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Necro Swarm Soundtrack Pitch - For IGA June Challenge Jam's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall SFX | #1 | 3.889 | 4.125 |
| Overall | #4 | 3.329 | 3.531 |
| Fun | #5 | 3.418 | 3.625 |
| Creativity | #5 | 3.536 | 3.750 |
| Overall Music | #10 | 2.475 | 2.625 |
Ranked from 8 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.
- Music - very adventurous, somewhat wholesome too. I believe you might be somewhat quoting/alluding to Prokofiev's Dance of the Knights? A little Brahms 4 too! It feels fairly positive, I think because of the instrumentation. There are moments of darkness/danger, but the glockenspiel sort of softens that (which may be the intent) The mix is a bit chaotic but it doesn't bother me - I like feeling all these things popping around. It's a little muddy, but the variety of timbres happening I think reinforces the game's theme SFX - The SFX are all really nice - they bring me back to Dungeon Keeper a bit. I think they all three work well, like not a single individual is making the sound, but it's a collection of thousands of creatures. That communicates very well. BUT I'm not sure it totally works with the music? The music is light and playful, and the SFX are more just....DARK. I would probably darken the music (more electronic than orchestral?) or lighten up the SFX. Of the two, I think the SFX feel more cohesive, so you might start there. Thanks! Nice work!
- I liked the music! It had a bit of fun chaos to it! Your SFX though - UnderAttack is so jarring, but appropriately so! All three really fit the Necro vibe perfectly. I enjoyed the use of voice, which has been different from the others I've listened to so far. I agree that Roar could be just a little shorter, especially if it's a sound we'll hear often enough in the game. Well done!
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Comments
The music is fun and high-energy and it feels like it would fit the gameplay, but it feels to heroic for a necromancer to me. I think it would be a better fit for more of a heroic fantasy game.
First off, I love the title "For the Swarm!" The theme itself was quite fun, and I loved the horns. It starts a little abruptly (maybe resolvable through sound mixing) and I feel like it needs to transition at some point in the middle to a more flowing theme to give it more texture and keep it from becoming stagnant. Otherwise, great piece! The little chime like dings were enjoyable too, if not a little too upbeat for a game about an evil necromancer, haha.
That demonic voice for the "under attack" SFX though is FIRE! I love the way you edited it and wish I could have gotten a similar effect with my undead voices. The roar had the same vibes but did not sound much like a roar. I would suggest reducing the distortion a little bit to let the roar shine through. Finally, the death sound is fun, but it almost sounds like they fell in water? Would be cool for a dark slime or ichor-based creature like little Venom spawns.
Great work on this!
SFX: Sounds like Transformers movies sound effects. The death and the roar sound really similar and the roar is a little long. But altogether very good and consistent. I am getting a zerg from StarCraft vibe from the voice.
Music: I think you have two parts with the same trumpet instrument, and it seems impossible to play, or like they are interrupting each other.
I can't hear the bells very well, and would like to hear more of them.
I like your driving strings
At 35 - 40 seconds the trumpets becomes super duper jarringly cheerful, and again at 1:10 with the cello
My thoughts --
Well done on your submissions -- I note, again, that you're one of those who submitted in such a short time, with hours to spare before the deadline; props for that. All the best in the jam!
Thank you Trois, really appreciate the feedback, and I think all of it is pretty good! The music ended up being quite the mess lol, but I mostly wanted to get something done, and I definitely leaned more into the production side of it than actually writing something intelligently! 😂
Really loved your thoughts on the SFX especially though, 100% agree on the Alien death one regarding impact, at the time I thought there may have been some rule against combining other samples (that I didn't make for the jam but had the rights to use) so I just recorded all of these from scratch with voice and foley from my phone mic run into a DAW for post processing.
And sometime if you are looking for a laugh I might send you the source sound I recorded and used for the roar, you might hurt yourself from laughing though! 😁
Nice work on the SFX. Very creative use of voice. In my interpretation, it sounds a bit like sci-fi to me, but that's exactly why I think it's creative.
The music kind of reminded me of something like a JRPG. It was good, but just doesn't seem to fit the theme in my opinion.
Thank you for the feedback! Yeah I wasn't quite sure how to do what I wanted music wise in the time I had left: started work on this jam less than 10 hours before it was finished, including the SFX. Glad you liked those, they were heavily inspired by the Zerg Announcer/unit VO/s from Starcraft, which I felt fitting for the idea of a Necro Swarm! Secret twist these were recorded from really derpy source sounds of my voice with my phone mic so I hope that doesn't make you deduct stars! Just heavily processed in post.😂
The amusing thing about this is I have played pretty much every RTS (since Dune 2, C&C, Age Of Empires, Starcraft days) including some really obscure ones, and I have hardly played any JRPGs so how I ended up with that sorta style is beyond me! 😁
I did originally consider making some Frank Klepacki style industrial thingy, but I didn't think that really fit the fantasy theme.