Stray Souls — Co-Development, Solo Audio & the Cost of Shipping

I had already worked with a certain dev once on a project before Stray Souls. It reached a Feardemic showcase, blew up, and then collapsed — the team eventually sent a letter nullifying our involvement with that dev. A year later he came back with a Stray Souls prototype and asked me to join. I said yes, with conditions.

We got publisher funding, and all seemed to be going well until about halfway through, when things started breaking down on his end. Milestones slipped and he began to flake, so I did what I could to help finish the project and stay positive and motivated. Somehow the game got finished — but with it went my health, and I paid for it dearly with the loss of my leg.

Core method: No middleware, no audio team, no handoff. I owned the pipeline end to end — composition through implementation — which meant every fix was mine to make and every decision had a single owner. That is the actual value proposition of a solo audio director. It is also the reason the schedule was unsustainable.

The Akira Yamaoka Collaboration

Akira was the guest composer for one level — Aspen Falls — and he delivered all of the music for it. Working with a personal hero and an industry giant was a genuine privilege, and I'd rather leave it there than turn it into a ledger of who did what.

The collaboration was entirely asynchronous and fully remote, running through the publisher. He was deep in Silent Hill 2 Remake and Silent Hill f at the time. Two people, opposite sides of the planet, no shared sessions, no middleware to bridge us.

What made it work was specificity. I sent him the level's intent — what the player should feel, where the silence needed to sit — rather than a temp track to imitate. He asked me for feedback on his material, which is not a thing I expected to be doing. Through translators, he told me he could feel the emotion in my guitar work.

What I'd change: I'd have pushed for a real review loop with the publisher removed from the middle, and I'd have documented the licensing terms in writing before a single note was written.

The Cutscene Repair

Mocap had been shot without narrative context. The result was a scene that didn't read — Daniel and Martha finding their father near the end of the game. With no budget for a reshoot, I fixed it in the edit: camera framing to hide what the performances didn't sell, and audio to carry the story the picture couldn't. Daniel trying to leave. Banging on the walls. The scene works now because the sound tells you what the actors weren't told.

I'm not going to dress this up as a badge. It's a warning label.

• ● 12–16 hour days, always on call
• ● ~4 hours of sleep, fast food as a food group
• ● One week of vacation — that's it
• ● Symptoms began before that vacation — foot pain, ignored
• ● Type 2 diabetes, unmanaged through the back half of production
• ● Launch: October 2023. Amputation: February 2024. Left leg, below the knee.

Audio production started well before publisher funding landed and never stopped until launch. The pipeline I was proud of — one person, no handoff, no middleware — is exactly the kind of pipeline that has no room for a human being.

My definition of crunch now: a solid eight-hour day, a one-hour lunch, regular exercise, clear timelines, and nobody on call at midnight.

That's not ambition erosion. That's the only pace that lets you still be doing this in ten years.

Scope is a promise. Credit is a contract. Sleep is infrastructure.

1. Write the script before the mocap. Performances shot without narrative context cost more to fix in the edit than the rewrite would have cost up front.
2. Approval means nothing without a read. A signed-off document nobody opened is the same as no document.
3. "We'll credit you properly" is not a contract. Licensing terms, payment schedule, and kill fees go in writing before work begins.
4. Solo ownership is a strength, not a staffing plan. One person can own the pipeline. One person cannot absorb an infinite schedule.
5. Symptoms are milestone data. The foot pain was a warning with months of lead time. I treated it as noise.

I've shipped a commercial horror game as the only audio person on it, while also writing the script and building maps. I know exactly where scope creep turns into physical damage — because I lived through the transition.

Every engagement now includes:

• ✓ Written scope with named deliverables
• ✓ Full, perpetual commercial licensing upon payment — unless otherwise agreed
• ✓ Milestone payments, not end-of-project promises
• ✓ Defined revision rounds and a change-order process
• ✓ A schedule that assumes a human being is attached to it
• ✓ Delivery format and license scope agreed before the first note

You get the same output. You don't get the casualty.