MindHabits

MindHabits is a series of games based on the psychology research of Dr. Mark Baldwin from McGill University. The games are adaptations of his experiments, which show that social anxiety and stress can be reduced by training the mind to pay less heed to negative input and actively search for positive input. The games have been translated into various languages, are sold internationally, and been written about in numerous publications from The National Review of Medicine and New Scientist to ABC News and NPR. Last year it was listed by Branham 300 as in the top 25 Up and Coming Canadian IT firms.

Finally, it was voted Best New Videogame of 2007 in the Great Canadian Videogame Competition.

I created music for the prototype versions of this game, wrote the instruction manual, official newsletters and some promotional materials, and made 100 of the 200 levels, 25 for each of the 4 games that come packaged with it. I also managed the localization projects for the German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Polish, and Hungarian versions.

Projet Aïma

Projet Aïma was the final student project for Ubisoft’s internal school in 2008. I was called in as Music Lead to create original music for the video game, to help create the feel of a fully professional development cycle. (The school also created packaging materials, full game design documentation, recorded audio dialogue and cutscenes to this end). I created the majority of the music for the game, although I had some help from Wisp who has since signed to Rephlex Records. I actually ended up using a great track of his as the title track for the project.

I worked side by side with the future level designers to place the sounds physically in-game with the Valve Hammer Editor, the engine used in the Half Life and Left 4 Dead series of video games, among others.

We did a few interesting things that pushed the music integration of what is normally seen in Hammer games, usually employing small and simple tricks. They were not conceptually difficult but simply had not been done before that I’m aware of: 1) we had musical tracks that unfolded in sync with your progression through the level, and 2) we made some inside/outside spaces where it sounded like the music was coming from the void and when you entered into buildings the music sounded muffled as if it was still coming from outside.

Theme from Aïma – VORPAL

Video(s) coming