Daryn Rowse
SFX Design
Avant-Guard - SFX Design, Voice-line Editing & Synthesis
Flapjack
Penny
Avant-Guard is a 1v1 online 3D fighting game blending rhythmic parries and expressive combat. Compete in The Festival as unique artists like Penny or Flapjack, mastering movement, combos, and strategy.
The team begun Avant-Guard as a senior capstone project at UMD. I joined as a junior, contributing sound effects through cohesive use of acoustic material, sound engagement processes, and post-processing. I continue to work on Avant-Guard, more recently spending time exploring water, glass, vowel formants, and vocal synthesis for our new character Flapjack.
Team:
Silas Raphaelidis (programming, gameplay design, animation);
Mateo Rodriguez (production, composition, game design, VFX, environments);
Martina Logan (concept art, 3D, rigging, motion capture, voice);
Abigail Yim (concept art, 3D, UVs, texturing).
Daryn Rowse (SFX, voice-line editing)
Ongoing Projects
Born To Die
An indie point and click visual novel made with Unity, produced by VanillaInTheAbyss. My role is SFX designer, dialogue editor, foley artist, and composer.
Avant Guard
A 3D arena fighter originating as a 2025 - 2026 senior capstone, spawning our indie company. My role is SFX designer and voice-line editor.
A 2D tower defense game made with Unity, in partnership with publisher. My role is SFX designer and composer.
A software wavetable synthesizer using behavioral and physical modeling to emulate insect bioacoustics, atmospheric processing, and landscape acoustics. I serve as the primary developer using c++ through ScriptNode and HISE. Deckard Lees is our primary researcher and artist.
HackUMBC26 Game Jamathon Submission - Royal Vineyard
All implemented sounds and instruments were recorded acoustically within the HackUMBC location and timeframe.
No presets, no recycled sounds, 100% true to the nature of a Jamathon.
24 hour SFX Design and Composition
First Place - UMBC Hackathon Game Jam 25'
24 Hour SFX Design and Composition with Digitakt II and Logic Pro
Created sound effects and original music for A.R.C.A.D.E, earning first place among 30 teams at HACKUMBC 2025. Used Tascam DR-05X field recordings and Elektron Digitakt II.
Timeline constraints led to a portion of SFX, including the lightning strike, to not implemented in the final build. The complete collection of SFX assets created for the project is available at the link below.
Game Audio (Linear Re-dubs)
Playdead's 'INSIDE' (re-dub)
Unfold Game's 'DARQ' (re-dub)
ThatGameCompany's 'Sky: Children of the Light' (re-dub)
Special Projects
Soundscript Entry 01
An SFX translation and narrative design practice for fun. Written and sonic material by me.
Water to ice
An audiovisual study on the transition between water and ice. Made with Touch Designer and Reaper for a UMD course on TouchDesigner.
Soundscape Therapy
A concept project with neuroscience student Maia Lee, information science student Danny Mallya, and Immersive Media Design student Kadan Knapp, under Professor Myungin Lee of UMD's Computer Science Department.
Concept
The embedded video shows our groups final project for IMDM290: a 50-track audio system grouping 10 sets of 5, where users emotional inputs to 10 therapeutic questions unmute tracks to form a personalized soundscape and digital environment; developed in Unity with clinical research and transformed into a real-time EEG-guided meditation system. I designed the 50-track audio system in Logic Pro as well as the on-screen questionnaire.
Adaptive Audio System for Soundscape Therapy
