Devblog 1 - The sound design of Garden Life with a touch a magic

Hi gardeners!

I’m Benedict, sound designer and composer at stillalive studios in Austria. Our latest title
Garden Life: A Cozy Simulator is a fun, relaxed, and charming game, and it was incredibly
important to me to enhance the coziness with audio design and music.

Sound design in games is important for two main reasons – informing the player of things
happening (e.g. a button pressed, a backpack opened); and immersing the player in the game
world alongside the visual style. With Garden Life being a relaxing, cozy game, the immersion
and feel-good factor were the main focus for this project.

When it comes to sounds triggered by player actions, there is a lot of variation in the sounds
players will hear often. Even “simple” actions such as opening up storage containers can be
made up of around 6-10 audio elements, all of which are randomized to never sound quite the
same way twice. After all, hearing the exact same sound over and over again is a sure way to pull
the player out of the experience!

Bringing The Garden Inside

As gardening is the primary activity in the game, and you play from a first person perspective, I
started most of my design with a base of realistic sounds that you would expect to hear as you
carry out gardening actions in real life – the movement of soil, the scraping and digging of tools,
the sploshing of water in a watering can, and so on. The only way to get exactly what we needed
for the game was to hit the garden centre and bring home loads of tools, soil, and ornaments to
record myself! I set up a makeshift recording room at home, using blankets and mattresses to
deaden the echo in the room. I made quite a mess, but luckily managed to clean it all up before
anyone got home!

Adding A Touch of Magic

Early in development, we decided that there would be hints of magic or fantasy in the game
world. Perhaps there are spirits living in the nearby forest, or there are magical tools which
couldn’t exist in the real world. Considering this, I would exaggerate some of the sounds to make
them just a little bit larger-than-life, fun, or even fantastical. For example, dig up and remove a
dead plant, and a sad, descending bell will jingle. It’s subtle but adds a lot to the cozy feel.
From simple concepts such as player footsteps that change depending on the floor surface and
the weather; to more crazy things such as the seed-planting sound that uses whooshy
synthesisers, wooden rattles, and cowbells; there’s a lot of diversity in the game’s sound,
ensuring that it never gets old and always sounds pleasant and fun! There’s a lot of hidden sound
to discover, too – different locations in the village have different variations on the theme music
that you can hear emanating from inside shops, and I wonder if you might notice something
special if you have a collection of frog statues in your garden?

Mood Music

The music that accompanies you in the garden was the very first thing that I came up with for the
game, and doing this helped set the right vibe throughout development. From the very beginning,
the idea was to have many musical elements that are put together on-the-fly, so the tune never
sounds exactly the same twice. And still you could always have an idea of what was coming up
next, and follow the tune along in your head. Imagine having a friend sitting in your garden,
playing a tune, but occasionally playing it a slightly different way – that’s the kind of relaxed
vibe we wanted.

To do this, I recorded loads of variations of guitar riffs, piano lines, ukulele parts, percussion
measures… and stitched it all together in audio software called FMOD. Under the hood, this
allows all sorts of real-time magic, like enabling different parts of music based on the time of
day, weather, or at random. And disabling other parts completely. Making the music different
with every playthrough.

Audio Systems Are Always Cheating

A cozy game is one that you can get lost in, where you can unwind and relax, and allow yourself
to be surrounded by things that just feel good. To achieve this with Garden Life, I wanted there
to be enough realism in how the sound reacts to you so that it was believable for the player,
especially in the ambience and nature sounds.

It’s unintuitive, but a 3D game world has no idea how sound works. That, for example, sound
should be blocked by walls. On the other hand, developing physically accurate sound simulations
would be prohibitive in terms of performance. And so sound designers always have to create
clever little cheats to make games sound good.

In Garden Life for example, you’re enveloped in the cozy sound of nature. But when you enter a
building, the sound of the outdoors folds together and can be heard coming from the doorway -
not all around you like before you entered. These little things make a big difference when
navigating the garden, especially as you leave a building and smoothly hear the garden ambience
envelop you.

With more of these little tricks, moving around the garden, under the tree, and into buildings,
especially when it’s raining, sounds natural and seamless. I’m really looking forward to seeing
people’s reactions when they enter the cozy little shed, and hear the soft purring of the snoozing
cat alongside the soft pitter-patter of rain on the wooden roof!

Working on the audio for Garden Life has been great fun. Being in control of both the sound
effects and the music allows for some fantastic interplay between the two elements. I can’t wait
to hear what you think of the game, and I hope you can feel the deep relaxing effect the sound
and music has.

Warm whishes,
The Garden Life team 🌼

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