Play soundtrack
child of the forest's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Quality | #7 | 4.524 | 4.524 |
| Correlation to theme | #8 | 4.262 | 4.262 |
| Overall | #10 | 4.210 | 4.210 |
| Impression | #13 | 4.143 | 4.143 |
| Composition | #26 | 4.119 | 4.119 |
| Creativity | #31 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
Ranked from 42 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Description
For this project I was picturing a platforming/puzzle mix with the following story:
For as long as Ryu can remember, she and her child Blinny Phong made their home in the village of Mirru. For some time, the elders have expressed unusual interest in her child. Uneasy, she eventually makes the tough decision to flee.
She decides to do this at night under the cover of darkness with her child in tow (track 1).
The forest is scary, and feels eerily lonely, but they have to press on and see if they can find some new place to live (track 2).
Eventually, she finds that the forest is not all that it seems to be. Every now and then she spots what look like small automatons from the corner of her eyes (track 3).
Eventually there journey leads to a hill beyond which the forest seems much more like a work in progress. Running up the hill she sees the other side of the forest for what it is. A giant mechanical meshwork of tiny cogs, pistons and springs (track 4).
It's a bit of a shock that it's not even a real forest, but all the intricate motion is mesmerizing. Behind its lush green facades lies a web of intricate mechanical parts continually producing plant-like organic matter.
Stranger still, the mechanical parts in the forest react to the child. Tiny cogs spin into action every time they approach (track 5).
Eventually the child starts controlling and interacting with its environment and rebels against Ryu who only wants to protect it (track missing unfortunately, ran out of time).
Eventually, Blinny is calmed down by the mechanical automatons from the forest which slowly take it in as its form seemingly blends into the mechanical parts that make up the forest. She realizes Blinn was never hers. She reminisces on her past with little Blinn (track 7).
Ending credits (track 8).
Message from the artist:
whee
Theme:
How does it fit the theme?
I took the themes quite literally. She's running away from her village. The ominous looking forest made me think that it would be nice if all is not as it seems.
Link(s) of the submission on streaming services
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc4EzVGWPUA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-msRic2k1TM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83DVkDY47GI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhQP35ssQ8Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOvP50ZmLQM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhqvHeJ5w6E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c2lKxL7g2I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hav5gxV4QdQ
Or as a YT playlist for convenience:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc4EzVGWPUA&list=PLeGUX1BqFELf7A4AT_oEZ4brpK26-XzIf
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Comments
What a compelling plot of the game! Implementing an important portion of mechanics on the forest scene is very refreshing, and you really nailed to combine these 2 elements musically as well. Percussive synth tracks in Woodland automatons reminded me of clockwork tower level in Shovel Knight(should be the only reference I can think of for now).
I also love how your music illustrates very well your description, and It was very interesting to notice how the rhythmic layer gets more and more dense and present with the progression of the tracks. Very interesting to notice the last 2 tracks being more rhythmic than I would have imagined.
It's really a quality work, Great job!!
Thank you. I really appreciate the review.
Melodically I still have a lot to learn, so I tend to lean a bit more heavily into the sound design and rhythmic parts. I like that you picked that track, that's actually the one I ended up being happiest with out of the ones I submitted.
The first track was a really great mood setter, great stuff!
Thank you :)
Each track feels very intentional. i like the variety and aural texture in the tracks while still feeling part of the same world . first track was ambient and subtle . second track build up was nice, I could visualize the progression through the stage. i see the merging of mechanical with more earthy vibes which was well done. great job !! very cohesive !!
Thank you! I appreciate it. I'm glad it worked for you :)
Holy smoke! I love the first track subs. These drones morphing sounds are amazing. Jeeez, this echoing, and phasing things. Daaamn. I am really impressed. Did you used any complex VST for it? Or everything just Reaper internal engine? How did you make this morphing sub thing? Damn I love it so much, it sits on my shoulder and say: Aaron, you will fall in to this ambient goodness hole.
Track two, well done, I love the fills. I love the bass, and that goa sound. Oh god, I really love how to bass and this goa sound move together.
track three: Fricking genius. I love the sounds design of the synths. So smooth, so light. These percussions are well mixed. You did a perfect job with the mixing and mastering. If you have time please put these tracks to bandcamp, please! The instruments well placed, well panned!
