Guide:Effective sound choice for visual novels

Sound effects are often one of the unsung heroes of media. When they are great, you might not even notice they are there, but when they are missing, story beats and actions can fall flat. The more senses we are able to experience something through, the deeper we will often feel it. If you ever want to test this for yourself, I highly recommend playing a game or two with the sound effects turned off. You’ll quickly notice how the entire thing feels different despite being the exact same mechanics.

However, visual novels live in a unique spot because there typically aren’t as many animated actions that we directly expect to hear. And unlike other types of games, the player doesn’t have as much agency over the gameplay, so the need for feedback, and guidance sounds is not nearly as big a consideration. But this doesn’t mean we can’t enhance our story beats with sound design, just that we might need to approach it in a slightly different manner.

The place I typically like to start is to ask, “What is the experience I want the player to have?” Because at the end of the day, that is the most important factor above all else. Every sound you add to your project should be in service of that question. How can your sound design choices best enhance that experience?

Recognizing moments to use sound

There are four primary functions of sound that will typically come up in visual novels.

The first, and probably most obvious, are any animations or visuals that clearly portray an action or movement. Any sort of motion is often going to be a great candidate for sound design. Partially because we just naturally expect things that happen around us to make noise. But even moreso, because sound is very good at bringing out the details of our visuals and heightening their excitement. The weight of an action, the materials objects are made of, the speed of the motion, and so much more can all be felt even more strongly by the player when they are engaging with them through an additional sense.

Another very typical candidate for sound design is any action taken by the player directly. As I mentioned earlier, in most styles of video games, we place a large emphasis on feedback sounds. They support the player’s actions and make their agency feel more concrete and engaging. So what about in a visual novel? There are the obvious elements such as UI sounds, where the player is directly interfacing with our game, but that’s not our only option.

The other way people often engage directly with our projects is through story/dialogue choices. If a player’s choice leads to an action, that’s another great time to make use of sound design. Not only for story reasons, but because it makes the player feel more connected to their decision. When they can actually hear the results of their input, they will feel it more deeply. It roots them more firmly in the world by reinforcing their agency. Not every choice is going to lend themselves to sound in this way, but remember, your effect choices don’t always have to be literal!

The third way we can use sound to help is by establishing a sense of space. What better way to pull your audience into the world you are creating than by allowing them to directly hear the space around them? Ambiences are a good option for this, and designing them effectively could be a topic worthy of an entire guide on its own. They don’t even always need to be ongoing loops. Sometimes things like the sound of a school bell when the characters arrive at school, or a car horn when the protagonist walks across the street can be all we need to set the scene. These types of sounds from the environment are simple and effective ways for establishing the setting, however, they aren’t the only tools we have at your disposal.

What about the other sound effects you are already using? For example, maybe you have some footstep sounds to match an important action in the story. What material is the ground they are walking on? Do they have a large echo and reverb? Do the footsteps sound close by or far away? All these kinds of decisions work to further establish where the story is taking place, and allows the player to construct an even stronger connection to the world.

The final function we have at our disposal is to help enhance a sense of emotional resonance. This can be especially helpful for making actions only described via text feel more impactful. The way a sound is performed, and produced can elicit wildly different emotional experiences depending on the choices made in its creation. Let’s take a simple action like a character putting a glass down on a table. Imagine a large thud, the sound of glass slamming down onto wood, plates and cutlery clatter from the vibration, there is a slight echo as the music playing in the room comes to a sudden end. Now imagine a very gentle tap as a glass lightly touches down onto the table with a small scrape. You can hear an ice cube clink against the side in a gentle rhythm, as the glass is placed down at a slight angle. These are both the same action, placing the glass down, but create totally different emotional experiences. And while not every choice might be as extreme as that example, you can express quite a bit of depth through these sorts of decisions.

