Augustin Carroll

A baby fighting game (I am so sorry)

This is probably the dumbest and most fun game I have ever worked on. It’s a boxing-ring slapdown with weapons and powerups and lots of spit-up, which you can play against your friends or bots (or both!) I originally joined as the composer, but I stepped in to do a lot of the sound design and all of the audio implementation when the original sound designer had to drop out. Ring Rascals was featured in a Unity GGJ showcase stream!

The game is set in an Idiocracy-like future in which Ring Rascals is a baby fighting TV show, so I created the music to sound like the orchestral rock-and-roll of classic sports show themes, including a looping menu theme, a fight intro theme, and a post-fight victory theme with a looping end.

Sound design that adapts to the fight

I created a variety of sound effects for this game, including some meaty lil’ slaps and footsteps, lots of pickups, vomiting sounds, and the “emetophobic mode,” which replaces the vomit with rainbow confetti (pictured) for those who are easily grossed-out. All sounds were implemented with FMOD using appropriate variation to keep the sounds feeling dynamic and alive.

Narrative designer and voice actor Preston Swincher wrote and recorded more than one hundred lines for the ring announcer! I compiled these into more than a dozen FMOD events corresponding to various events in the fight, each of which takes the intensity of the fight into account when selecting the line to play. It’s not just a bunch of random lines, the announcer truly feels like he’s following the arc of the fight with his commentary!

Ring Rascals is available for PC with optional local multiplayer. It can be found on itch.io at https://chrom4t1c.itch.io/ring-rascals and downloaded for free.