Hey all, 2017 has been a bountiful year for us! From new staff to interesting projects, this has truly been a great journey for the entire team.
The Imba Studio
Starting with company happenings, we officially opened our studio space in Hougang! It’s a small and humble home studio shared among all staff – you can check out more from here.
It’s been a year since we’ve started using the studio – while working from home has had its perks, Imba is known to be loud not just with our work but also its people, and what better way for that to happen than to have all of us in one physical space where teamwork, discussion, brainstorming & collaboration can happen offline and spontaneously! (well it’s still in a home studio, just Jeremy’s home, complete with showers and a kitchen!)
Changes to the Imba Family
In July, we’ve officially added Bings to Imba, bringing experimentation and a fresh perspective to the table. As a game audio studio which handles multiple projects at any one time, sometimes it’s easy to get so overwhelmed with meeting deadlines and producing assets that we forget to experiment. It’s important to remind ourselves that sound is not just a service; it’s also an art form – one of the best ways to grow creatively is through play, expression and reflection. Having come from a band which dabbles in experimental electronic music, Bings has injected this often-ignored aspect of running a creative business on top of the many other strengths he has. You can check out his band work here: Canvas Conversations.
The twins Sing Huey & Sing Ern have also left Imba to pursue their own passion. We’re grateful for all the hard work they’ve put in while working with us – the both of them have insane talent in their craft as composers/sound designers and without doubt, will excel in however they plan to live their dreams. So now we’re officially a fun-sized 4-person team! 🙂
Fruitful events
I pretty much dedicated an entire post to GDC early this year; you can read all about my GDC 2017 experience here!
Apart from GDC, it’s also Sharon’s 1st time at Level Up KL in Malaysia! For us, it’s always such an enjoyable experience not too far from home.
I had the privilege of being a panelist alongside Falk Au and Shota Nakama from SoundTrec Boston/M’sia! We presented on the topic: Sound Design Experience for Multiple Platforms covering different perspectives from music to sound design.
For those who wanted a more in-depth experience with creating game audio, we conducted a workshop at Komune @ Bangsar South. MDEC did an amazing job in organising the whole Level Up event as well as the extended workshops!
I personally feel so much at home whenever I visit Malaysia’s game dev events. I guess it’s always the hospitality and just getting together with friends from all over South East Asia (many of whom I only see once a year in person) that make it seem so warm and welcoming. A couple of other really great news at Level Up KL:
Rhythm Doctor has always been a really unique, impressive game to begin with – its mechanic is so simple where you only use 1 button to sync your beat to the song’s rhythm (usually on the 7th beat). The choice of songs are diverse and consistently lovely just to listen to on its own. Hafiz got us on board to help out with the sound effects and it’s been a joy to work on something seemingly straightforward yet has its own complexity where a single sound has to be fitting over many different tracks – a healthy challenge for a sound designer!
Simulacra needs no introduction for those familiar with its predecessor “Sara Is Missing”. You pick up a stranger’s phone and navigating through the phone’s UI to find out who it belongs to is basically the game – you’d have to unravel puzzles and hints but I won’t give spoilers! Maybe something you can look out for: our recordings with Roland CS-10EMs (if you know what this means, YES!).
I was really blessed to have visited the Altitude Games studio all the way at Manila! After working with them for 3+ years, it was my first time hanging out with the team face-to-face, and managed to also settle some work for Holy Ship! – currently in open beta. Altitude works mostly remotely (for a very good reason – you’d understand if you’ve experienced Manila traffic) so it was also some of the staff’s first time seeing each other in person!
Last but not least, we also had a mini-Game Audio Singapore EOY party. People went crazy with playing Overcooked, we had cake and all was merry. Most importantly, we had a really heartwarming roundtable discussion about what excites us about game audio/game audio community (thanks Daniel Yap for asking that question!). It’s been a year since the official set up of Game Audio Singapore and it’s really nice to be part of this awesome group.
Craft Advancements
With our own foley pit and composition room, we have been recording source materials as much as possible (and having fun!).
Here’s a video of us playing around with Scrappy (Bing’s creation). Originally meant to be just for a horror game we’re working on, we ended up getting carried away and pretty much bowing all sorts of surfaces.
Another video of us recording all sorts of whooshes with different tools – just an excuse to build on our existing libraries since we all love whooshes, right?
