Rami Al-Balawi
December 15, 2024 | Top-Down 3D Action Game
Nightmare Wizard is a whimsical yet eerie action game set inside a child’s twisted dream world. Players take control of a young kid armed with a magical wand, battling bizarre stuffed animal enemies like Zombears, Zombunnies, and Hellephants. Set within a shadowy bedroom filled with oversized toys and lurking threats, the game blends cute and creepy into a fast-paced, arcade-style experience.
Project Overview
The audio for Nightmare Wizard walks the line between playful and unsettling, capturing the surreal tone of a child’s nightmare. I designed and implemented a full suite of sound effects and music cues to support the game’s whimsical but eerie tone.
The music blends orchestral and synthetic elements to build tension and atmosphere across different game states. Using pizzicato strings, creepy organ lines, timpani, and subtle synth textures, the soundtrack supports everything from quiet exploration to chaotic combat — all while maintaining a dreamlike, off-kilter feel.
Sound design includes varied enemy death sounds for Zombears, Zombunnies, and Heliphants, as well as magical wand blasts, ambient creaks, distant growls, a ticking clock, and player damage and death cues. A dynamic heartbeat system triggers at low health, filtering the mix and tightening the sonic focus to enhance tension.
I designed and composed all audio assets in Pro Tools and implemented them into Unity using Wwise.
Roles
Technical Skills
Signal Flow Understanding
Audio cleanup
Balancing
Equalization
Compression & Limiting
Automation
Critical listening skills
Wwise
Unity
C#
Creative Skills
Composition
Instrumental arrangement
Sound synthesis
Modulation
Effect processing
Adaptability based on visual source
Nightmare Wizard gave me the opportunity to work within a pre-existing game and focus fully on crafting immersive, reactive audio. The use of Wwise pushed me to approach implementation more deliberately, using systems that respond to player states in real time.
This project also strengthened my creative sound design and mixing skills, from vocal layering and foley to ambient world-building. It was a technically demanding but rewarding experience, and a key step in developing my understanding of interactive audio pipelines and middleware integration.