Recognizing categories of sound

As you might have noted already, there is room for quite a bit of overlap between these categories. For example, let’s say when the main character arrives at a large mansion, the player has the choice to enter through the front door, accompanied by a short animation of it swinging open. First, this is an important action, represented explicitly in the visuals so we’d expect to hear it. Second, because the player was the one who prompted the action, hearing it will make the choice feel more impactful. Third, as the door swings open, you can hear the quiet reverberation as the sound rings out into the large, empty entryway. Establishing the space and giving the player a clear picture of what lays ahead of them. And finally, the way the door slowly creaks open with a loud groan and uneven stutter lets the player feel our main character’s trepidation and unease as they move into the next part of the story. It’s all of these factors combining to make for such a compelling moment.

Other times, it might not always be clear how a sound might relate to one of the above functions. And at the end of the day, that is also okay. I didn’t create these classifications as the way sounds must be approached and designed. Rather, their point is to illustrate how we can start thinking about what our choices actually are providing for the player’s experience of the story.

Getting started

Now that you have in mind some of the ways sound can be used to your advantage, play or read through your story and start listing out any audio you think might be effective. Any ideas you have, put down on paper. No judgement, no thinking about what it might sound like, or how difficult it might be, just get all your ideas out. You can worry about everything else later.

The first time you do this, it might be difficult if you aren’t used to thinking about sound in this way. However, do your best to visualize your story, and the way you want it to be experienced. To put yourself in the player’s shoes. Think about the moments that are going to have the most weight, and consider if sound can enhance them in any of the ways we mentioned above. Try the opposite as well. Think about the moments that you feel fall a little bit flatter than you’d like, and consider if maybe audio could help bring out some of the life that is missing. And as you do this, as with any other skill, the more naturally you’ll be able to start recognizing where some of these opportunities in your story might be.

Next steps

You have all these great ideas written out now, should you go add them all to your game? Well, that’s not really a question I can answer, because that is somewhat up to you and the needs of your project, but I can tell you a few things that might help you solidify your list of sound effects.

The first is to make sure you go back to your initial answer. What is the experience you are trying to create? Go through the list you made and make sure that your decisions are in service of that response. Otherwise, they might not need to be there.

The second is to be careful that you haven’t leaned too hard onto your sound design choices. If you are relying on them to create any aspect of your story on their own, you run the risk of that story beat being entirely lost if the player doesn’t have their sound on. And remember, one of the reasons sound effects can be so powerful is because they add an extra sense to the player’s experience. So relying on them entirely on their own can be a possible detriment in some situations.

Another consideration is the amount and pacing of sounds. If your visual novel has near constant sound effects, maybe even multiple triggered per line, it can get very overwhelming very quickly. It can start to distract and detract from the other elements of your game. Whereas on the other hand, if you use too few of them, it can make the ones you do have feel out of place. If the player is reading your story for 5 hours with no sounds playing, and then all of a sudden they hear one, the sound itself stops mattering because the focus begins to shift towards its unexpectedness, rather than the sound’s content.

And of course the practical. Are you hiring someone? Are you making the sounds yourself? Are you buying sound effects from a website? What is your budget? All these kinds of considerations can naturally help shave down your sound effect list because it just might not be practical to include every single idea you had. Having to answer these questions of what to prioritize can be difficult, but also can help you make sure that you are really thinking through what will be most effective for your project.

The one thing I would caution against is too quickly removing a choice because you can’t imagine how it would sound, how you would make it, or where you would get it from. If you are hiring someone, talk to them! You are hiring them for a reason. Let them use their expertise to figure out how to bring your vision to life. If you are making it yourself, think outside the box! Audio can be flexible, so consider all the different ways that you might be able to achieve your sound goal. Even if you might have to approach it from a different angle than you first considered. And of course, talk to other people, brainstorm, check out references you like, etc. You’d be surprised just how much you can shape a moment when you begin thinking through audio from new perspectives.

And finally, trust yourself. Trust your instincts. If you want to hear it, it is important. That is what is going to help you make the sound design choices that are truest to what you are aiming to create.