Hi I'm Merlin, I'm an electronic music producer and sound designer with over 20 years experience in music production and sound design for games. I'm an extremely versatile composer and my portfolio spans Breakbeat, Drum & Bass, Techno & Trance to Classical arrangements, Hybrid/modern film scores, Ambient and Electronica. As a sound designer my specialty is sci-fi/horror sound effects and ambiences, creature and weapon design alongside technical/game-engine implementation. I have worked on VR and PC titles but I am also open to linear work for film or animation. My rate is flexible as I can offer a large range of services from music and sound effect production to mixing/re-mixing, editing and technical sound design. I come equipped with a highly capable treated home studio with industry standard Genelec monitoring and access to a vast number of sound libraries, instruments and plugins.…Hi I'm Merlin, I'm an electronic music producer and sound designer with over 20 years experience in music production and sound design for games. I'm an extremely versatile composer and my portfolio spans Breakbeat, Drum & Bass, Techno & Trance to Classical arrangements, Hybrid/modern film scores, Ambient and Electronica. As a sound designer my specialty is sci-fi/horror sound effects and ambiences, creature and weapon design alongside technical/game-engine implementation. I have worked on VR and PC titles but I am also open to linear work for film or animation. My rate is flexible as I can offer a large range of services from music and sound effect production to mixing/re-mixing, editing and technical sound design. I come equipped with a highly capable treated home studio with industry standard Genelec monitoring and access to a vast number of sound libraries, instruments and plugins.WWW…
Hi I'm Merlin, I'm an electronic music producer and sound designer with over 20 years experience in music production and sound design for games. I'm an extremely versatile composer and my portfolio spans Breakbeat, Drum & Bass, Techno & Trance to Classical arrangements, Hybrid/modern film scores, Ambient and Electronica. As a sound designer my specialty is sci-fi/horror sound effects and ambiences, creature and weapon design alongside technical/game-engine implementation. I have worked on VR and PC titles but I am also open to linear work for film or animation. My rate is flexible as I can offer a large range of services from music and sound effect production to mixing/re-mixing, editing and technical sound design. I come equipped with a highly capable treated home studio with industry standard Genelec monitoring and access to a vast number of sound libraries, instruments and plugins.…Hi I'm Merlin, I'm an electronic music producer and sound designer with over 20 years experience in music production and sound design for games. I'm an extremely versatile composer and my portfolio spans Breakbeat, Drum & Bass, Techno & Trance to Classical arrangements, Hybrid/modern film scores, Ambient and Electronica. As a sound designer my specialty is sci-fi/horror sound effects and ambiences, creature and weapon design alongside technical/game-engine implementation. I have worked on VR and PC titles but I am also open to linear work for film or animation. My rate is flexible as I can offer a large range of services from music and sound effect production to mixing/re-mixing, editing and technical sound design. I come equipped with a highly capable treated home studio with industry standard Genelec monitoring and access to a vast number of sound libraries, instruments and plugins.WWWW…
Available to hire
Hi I’m Merlin, I’m an electronic music producer and sound designer with over 20 years experience in music production and sound design for games. I’m an extremely versatile composer and my portfolio spans Breakbeat, Drum & Bass, Techno & Trance to Classical arrangements, Hybrid/modern film scores, Ambient and Electronica.
As a sound designer my specialty is sci-fi/horror sound effects and ambiences, creature and weapon design alongside technical/game-engine implementation. I have worked on VR and PC titles but I am also open to linear work for film or animation.
My rate is flexible as I can offer a large range of services from music and sound effect production to mixing/re-mixing, editing and technical sound design. I come equipped with a highly capable treated home studio with industry standard Genelec monitoring and access to a vast number of sound libraries, instruments and plugins.
