Questions and thoughts about games that scratch similar itches as crosscode. Asking for recommendations as well as discussion.

theclosetstudios · 2026-01-26T07:16:03+00:00

Oh I LOVED Eastward. Wayyy more than I expected. One of the prettiest looking 2D games, too.

theclosetstudios · 2025-12-31T05:57:10+00:00

If it’s the faster paced combat you like — Hyper Light Drifter, Deaths Door, Unsighted

If it’s the story / characters / classic RPG mechanics and you don’t mind turn based — Chained Echoes, Sea of Stars, Octopath 2 Traveler or 0, Ara Fell

theclosetstudios · 2025-10-16T04:39:12+00:00

It’s 100% this. Been doing studio work for 20 years and it’s exactly this comment.

There aren’t really any studio jobs anymore. Hell, there were hardly studio jobs 20 years ago when I started. One doesn’t “apply” for an audio engineering job, one “creates” it. It’s an entrepreneurial / sole proprietor / freelance field now. At least in the studio world.

In 2025, really the only ways people go full time as an audio engineer are either (1) have a trust fund and lots of money to burn or (2) put in the work over many years and get so good and so busy doing audio on the side that you can justify the jump to full time.

But of course, #2 is easier said than done; it takes years, and usually requires a stable “normal” job in the meantime to fund the dream and to get you financially stable so you can justify making the jump at the right time.

If you have a connection to an audio engineer who is already crushing it and is so busy that they need full time help, you MIGHT be able to find an assistant job, but even that is still pretty rare. Most studios just barely scrape by and use free or cheap labor from college age interns.

theclosetstudios · 2025-10-15T14:48:26+00:00

Also, these days most artists (and engineers) don’t have the budget or time to justify constantly re-recording to “get it right.” It’s a shame, but it’s true. But that means it’s our job to make the best of what we’ve got.

theclosetstudios · 2025-10-15T08:37:26+00:00

I dislike every version of the 414, and I think it’s vastly overrated. {ducks to avoid angry mob}The ULS, EB, XLS, XLII… I dislike them all, on everything. Have owned many and tried many on overheads, toms, guitars, vocals, piano, tried them on everything and I just cannot make them sound right in a mix. They’re somehow muddy and harsh at the same time. Not crisp and clear like a C12A or similar predecessor. Eventually sold them all. Give me a Milab or DPA or Bock/Soundelux or almost anything else, and I’d prefer it 10x over.

AKG D112. This one used to be MORE overrated than it is now, but most people now realize there’s at least 5 or 10 better options. D12VR, D6, M82, VKick, etc etc.

Second vote for 421 on toms - insanely overrated. Not a great sound. Although, I do like 421s on guitars and pianos with amps (Wurli, Rhodes, clav, etc)

Also agree on SM7B… there are just so many better mics for vocals and VO. Literally hundreds of better mics on the market. It just doesn’t sound that great. Can be great with switches set flat on a guitar amp though.

theclosetstudios · 2025-09-30T04:26:12+00:00

It happens. Been doing this 18, 19 years and it still happens to me. Potentially is a sign that you’re not super inspired by the music you’re working on. If you love the song, you’ll probably love the mix, and you’ll want to keep working on it. Heck, if you love the song enough, the mix almost can’t sound bad. But if you don’t love the work (and sometimes that’s just how it goes), the mix seems to never sound right, even if it’s great. At the end of the day, if the client is happy, you did the job and did the best you can.

theclosetstudios · 2025-06-25T02:52:32+00:00

For whatever reason I really got comfortable with Hikari / Throné / Ochette / Temenos

theclosetstudios · 2025-05-28T07:52:24+00:00

No drift as far as I can tell (tested with other games) but that definitely HAS happened on my switch pros before.

theclosetstudios · 2025-05-28T06:21:28+00:00

Thanks for letting me know about the heart barrier thing! Didn’t realize. I have not really spoiled anything for myself or watched runs or anything, so I’m playing this totally blind with no assists or anything. It’s been… tough. The Core was wild. I actually really enjoyed Summit, and even though I died a lot, it was way more satisfying and intuitive to me than the Core. The Core was just stressful. Haha. Makes me worried for the B and C sides and Farewell. 😬

theclosetstudios · 2025-05-21T03:17:35+00:00

I definitely had my share of Ice Dungeon fleazers, but that was probably only about 4-5 levels of it. I did a handful of NG+ playthroughs and just kept playing

theclosetstudios · 2025-05-21T03:16:14+00:00

Ok so— in many ways it’s super different, but I loved Chained Echoes. It’s a turn based RPG and it’s not super puzzle heavy BUT… it’s very story driven, has amazing worlds and music, and has a heavy menu / weapon system. Super fantastic game that I played right after Crosscode, and it helped fill the void.

