Ten years later, I still consider "Minecraft" to be one of the scariest games I've ever played. This is due in no small part to the lonely melodies that fade in and out of the quiet game, and the mournful moans of the monsters that echo through the pitch-black caverns. The original soundtrack for Minecraft, created by Daniel "C418" Rosenfeld, is an iconic companion to the sandbox survival game, but I have never seen so much attention paid to its strange and unmistakable sound effects.

That's exactly what the latest episode of Twenty Thousand Hertz, a podcast that explores the origins of the world's most recognizable sound, is about. Host Dallas Taylor spoke with Rosenfeld about his early work on "Minecraft" (long before it became a worldwide hit) and how he created some of the game's most ubiquitous sounds.

At the time, Rosenfeld did not consider himself a sound designer. He sourced as much of Minecraft's sounds as he could from Freesound.org. When he hit a wall with the limitations of the free library, he had to create his own. Some of them were quite bizarre.

Listen to the full episode above.

Did you know, for example, that the crazy screeching sound of a spider was actually Rosenfeld's water hose synthesized? 'Originally, I was thinking, what would a spider's screech sound like? It turns out that there is a spider called the camel spider (not technically a spider, apparently) that lives in the Middle East. Rosenfeld wanted to use that sound, but he couldn't get the microphone close enough to the real thing in the "middle of Germany." So he sampled the hose and made it up. And now we have this sharp screeching sound.

Of particular interest to me is the sound of digging in the dirt, which is unique to Minecraft. The 'crunching' sound you hear when the blocks finally fall apart was originally the player's default footstep sound." It was a terrible footstep sound. When I walked on the grass, it sounded like I was eating Cheerios." In the episode, we hear an older version of this unpleasant sound. Eventually, the sound was sped up and shortened to create a crunching effect, and Rosenfeld found a less aggressive footstep sound. The digging sound still sounds like chewing rocks, but is very satisfying.

The morbid moans of Minecraft's zombies turned out to be more accurate than one might imagine. 'I've got a bad flu and it's killing my throat,' he said. That's why I groaned into the microphone. Is this what it's like to be a sound designer? I'm always trying to figure out how to use the weird sounds coming out of my body. The sound of zombies wandering around in front of the front door is pretty creepy.

Oh, and the sound of the creeper exploding. There were no explosions, but one thing you can easily get on the Internet is gunshots." This really surprised me, but makes total sense. The creeper explosion sounds quite strange compared to a traditional kaboom. It has more of a bass, a sound that lets you know that you are not generating a large fireball. The gunshot is a really inspired solution, since it is a micro-explosion in and of itself.

I came away from this episode with a stronger understanding of how hard it is for independent creators with limited resources to make a game's sound stand out. Ironically, Rosenfeld's DIY avoidance of traditional sound effects resulted in a unique soundscape that has stood the test of time; even 10 years later, no game sounds like this one, and I am convinced that the sound of the game is still the best in the world.

This episode is a lot of fun, so give it a listen, and Rosenfeld also delves into Minecraft's soundtrack and the pesky audio bugs that limited how it could be used in the game. Taylor's extremely accurate assessment of the game by her 7-year-old daughter is also sprinkled throughout.

I couldn't agree more.