LISTEN TO ME, CLARA
SOLO PROJECT
During my final year at university, I created a dissertation project which lead to the creation of 'Listen to me, Clara'. This game was to support my thoughts on how immersion is delivered in games, often forgetting a vital role in how audio plays a part in creating that immersion, as well as testing out ways to make video gaming more accessible.
Listen to me, Clara is an audio only video game, where you play as a young girl, Clara who is left blind after a parasite takes over her head. This parasite, however gives her magical abilities that help her navigate in other ways. When she wakes to the smell of her village burning, it's up to her to venture out further than she has before in hopes to find a new home and maybe a cure.
This game has multiple endings depending on the routes you take and conversations you have with other characters, all whilst using the four directional keys or a joystick.
Writing and concept
Since high fantasy has always been a passion of mine, I wanted to write a story that has all the core elements that make a good fantasy. Beyond this I needed to write in a way where the player would not need the use of visuals in order to progress the story or do what they want.
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Magic & Mechanics
Every fantasy story has a little magic in it, but when it came to writing the game I wanted to utilise the use of magic to help the player in 'seeing' what's around them and choosing what to do. The parasite inside Clara's head, Constance, narrates the story and direction of what Clara is currently facing. By giving Constance, and therefor Clara a magical gift, it helps reduce becoming un-immersed as the dialogue shifts to more mechanical and descriptive terminology. By shrouding the audio cues and mechanical dialogue inside an 'all seeing, all knowing' magical creature, the player feels less inclined to ask questions as to 'how' or 'why', but just accepts that magic is present.
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Difficult decisions
I wanted to create an illusion of an open world by creating branching narrative. With the lack of visual aids to guide a player around a fully open world, creating decisions the player must make to progress the story how they want to play, combines a feeling of personalisation to the player without needing to over complicate the story arcs and writing.
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A relatable protagonist
When creating Clara, I wanted to make sure she had as much of a distinct personality as her parasite counterpart. Even though her powers stem from Constance, her drive and determination belong to her and her alone.
Audio Design
Whilst I was creating the game, I looked into multiple ways to emulate being in the game as realistically as I could. For this there were a few techniques I used.
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Binaural audio
The main technique when creating the audio for the game was creating the illusion of binaural audio. This was done during the mixing process as I did not have access to a binaural microphone. This process was used for both voice acting and foley throughout the game.
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Stereo audio
After the creation of the binaural mix for the majority of the in game audio, the exports unfortunately wouldn't play in the Unreal Engine. My contingency for this was to revert back to mixing in stereo. The quality of the mix was not as intended but still gave off the impression of being inside the scene. An example of the original binaural audio can be found here.
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Music
Even though I wanted the immersion to stem from the mix of voice acting and foley, I felt the fantasy vibe was not complete without a soundtrack to accompany the mood. I created a dynamic soundtrack which changed depending on who you had in your party at the time. The playlist for all the soundtrack can be found here.
Accessibility and testing
Something I wanted to explore with this project was how I could also make it accessible for gamers who had visual impairments. Through this I was able to work with some amazing charities including Special Effect and Vista in Leicester where people who tested my game and gave great feedback.
On top of this, I used a custom joystick programmed with an arduino board that could be easily plugged into a USB slot so the players did not need to use a keyboard to experience the game.