We’ve also seen an increase of audio middleware use among the devs we work with, which is super nice to see since all game audio people love middleware!
With the Black Friday craze, we’ve finally got our own VR headsets, both for PSVR and Oculus. Needless to say, we’ve been working on some really exciting VR projects which can’t be announced yet!
I would love to elaborate more on our new gear/plugin exploration but that warrants a whole separate blog post. 😉
Projects we worked on for 2017!
Finally, we have a list of games we’ve worked/are working on, published or otherwise (and safe to post!). Excluded from this post are the numerous linear work we’ve also worked on including almost every NOC video released!
Published 2017 Works
Inzen Studio – Star Tap (Additional SFX)
Masquerada: Songs & Shadows PS4 (SFX, Implementation)
Daylight Studios – Holy Potatoes! We’re In Space! (SFX)
MOS Studio – Tofu Heroes (BGM, SFX, Implementation)
Mojocat – Brain vs Flags (SFX)
XII Braves – Valiant Force (SFX)
Dr Panda Games – Dr Panda Town (SFX, VO)
Dr Panda Games – Dr Panda Street (SFX, VO)
Dr Panda Games – Dr Panda Cafe (SFX, VO)
Dr Panda Games – Dr Panda Mall (SFX, VO)
Dr Panda Games – Dr Panda Trucks (SFX, VO)
Dr Panda Games – Dr Panda Christmas AR (SFX, VO)
Opaque Media – Earthlight VR (Mandarin VO)
Kaigan Games – Simulacra (BGM, SFX)
Landshark Games – Zenkoi 2 (SFX)
Mojo Forest – Dobu: Furry Fighters (BGM, SFX)
Works-in-progress
7th Beat Games – Rhythm Doctor (SFX)
Battlebrew – Battlesky Brigade (BGM, SFX, Implementation)
Manacell – Space Cycler (BGM, SFX, Implementation)
Altitude Games – Holy Ship! (BGM, SFX, Implementation)
Diceroll Studios – Umiro (BGM, SFX, Implementation)
EnjoyPlay – Sweety Prince 2 (BGM, SFX, Implementation)
Looking back, we’re truly thankful for all our friends who’ve chosen to work with us over these years – hope to grow together as an industry locally & internationally!
Plans for 2018 & Beyond
Moving forward, we have some exciting news for those following us:
- The whole Imba crew will be headed down to Taipei Game Show (TGS) in January 2018! This is the first time that the whole team aside from founders are travelling to a foreign country together. As many of you might know, we treasure opportunities to spend time with each other inside or outside of work; a tight friendship only means good things for our studio. The next 2 points will emphasise on why we’ve chosen the TGS trip as a major milestone.
- Officially, we’re working with Rustbucket Interactive to co-develop our very own game title! Founded by 2 incredibly talented former Inzen Studio staff, we’re proud to be collaborating with Teng Fei and Gareth Tan, the dynamic duo who’re not only an excellent team together, and also amazing people as individuals. It has been a 4-year dream of Imba to develop game titles on top of our audio services; we were planning for the opportune moment and are grateful that Rustbucket decided to suggest the crazy idea to us which we agreed to in a day! TGS will be our debut showcase of our humble demo – there will be more details released closer to the date so keep your eyes peeled!
- Our plans to expand our services to Taiwan via a branch is slowly but surely getting closer. We’ll hopefully reach that dream in 3 – 5 years’ time. Our experience working with Taiwan has been nothing short of an enjoyable experience despite the slight language barrier. We’re always touched by the warmth and sincerity of our dev friends who work with/host us and will continue doing our best to help their games reach its fullest audio potential.
- We hope to collaborate with other composers/sound designers more as our portfolio increases over time. 2018 will be a year where the games we work on can also provide opportunities for other audio friends, helping the game audio industry grow locally and regionally!
- Small note: From now on, we’ll address “Imba” as a word (subsequent lowercase letters). Previously, it was seen as “IMBA” and we’ve noticed that non-gamers assume that this is an acronym (sorry International Mountain Biking Association!). Here’s the “official” urban dictionary definition. We hope this avoids further confusion. 😛
Thanks for reading our 1st ever annual retrospective! Hopefully, it gives y’all a better insight to our Imba family. Happy 2018!
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