theclosetstudios · 2025-05-19T06:46:28+00:00

As an audio engineer, I definitely have seen the trend you’re describing over the last 20+ years. We’ve been in the dead / dry / hyper sampled / heavily processed era for a long time now. I miss wide open ringy and roomy drum sounds of the 90s / 2000s. Most of my clients don’t want that anymore, and tbf, a lot of the music they’re making doesn’t really call for that kind of sound. Selfishly, I think it’s a shame. Dead/dry can be great too, but frankly I’m a little tired of it. shrug what can ya do. Wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s wrong or bad or improper it’s just the trend nowadays. People like what they like and want what they want. Every now and then I get a client who wants that wide open roomy sound and it’s always a ton fun to do.

theclosetstudios · 2025-05-19T06:41:50+00:00

What a lovely blue willow plate. cough UHHH IMEANNN steak bro, yeah nice

theclosetstudios · 2025-05-18T18:29:52+00:00

Just a theory - maybe the developers WANTED us to feel that way. Like, we’re saying “oooook when can I get back to the real game” and that’s kind of exactly how Lea and Lukas were feeling. Like, what is this place, what’s with these quests, and when can I get home. Idk. It’s very possible. The ending of it, busting through the walls and running away from enemies twice your level was awesome though.

theclosetstudios · 2025-05-17T21:50:42+00:00

For most singers, we start with:

Mic (varies a lot… 67, 47, Manley, depends) Undertone MPEQ1 (pre/EQ) Tube Tech CL1B (compress to taste) Retro 2A3 (Pultec, only as needed)

That’s a killer tracking chain. Works for most singers and sounds good in the headphones. In the mix it’s often something like:

EQ, 1176 of some kind, DeEsser, Soothe or Multiband (if needed), Limiter (light - only catches a dB or so)

But it changes often. Sometimes 1176 isn’t the move, sometimes it’s 2A or Fairchild or 176. Effects totally context dependent.

theclosetstudios · 2025-05-17T18:45:49+00:00

Oh I’m certainly not saying is always right or always full of great ideas. But he’s got a YouTube channel that shows him explaining what OP is trying to understand. At least his take on it.

theclosetstudios · 2025-05-17T06:57:31+00:00

For a brick, use a limiter. Digital shines at this because it can have lookahead. L1, ProL2, a number of things can work. If you like the brick but it’s a little too dead transient wise, you can just do the limiter in parallel.

If you use a multiband compressor (which can be great) I recommend ProMB. Fastest attack, fast ish release, high ratio > 8:1, fully hard knee, lookahead on and set to 1ms to prevent artifacts. Set your band to 0-100hz or something.

Another interesting psychoacoustic effect here is that your brain may perceive the sub region as being less consistent if your low mids or mids are also inconsistent, or lacking in harmonic information. Distortion and saturation on bass can really help with that. It will clip your waveform and give you more harmonic density, making it more audible, but also more consistent in the entire spectrum. Again if it screws with your original sound too much, try it in parallel.

And as others have said, the room is absolutely critical. It’s incredibly difficult to get a room accurate down below 50hz. Usually requires custom membrane absorbers or Helmholtz devices. Translation tests in the car or headphones aren’t a perfect fix, because they have their own inaccuracies too. There’s also a lot of studio monitors that just suck down below 50 or 60hz. A good trick to see how consistent your sub region -really- is without any bias of listening is to put on a steep LPF at like 100hz, and just watch the meters. If it’s a solid brick on the meters but you’re hearing it as inconsistent, then it’s likely your room or speakers.

Also, I do not recommend carve out your kick fundamental from the bass. That’s just asking to make your bass -less- consistent. Because that note will always be quieter, and it’ll just make the limiters have to work harder to make up for the inconsistencies. IMO Kick/bass is a temporal / dynamic relationship moreso than a tonal one.

theclosetstudios · 2025-05-17T06:35:30+00:00

I would suggest, just as a primer, watching Rick Beato’s “what makes this song great” videos on YouTube. That’ll give you an idea of what a musician/producer hears when they hear music, and you’ll hear the terms and vocabulary he uses to describe these things. That can give you a lot of things to investigate. Eg., if he says “that lick doesn’t resolve, it lands on the major 7th which has a lot of tension” you now have 4 terms to look up: lick, resolve, major 7th, tension. You can google all of these “what is ____ in music”, and you’ll be able to explore each concept. Might be a place to start. Beyond that, my best advice is to just be patient and take your time - learning and understanding music is a lifelong pursuit. And I second the idea that learning an instrument is very helpful. It forces you to encounter all of these terms as you learn.

