We’ve got a special interview for you today! We got the chance to chat with the developers behind State of Survival, and naturally we asked them all about the soundtrack to the game and what goes into creating it.
Q: Describe the backdrop to the game—what is it/where is it set?
A: Hey! State Of Survival is a Free-to-Play multiplayer mobile strategy game, set in a post-apocalyptic world.
Q: When was it released?
A: In September 2019.
Q: How do you play the game/survive the game?
A: You have to build up your settlement to form a safe haven for your survivors and a foundation for your post-apocalyptic empire. Then you need to save survivors to boost your troop numbers and strength. You also need to do research to understand the virus and liaise with tactical allies and forge strategic partnerships to survive the horrors of the zombies and defend against rival human survivors.
Q: How many people are playing the game now?
A: There are over 2.6 million weekly active users.
Q: How important is sound and/or music to the gaming experience?
A: Sound is the connecting element between visual information and the human mind. It is vital for both information and emotional support. While you can highlight elements in the picture and make it easier for users to find certain elements in the screen, you can alert the players, stress them or even send them on an emotional ride. Sound is extremely powerful and leaves plenty of room for artistic imaginations and variations.
Q: What are the steps in sound design once you have the storyboard for the game?
A: It’s all about context, every game or visual experience is different and requires a different approach. It is very important to communicate the intentions and visions of the visual artists to the sound artists, so that ideas can transcend. This is how you achieve coherence. If there is no coherence in sound, the player will notice it very quickly and feel disconnected from the visual and haptic experience.
Q: With modern technology what feature excites you the most surrounding the gaming space?
A: Modern audio implementation engines have come a long way since they started about a decade ago. Immersiveness is the key word here—they allow you to create a much more immersive gaming experience and blur the lines between classically “triggered” sound effects and engine-supported evolving sounds.
Q: Perhaps 3D Audio?
A: While it is a very exciting topic which is already being explored extensively, for mobile gaming, this is not an important addition (yet!!!) since the player is mostly limited to the built-in speakers of their mobile devices which can’t effectively recreate a 360° audio environment.
Q: What are the factors that create the perfect game soundtrack?
A: Again, coherence is everything. If the composer feels the settings, environments and dramaturgical moods of the game, there is not much that can go wrong. The beautiful thing is that there is no direct rule book of how music needs to sound or what instruments have to be used. It comes, once again, down to the communication between the departments. Music is vital to the emotional base of a game and can also dictate/influence elements like pacing, information, and guidance. That’s why one of the most important factors in creating it is communication.
Q: How important is the sound design for a game like State Of Survival and how different would the game be without certain sound elements?
A: State Of Survival has a rather functional sound design, since there is so much going on at once. The purpose of the sound here is to keep the players’ minds in order and support them in their decisions. There was not much room for creative outbursts since the key factor was to keep the players focused. I know, it sounds easy, but to be honest, it was hard work and a lot of trial and error.
Q: How do you tailor the sound for mobile gaming as opposed to console gaming? Are there many restrictions in what you can achieve?
A: Your audio contents will always be dictated by the standard playback devices and the environments where they are used. Since mobile gaming is limited to a set of tiny (also commonly mono) speakers in loud environments, there is a substantial difference to desktop gaming when it comes to sound. The mixes have to be tighter and more compressed to make each sound perfectly noticable and cut through the rest. Therefore, you boost frequencies that the human ear is more sensitive to. And then there is bass which makes most sound designers’ hearts bleed. Bass is such a powerful frequency range and can achieve so many great effects, but in mobile gaming you have to do completely without it, and that is quite a challenge.
Q: What was the hardest sound to create in the game?
A: It’s hard to say what the hardest sound is because the question is whether it’s the plain creation of the sound or the compatibility of the sound with the rest of the sound design. But I would say the alert sounds were a big challenge. How can you make something that informs players about urgencies, yet still doesn’t sound too annoying and stressful?
Thanks to the team behind State of Survival’s sound design for chatting with us. Currently, there’s a giveaway on Anker’s website where you can win the ultimate power-up pack which includes a PowerHouse II 800 
Check it out here.
And finally, what’s your favorite gaming soundtrack? Let us know in the comments 
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At my house, I cannot chase children away from the computer and phones. They play games all the time 
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