Inside SCORCHED: The Sound Design Process

SCORCHED is the first release from Puzzlebox and the opening volume of the Wasteland Series, a five-part collection of cinematic sound design libraries. Each is a distilled environment reflecting a different facet of a collapsed world. Designed to stand alone or combine seamlessly, they form a unified toolkit for building immersive, fractured landscapes.

This initial entry is the most violent pack in the series, exploring a world whose sounds are built around destructive energy and the aftermath of annihilation.

Behind the Vision

SCORCHED was forged around the concept of apocalyptic destruction. The sound palette reflects the scorched remnants of civilization’s machinery, explosive impacts, warped signals and brittle tension.

Alongside the aggression and fire that define the most violent pack in the series, we also wanted to capture the stillness of the aftermath. Low rumbles from a shattered terrain, flickering embers, fragmented radio transmissions, and the distant wail of warning sirens, echoes of what survived the burn.

Sound Design Approach

The library includes over 530 original sounds, expanded to 1,590 files through alternative takes, processing chains and performance variants. It covers drones, textures, tonal hits, warped loops, processed percussion, and more.

Distortion, aggression, fragmentation and decay are at the heart of the SCORCHED sound. We pushed source material through layers of saturation, re-amping, tape modulation, convolution, and downsampling, blending the organic with the broken. A mix of revered outboard gear (Sherman Filterbank, Culture Vulture), digital staples (Decapitator, Trash), and obscure devices (DFX plugins, a modified cassette deck, circuit-bent karaoke unit) helped shape the aggressive sonic palette.

Equally central was our use of glitch, granular, and buffer-based processes, not as gimmicks but as tools to erode structure and fracture time. We stretched sounds to the edge of recognition using granular samplers, unstable software chains, and real-time manipulations, then reassembled the debris into tense rhythmic patterns and atmospheric textures

Development Process

The development of SCORCHED followed a tightly organized pipeline:

• Creative direction was established using internal style references and texture studies

• Sound categories were treated as individual sessions, allowing for focus and depth

• Processing and refinement took place in structured passes: shaping, cleanup, testing

• Variants were created with clear intent, not redundancy

• Naming and tagging followed a strict system for clarity across DAWs and samplers

Material was regularly tested in real-world scenarios, including mock scoring sessions and trailer builds, to ensure that the library delivered functionally, not just aesthetically.

SCORCHED is the most aggressive pack in the Wasteland Series — a relentless soundscape of destruction and decay. Ready to experience it firsthand? Download the free sampler or get the full library now and ignite your next project.