Skills
Experience Level
Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Expert
Intermediate
Intermediate
Intermediate
Work Experience
Technical Audio Designer at Rezzil
July 1, 2024 - January 1, 2025Lead Audio Designer at Antler Interactive
November 1, 2022 - August 1, 2024Audio Designer at SON Studios
December 1, 2020 - May 1, 2022Freelance Audio Designer at MSAudioDesign
September 1, 2019 - PresentEducation
Bachelor of Arts at Plymouth MarJon University
September 30, 2019 - June 30, 2022BA Sound for Games and Apps First
Qualifications
Industry Experience
Gaming, Media & Entertainment, Professional Services
Rezzil Premier League Player
Premier League Player (Rezzil) | Technical Audio Designer
Rezzil is a Manchester based studio, and Premier League Player is the official English Premier League VR game, released in December 2024. I was brought on as technical audio designer to design and build a dynamic crowd and commentary system, and went on to own audio implementation across much of the game, including music systems, UI audio, multiplayer lobbies and the game's Moments. The goal was a stadium that reacts to the play in front of you and still feels like it surrounds you when you turn your head.
Crowd sound design
Gathered a large library of stadium crowd material and organised it into the building blocks of a match atmosphere: baseline crowd, build up of play, boos, cheers, random chants and fixed location chants.
Designed and synthesised generic crowd beds and layers from that material to cover the full range of stadium moods.
Rendered the crowd as ambisonic files, with a four channel base loop that surrounds the player and additional layers that fire off when needed. Tested extensively to minimise phase issues, and played back through the Oculus SDK.
Mocked up whole moments in Logic Pro and Reaper before taking anything into the engine.
Spatial crowd system
When the spatial audio plugin we had planned to use didn't make it into the build, I designed and built a custom emitter system from scratch.
It generates a ring of emitters in a clock formation around the player. The ring pivots and pitches around the player's head as they move, and it also teleports with them between positions.
The crowd is event driven, so cheers, boos and build up respond to what is happening in the moment.
Commentary
Edited all of the commentary audio, performed by Alistair Mann and recorded on a professional commentary mic at the Rezzil office. It took a huge amount of detailed editing to get it ready for the game.
Organised the edited lines by sub-moment and built a scriptable setup to hold them, so a positive or negative shot outcome plays a random line from the matching set and the commentary stays varied.
Music, UI and game modes
Built a seamless looping music system for the shotstopper mode.
Implemented all of the UI audio across the game.
Built the audio for the multiplayer lobby and for the Moments, the game's core scenarios.
Systems and implementation
Extended the existing audio manager with much finer control over fades and mixing, and built an audio object pooling system.
Integrated the whole audio system into Rezzil's shared packages setup so the team could update it through Unity's package manager.
Wrote design documentation and flowcharts so the wider team could build the remaining moments on top of the system.…Premier League Player (Rezzil) | Technical Audio Designer
Rezzil is a Manchester based studio, and Premier League Player is the official English Premier League VR game, released in December 2024. I was brought on as technical audio designer to design and build a dynamic crowd and commentary system, and went on to own audio implementation across much of the game, including music systems, UI audio, multiplayer lobbies and the game's Moments. The goal was a stadium that reacts to the play in front of you and still feels like it surrounds you when you turn your head.
Crowd sound design
Gathered a large library of stadium crowd material and organised it into the building blocks of a match atmosphere: baseline crowd, build up of play, boos, cheers, random chants and fixed location chants.
Designed and synthesised generic crowd beds and layers from that material to cover the full range of stadium moods.
Rendered the crowd as ambisonic files, with a four channel base loop that surrounds the player and additional layers that fire off when needed. Tested extensively to minimise phase issues, and played back through the Oculus SDK.
Mocked up whole moments in Logic Pro and Reaper before taking anything into the engine.
Spatial crowd system
When the spatial audio plugin we had planned to use didn't make it into the build, I designed and built a custom emitter system from scratch.
It generates a ring of emitters in a clock formation around the player. The ring pivots and pitches around the player's head as they move, and it also teleports with them between positions.
The crowd is event driven, so cheers, boos and build up respond to what is happening in the moment.
Commentary
Edited all of the commentary audio, performed by Alistair Mann and recorded on a professional commentary mic at the Rezzil office. It took a huge amount of detailed editing to get it ready for the game.
