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A jam submission

A Lonely PlaceView project page

Imaginary OST to a made-up game, for Composer Jam #2
Submitted by Beached — 2 days, 1 hour before the deadline
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A Lonely Place's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Impression#193.7733.882
Overall#213.6593.765
Correlation to theme#233.7163.824
Quality#313.7163.824
Composition#313.6013.706
Creativity#353.4873.588

Ranked from 17 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Description
DAW: FL Studio
OST Genre: Chiptune
Game Genre: Story-Based Adventure/Bullet Hell

Goal: Capture the eerie, intense mood of this game idea loosely using the functions of an old NES 5-track sound card as inspiration for the music.

Intro: You wake up inside your spacecraft after 5 years in cryo-sleep. An extinction event on planet earth has forced you to build a spaceship and launch yourself at a nearby galaxy in hopes of finding a hospitable planet to start a new life. Thankfully, technological advancements in the late 23rd century have enabled long distance space travel. All it took was a little elbow grease and a mechanical engineering degree. And a doctorate in astrophysics. And a couple billion dollars...but you managed to get it together just as the last bits of oxygen on Earth were depleted. Most others weren't so lucky.

Now you have to find your way to a nearby planet and hope to high heaven that it has enough oxygen for you to breathe. Luck has been on your side so far, but there's trouble incoming...

OST

1. A Lonely Place

You wake up in your spacecraft, all alone. You're overcome by the gravity of the situation, too aware of how you may be the last human alive. You pry yourself out of your sleep pod and trudge around the ship in order to check on all of the sensors and make sure everything is in working order. After a while, something appears on the radar...
(Tasks similar to Among Us take place as the story is explained)

2. Unexpected Encounters

You gasp in awe as you peer out the window of the ship. In the distance some hundreds of thousands of miles away is a giant blue and white planet. That isn't your immediate concern however.

3. Enemy Ship

Between the planet and yourself looks to be an asteroid-sized spaceship. This ship does not look as if it came from earth. You count your blessings, because this ship doesn't look to be very friendly either.

4. Blasters

An intense dogfight in space ensues. Luckily, you outfitted your craft with the finest missiles earth money can buy. Good thing too, because that money is useless now.
(Bullet Hell boss fight, similar to Galaga)

5. All This Way for Nothing

After obliterating the alien spacecraft, you check the sensors again to find damage to your hull. You heave a sigh of relief...only to see the flashing red light coming from your oxygen system. There's a leak, and your odds of survival just plummeted.

6. Full Throttle

You throw the thrusters into overdrive. A few hundred-thousand miles in an hour is doable. It has to be. You dodge through an asteroid belt as fast as you can go, slipping through the space rocks like water between your fingers. It's going to be so close...
(Bullet Hell "boss fight", dodging and destroying asteroids)

Epilogue

The craft breaks through the unknown planet's atmosphere. It tears through the air at blistering speed as the icy mass of rock and mineral grows closer. A crash landing shakes the planet to its core. You've been dead for a few minutes now, as the small amount of oxygen in the cabin just wasn't enough to keep you going. Not that there would be enough to keep you going on this frozen sheet of ice.

In a strange, oddly calming twist of fate, it turns out this mission wasn't all for nothing. The bacteria from your body manage to find their way outside your ship over the course of the next millennia, and where there's ice there's water. It may take a while, but evolution exists even here, at the farthest reaches of a new galaxy.

Message from the artist:
This is my first jam submission ever, and I had a blast building this soundtrack from the ground up. Hopefully as I get a little more experience I can make a cleaner OST in the future :)

Theme

Panspermia (Πανσπερμία)

How does it fit the theme?
The theory of Panspermia can take on a few meanings. In my made-up game you encounter an alien spacecraft, showing that another species capable of space travel exists in this universe.

Then in the epilogue, it hints that the bacteria from your body and ship push on to create life on a different planet. In a way, the main character ends up becoming the life that exists throughout the universe.

Link to streaming services
https://soundcloud.com/user-393058037

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Comments

Submitted

Wow! That was really amazing, I really liked the melodies and energy of all the songs. I don't know if I got it right but I found the revisit of the first song on Thursday very interesting! My dream will one day reach your chiptune level

Developer

Thank you! I'm not that great yet but we'll see how the next one goes.

This is whole, complete, cohesive, and exhilarating.  An excellent example of what chiptune can accomplish. It includes good homages to familiar sounds too. 

Developer

Thanks for the kind words :)

Submitted

I really like how much energy your soundtrack has! I especially really enjoyed Blasters and Full Throttle - it felt like my heart was racing while I listened to them!

Developer(+1)

My heart was racing trying to get these done in time :)

Submitted

This is really good work! All the tracks fitted to the descriptions you provided, and I thought it was well written (both the music and the concept). For some reason the first track made me think of the Rayman Advance OST song "The Dream Forest 2" haha. I like the idea that there's no "happy end" but something in between. Great job! 

Developer

Whenever I write music and get down something I like, I always panic that it came from some deep subconscious thoughts and i heard it before. I probably played rayman as a kid and this came from it lol

Submitted

From my limited exposure to it (I've never played it and have only heard small bits here and there), this reminds me a lot of the Earthbound soundtrack with the textures and overall composition. Enemy Ship made me smile because it reminds me a lot of the old school Pokemon games' battle tags that I grew up :) Also, Full Throttle is amazing! It gets me pumped listening to it

Overall, great work! I would love to play a game with this soundtrack to it!

Developer

Definitely one of my favorite songs i've ever made, I'm gonna extend it + add some panning to it and put it in an 8-bit album eventually. Thanks for the kind words!

Submitted(+1)

Very nice old school vibe to it ! Congrats !

Developer

I'm only good at chiptune stuff :)

Submitted(+1)

Well done! The music is nice and you really pushed your game concept :)

Developer

Thanks! Making the outline of the game concept really helped me focus on the mood of the songs.