What The Funge, an auto battler. April 2024 saw its final free-to-play tournament, with a prize of 150 Prime, worth roughly $3,000 USD at the time.

Consider what menu navigation is really doing, the psychological triggers UI sound is meant to leverage, and apply those principles to the ritual of consuming a drink: opening and pouring liquid from a glass bottle, pulling a bottle from the case, dropping the empty back in. That is the language behind the UI SFX in the game’s Lounge Menu: familiar, tactile, and satisfying in a way generic clicks never are.

None of it is a click library. The whole UI palette was performed and recorded, then tuned to the menu.

Materials: Glass bottles · Beer and soda pop · Pouring · Bottle case · Empties going back in

All music composed with East West Opus and Addictive Drums 2. Scored in jazz and funk, or big room jazz as I call it: a full band sound with the space of a real room around it, swinging rather than gridded. In game terms it is casual game music, which has to stay likeable for hours because the player hears it on a loop.

It is the hardest thing to fake. Nobody forgives synthetic drums the way they forgive a synthetic orchestra, so the tells are the ones a programmer skips: a kit that changes weight when it gets loud, a bass that sits slightly behind, horns that breathe between phrases, and an arrangement that leaves room instead of filling every bar.