Organised the edited lines by sub-moment and built a scriptable setup to hold them, so a positive or negative shot outcome plays a random line from the matching set and the commentary stays varied.
Music, UI and game modes
Built a seamless looping music system for the shotstopper mode.
Implemented all of the UI audio across the game.
Built the audio for the multiplayer lobby and for the Moments, the game's core scenarios.
Systems and implementation
Extended the existing audio manager with much finer control over fades and mixing, and built an audio object pooling system.
Integrated the whole audio system into Rezzil's shared packages setup so the team could update it through Unity's package manager.
Wrote design documentation and flowcharts so the wider team could build the remaining moments on top of the system.WW…
Cloudborn
Cloudborn | Audio Lead (Sound Design, Music, Implementation)
Cloudborn is an unreleased narrative deck builder with turn based tactics, where your conversations with characters change the outcome of the game. I was audio lead for two years, designing the sound of the world from the ground up and also composing the score. The brief was a world that felt alive and lived in, but completely alien. We steered away from cartoonish sounds and settled on a fantasy cog-punk aesthetic with rough, tactile textures.
Sound design
Recorded mechanisms, rocks and grinding metal with a contact mic to give the world its worn, mechanical character.
Built the creatures by pitching bird recordings down four octaves, performing similar calls with my voice, then pitching those up. Layered with library material where needed.
Designed the dimensional rifts from heavily filtered and enveloped white noise, with a soft puff as each rift appears and an explosion as it opens. The explosions came from running a kick drum through a granular synth to generate dozens of variations. Everything was then worldized through reamping and speakerphone.
Ambience
Created a unique bedrock ambience for every area, so each location has its own sonic signature.
Shifted the ambience with the player's position, so a cave, a mountain top and a stream each sound distinct within the same level.
Used looping emitter zones to add movement and variation on top of the bedrock layer.
Music
Composed and produced the full score, with a distinct set of themes, battle tracks and a boss piece for each level.
Built the adaptive system that lets the music respond to the emotional state of the characters.
Implementation
Built an interactable audio system covering approach, interaction and exit. Sounds become more detailed as the player gets closer to an object.
Set up a swappable foley system so footsteps match whatever a character is wearing, with pitch scaled to character size.…Cloudborn | Audio Lead (Sound Design, Music, Implementation)
Cloudborn is an unreleased narrative deck builder with turn based tactics, where your conversations with characters change the outcome of the game. I was audio lead for two years, designing the sound of the world from the ground up and also composing the score. The brief was a world that felt alive and lived in, but completely alien. We steered away from cartoonish sounds and settled on a fantasy cog-punk aesthetic with rough, tactile textures.
Sound design
Recorded mechanisms, rocks and grinding metal with a contact mic to give the world its worn, mechanical character.
Built the creatures by pitching bird recordings down four octaves, performing similar calls with my voice, then pitching those up. Layered with library material where needed.
Designed the dimensional rifts from heavily filtered and enveloped white noise, with a soft puff as each rift appears and an explosion as it opens. The explosions came from running a kick drum through a granular synth to generate dozens of variations. Everything was then worldized through reamping and speakerphone.
Ambience
Created a unique bedrock ambience for every area, so each location has its own sonic signature.
Shifted the ambience with the player's position, so a cave, a mountain top and a stream each sound distinct within the same level.
Used looping emitter zones to add movement and variation on top of the bedrock layer.
Music
Composed and produced the full score, with a distinct set of themes, battle tracks and a boss piece for each level.
Built the adaptive system that lets the music respond to the emotional state of the characters.
Implementation
Built an interactable audio system covering approach, interaction and exit. Sounds become more detailed as the player gets closer to an object.
Set up a swappable foley system so footsteps match whatever a character is wearing, with pitch scaled to character size.WW…
Merlin Sunley Audio Design: 2025 Linear Sound Design Showreel
Merlin Sunley Audio Design: 2025 Game Audio Showreel
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