Sigh...sound

I'm attempting to make a game on my own. I'm not trying for originality (though it would be nice) the main focus is making a game from start to finish. This means I want to sketch, code, design, draw and animate my way through a mini game production trying on all the roles needed to come full circle.

In the game development endeavour I've been part of so far I've worked on the game design and the graphics. So this dogma game entails many first for me. I'm fine with the coding part actually I'm excited about the coding. Up until now I've always left the coding to the coding savvy. But lately I've passed a Java course and I'm taking object-oriented programming. So now I get to play.

No, the part I'm really scared of is the audio for the game. Though I enjoy music I rarely listen to any (I'm a talk-radio-person) and I definitely don't make any music. So where to start?

Music and sounds are really important for a game. The audio sets the tone of a game makes is fun or scary and in some cases boring. E.g. I've been playing a lot of Plants vs. Zombies lately and I really like the background sound its happy and playful and though I play for a long time it doesn't start to annoy me which is a real quality. Recently, I've also played with Kometen I initially got it for the beautiful watercolour graphics but now the real draw is the soundscape that puts you in a soothing meditative state.

So what should I do for the game audio? Of course I want funny event sounds like when a kid gets scared and starts crying. But I don't want constant crying. On its own the game play is stressful so maybe the background sound should be somewhat soothing?

In trying to add sound elements in unity which was very easy. I made two sample prototypes with background sounds borrowing audio from FlashKit and here.

• Prototype with not so annoying background music
• Prototype with really annoying background music

For the final game I have to make the music by myself.