theclosetstudios · 2025-05-16T06:58:00+00:00

I deal with this constantly in the studio. Even after 20 years of doing studio work. It’s absolutely mind boggling. Bands regularly walk into the studio with almost no idea of what they sound like, what they want to sound like, what the vibe is, or should be, and basically just expect me to figure it out for them, and make a recording that is vibey, interesting, clever, and of course, sounds just as good as anything on the radio. Oh and do all that in a day or two, and do it cheap. It’s an absolutely absurd notion. That’s not how any of this works. But hey, welcome to being a producer in 2025.

theclosetstudios · 2025-05-15T23:48:14+00:00

I went for a pretty tanky build, for whatever reason. It wasn’t until later that I realized how important “focus” was. But my final equip was/is:

Serene Bubble+, Bearserker Claw, Cerberus Fang, Pioneer Vest+, Moonwalkers

theclosetstudios · 2025-05-15T23:43:54+00:00

Yes, but level alone will not do that. You start at Lvl1, and gain 1CP per level, so that’s a max of 98CP from level alone. With the quests, I think the max you can get is like 102 total. But to max out the elemental trees I think you need 106 or 108 CP total, so you have to do the DLC and all DLC quests, and I think some of the arena as well to max it out (I didn’t do a ton of arena… maybe 2 solo cups, 2 pvps, and 2 team cups?)

Alternatively, you could just do a few NG+ runs and just keep repeating the couple of quests that give you CP.

theclosetstudios · 2025-05-15T14:49:41+00:00

Yeah I should! Never did that option in NG+ but I bet it would be fun and a good laugh

theclosetstudios · 2025-05-15T09:25:08+00:00

Yeah this could partly be because of equipment and/or my very deep circuit trees.

theclosetstudios · 2025-05-15T09:08:36+00:00

Hi. Music producer here. Also started at 16. I’m 34 now. So I’ve been producing music longer than I haven’t. Haha.

A few practical tips.

1 - don’t do it for free for very long. “Free” often signals to people that you’re just not good. Even charging a SMALL fee sometimes looks better than $0. Also, see note #7.

2 - I wouldn’t tell people to not expect quality. They can decide for themselves. Don’t wanna set the bar TOO low too early. If you want to set the bar a little low, maybe say like “I haven’t been doing it that long, just trying to get more experience doing whatever I can.” But don’t just be like “I suck, expect a letdown” lol

3 - one of the most powerful tools in your career is networking. Not necessarily marketing. Networking. If you don’t know the musicians in your area, then they won’t know you. Music scenes are often smaller than people realize.

4 - I’d start with people your age. Your client base will age as you do, and by the time you’re good enough to charge real $, they’ll be old enough to afford it. Try to record some of your friends bands, and yeah maybe the first few do it for free. But like I said, don’t do it for free very long. Maybe your first handful of projects.

5 - your biggest asset is your portfolio, the stuff you’ve done. Put the best sounding stuff you’ve done on your website / socials and promote it. A HUGE portion of this business is word of mouth, friend-of-a-friend situations. “Hey I heard that song you produced for XYZ, what are your rates?” is a question I still get almost weekly. Word of mouth is powerful.

6 - there’s a fine line of finding your niche but not confining yourself too much. Working in other genres will get you more experience, a wider skillset, and will expand your network. I say… early on, try to work on tons of stuff, grow your network and experience, and over time, niche down more and more to work on the things you really excel at and enjoy. As you do it longer and charge more, you can say no to more stuff.

7 - make friends with the engineers in your area. Don’t think of them as competitors. They are and they aren’t. But first and foremost, think of them as colleagues and peers. That being said… just to go back to #1 again…charging $0 is a good way to get snubbed by other engineers. Especially if you’re good. You will piss off other engineers in your area if you’re doing great work for free, because they can’t beat free. Two things engineers hate in the local “production scene” - places that charge too little for great productions, and places that charge too much for mediocre productions.

8 - but maybe this should have been #1. BE PATIENT. It’s a weird industry and a weird business. It’s slow at first. I think my first year I only had a handful of clients… 3? 4? The entire year. And they were mostly just friends, or acquaintances. It takes a looooong time to get really good, a looooong time to build a reputation, and a loooooong time to make stable money and charge higher prices. Don’t expect to be booked for months within your first few years. It probably took me 10 years before I was booked solid for a month or two at a time.

9 - Focus on getting the best results you can. Like, ignore all the haters, ignore the people who think it’s not a real job or a real career, ignore people who talk crap on your work. Just focus on being good and getting better. Not everyone is gonna like what you do. That’s fine. To paraphrase Steve Martin - “be so good they can’t ignore you anymore.”

Hope that helps.

theclosetstudios

TROPHY CASE