As a game designer, Syd makes games that are musical instruments, compositional systems, and musical works.
They got their MFA in Game Design at New York University's Game Center, where they learned not only how to make games and craft and implement sounds, but also procedural audio, aesthetic systems, and how to push the limits of what's happening in music games right now.
Audionaut
Audionaut is a 2D music composition spaceship autobattler. Taking inspiration from modular synthesis, players make music using the component parts of their ship. As you defeat ever stronger enemies and build a better ship, so too will your composition grow.
Syd serves as the Audio and Narrative designer for Audionaut, which has continued development since its beginning as an NYU Game Center MFA thesis project. This game asks how music composition can be a form of gameplay.
Using Max/MSP's RNBO extension to build plugins for FMOD (game built in Unity), Syd builds generative instruments the player controls by patching together their instruments in addition to the standard sound design and implementation for the game.
now it's just so quiet
now it's just so quiet is a small game originally created for a 2025 summer game jam.
This game is yet another exploration in how games can be not only musical instruments, but composed pieces, again by creating generative FMOD plugin instruments using Max/MSP's RNBO extension.
This game interrogates how sound and movement can emulate feelings of depression, loneliness, and the passage of time.
TITHE
Tithe is a game demo with sound design, implementation, and music composition by Syd.
For this game, Syd designed a dynamic feedback system which used vertical arranging and parameters controlled by gameplay variables to control the amount of diegetic "haunted radio sounds" the player would hear (alongside a visual representation in the User Interface) to convey the riskiness of player actions.
gerald goes to a lecture
syd's first exploration of using video games as musical instruments. This game uses vertical and horizontal arrangement in FMOD for Unity and a simple WASD controller to be played alongside a full ensemble for the experimental lecture band, MCTheProfessor.GOV
threnody
threnody was a walking sim designed as a space to explore alongside a musical piece by the same name.
Both the space and the piece ask what we do with what's left behind for us.
gerald tells ur fortune
gerald tells ur fortune is a small prototype made for an advanced music and gameplay class at NYU.
In this tiny game, the dialogue sounds designed by syd are implemented alongside corresponding dialogue outcomes through the use of scriptable objects. Using Unity and FMOD.
for more, find syd on itch:
