’re done playing?

KK: I wouldn’t want players to think solely about the sonic design, but rather have memories of the scenes and images accompanied by the sound that helped them stay immersed in the game. An important direction we had was to make sure that things did not sound familiar to our real world, as any connection to real-life sounds would break the immersion. Working on this project was fun as we had to create something unique that no one had ever heard before.

Lastly, I would like to mention the entire audio team and congratulate them again on a job well done. As the Lead Sound Designer, I had the privilege of working with several other sound designers including Dragoslav Ostojic, Milan Kovarbasic, and Dobrivoje Milijanovic, composer and sound designer Adis Kutkut, as well as Jakov Munizaba and Vladimir Kerkez who assisted us in the earlier stages of the project. We also had two audio programmers, Dino Duvnjak and Dimitrije Krsteski, who provided immense help.

A big thanks to Koca Kastavarac for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of Scorn and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!