This is still my least favourite episode so far and by a consdierable distance. It’s genuinely difficult to listen back to now, honestly. There are episodes that I can quite happily listen to, again and again. My partner will sometimes put the episodes on in the car so she can catch up and I usually get a kick out of listening back to them for one reason or another. Not this one, though.
I initially chose this episode because I figured it would be an easy one to do in terms of producing and editing, no complex set pieces or elaborate storytelling to slow me down. The storytelling in a platformer is very straight forward and its almost all vibes. I could rely on ambience and quirky sounds to get by. That was the theory, anyway. I wanted to get an episode out that month, while I was still busy planning the Resident Evil and LOTR episodes, which appeared to be more narratively and logistically complex, so I tried to knock something out fast.
That was a mistake. I hope I have learned to avoid this sort of thing now. If I don’t have a strong enough idea, or it’s not coming together in the edit, just leave it alone and move on. I chose too abstract a genre to handle so early in the series. I wasn’t experienced enough in designing soundscapes to pull this off so I don’t think any of the ‘imagery’ I tried to communicate came through in the production. The vibes were all off. My script had to explain too much for things to make sense for the listener. And the action was incredibly limited to just jumping sounds. The simplicity of it all was actually a negative. There are a lot of ways to use punch sounds to keep the action varied, there are lots of unique monster sounds and gore effects to make a space monster story engaging. A single, repetitive jump sound scattered through some vague ambience just doesn’t work the same way.
I was very happy with my analysis, though. I thought I made some great points, especially with Sonic, but the way the episode came together in the edit really bugs me now. I was feeling off about it when I finished it but I felt like I should upload it, since I put all that effort into it.
I was listening to it with Caroline a few months after its release, while we were driving to IKEA to buy some ‘storage space solutions’ (boxes) and I was picking it apart the entire time, which I just don’t do with any other episode. Sure, there’ll be a joke here or there that I realise didn’t land quite right or a sound that could’ve been improved on, but overall I’m usually really happy with the finished products. Proud, at times. This is the only episode so far that I just plain dislike.
And that’s a shame because I used my infant son’s little babbling noises as the source for the monster speak, and got my eldest to design the creatures for the podcast’s instagram account. There’s some stuff involved in this episode that has sentimental value and it’s exclusively stuff I didn’t do.
If I ever try to do a platform themed episode again, I’ll need to spend much more time in the plotting and planning stage as I did on the critique side.