Explore the epic adventure within the Gaia Online MMO, zOMG!. Discover interesting and beautiful worlds, engage in combat with monsters, interact and play with friends, and more in this casual online massively multiplayer game. Designed for the PC as a free to play game with no download requirements, the MMO is accessible and easy to navigate for everyone. More than a game, zOMG! incorporates elements of social networking and entertainment for community members. Featuring streaming music, a unique storyline and characters, and engaging gameplay, zOMG! is an open environment for people of all ages to play games, meet friends, and explore.

Following a highly successful Closed Beta period, audiences everywhere are now invited to journey through beautiful worlds and join forces with friends in the battle against unruly monsters. With 16 zones and a vast variety of battle rings and recipes to choose from, zOMG! is an engaging adventure that blends social online community experiences with accessible MMO gameplay.

After finishing work on 2K's Bioshock, dSonic's sound design team turned its attention to zOMG!. The game's creatures are hybrids of living and non-living objects and dSonic co-founder, Kemal Amarasingham, revealed some of the methods behind blending the two.

Amarasingham explained, "The most difficult aspect of sound design is finding the right base sounds for each creature, so that when they're all processed and layered, they blend well and sound natural. Blending was particularly important for us while working on zOMG! because of the hybrid nature of the monsters." To get the effect of a creature sounding mechanical-real, as opposed to just mechanical, dSonic's sound designers adopted leading edge techniques like morphing and convolution.

Kemal Amarasingham used the sound design for the Mosquito Clock as an example of his team's work in the game and said that when players hear this monster in attack mode, they will hear five different sounds combined to make up the movement sequence: 1) a clank sound for the mechanical body, 2) a buzzing sound reminiscent of mosquito wings flapping, 3) a clock mechanism winding up and down as the antennas go around, 4) the ding of an alarm clock when the antenna arms strike twelve o?clock, and 5) a sonic wave (the attack itself).

The Mosquito Clock is but one of 36 monsters and characters in the zOMG! world. Amarasingham added "We strived for originality and to bring out the story in the sound of every creature in the game. We hope that by doing so we have added to the richness and the depth of zOMG!" See the Mosquito Clock monster and other zOMG! creatures here.

As community members begin playing the MMO, they’ll discover the game’s overarching storyline. In the world of zOMG!, inanimate objects such as lawn gnomes, rubber boots and alarm clocks are coming to life, threatening to overwhelm all of Gaia, and it's up to players to stop them! While forging alliances with other players, collecting and trading powerful rings, creating recipes, and challenging monsters in battle, players will try to solve the mystery of why inanimate objects are coming to life and how they can be stopped. As the zOMG! world continues to grow, so will the plotlines, each new story arc building on the others to evolve the world of Gaia far beyond where it stands now. Join in the game and be an active part of the evolution as you explore the world and aid its citizens.

For more information and to start playing zOMG!, visit the official website.