Track four: Oh I love how the arps goes to higher pitch. Really smart! Holy smoke, really smart ambient from the depths. Oh god, how amazing the mixing. Hope you will be on the track list. These tracks are amazing.
Track five: This sound design, kills me. These are pianos with some bit crush and saturation, I think. Not bad. :D Yeah baby, cut off trick, and so smooth. Did I tell you you have to on the track list? :D
Track six: Ooooooh it sounds like the good old fashioned Hot Line Miami. I love that game. Oh I forgot to read the description. My attention grabbed. :D
Track synthwave: The sounds are really smart. I didn't know if you put the synths to the background it will be sounds more awesome! I love the drums. It's kinda my taste, but a bit more compression for the drumz could be killer, but I stfu, because it's amazing track!
Track awesomeness: You are doing the synthwave very well. Amazingly catchy. I thought the good synthwave has a really simple drum arrangement, but this is much better!
I am a really simple man. I love synthwave, I love subs. well done 13 out of 10. A+++, What can I give you? :D ** CLAPS ** CLAPS **
Thank you for the in-depth review man. I really appreciate it. :D
For this soundtrack I really mostly only used my own JSFX. But I've made them all availabe. You can find 'em all here if you want to take them for a spin: https://github.com/JoepVanlier/JSFX#installation-instructions
They're all free. Beware though, I can't guarantee that they'll be completely bug free, but if you find any bugs, let me know and I will at least try to fix them.
The ambient opener makes a lot of use of Swellotron in particular. It's an effect that takes two sound sources and turns them into ambient washes. It's basically kind of like a vocoder and reverb in one. It takes two inputs, computes their frequency dependent energy over time and adds that in a buffer (a reverb tank basically) to decay over time. It resynthesizes this with random phases which makes the sounds very wide (because left and right are not correlated). It's not the best for live use because it has quite a bit of latency, but it can be really nice for creating some audio washes for resampling later. I have a short tutorial of it here:
It can be a bit tricky to control, so I'd recommend just making a whole bunch of samples and then sculpting those more into the final thing that you want later. For the bass I used lava verb in its spectral mode. If you set the diffusion somewhere in the middle on a bassy note, you very quickly get that non-localized sound. Unfortunately, I don't have a tut for lava verb, but hopefully it's easy enough to figure out from the UI.The synths are typically Yutani in paraphonic mode. In most polysynths, you have a filter per voice. In paraphonic synths, all the voices go to the same filter. With non-linear filters, this creates a kind of unusual distortion which I quite like. It makes it sound kinda old.
The strange synth in track 5 is Yutani again with audio rate modulation on the filter at very high resonance. It's a particular filter with some non-linearity in its feedback path, which causes some unusual effects as you can hear. Personally, (also based on feedback received), I think I should've maybe made it slightly less harsh to blend in a little better.
I'll probably do some touch-ups on the tracks based on the feedback I've received and then maybe put an updated version here (and maybe on bandcamp). Unfortunately I had to work the week of the compo, so I was a little strapped for time trying to get it all finished. :D
Thanks again for the feedback :)
Holy baby Jesus, Did you create those effects? I am amazed. :D Sadly I am using Ableton live.
A lot of thanks for the details! Very smart sound design. I never tried to use a synth in paraphonic mode, maybe I will somehow. This Swellotron sounds great. I've never tried vocoder in that depth. It's a really good idea again. I learned a lot, thank you. :)
You should put the whole album on Bandcamp! It is worth it. :) Sadly I didn't have the time to participate in more depth. I had to do a lot of stuff, but happily, I had a track that I was able to push. Anyway, this is an amazing jam. Nice to meet amazing people like you. :)
I did. It's pretty fun working on your own effects. :)
Actually, if you ever feel like experimenting, there's a VST host you can use. You can find it here: https://github.com/jpcima/ysfx . ysfx behaves like a VST, but once it opens you can just open any JSFX and it should just work. It's still under active development though, so I don't know if there may be issues that still need solving there for specific DAWs.
And likewise! I had to work the week of the compo unfortunately, so I could only really do stuff in the evening hours. That said, it was a ton of fun.
Thanks a lot! I will check it out!
Through the Perimeter is one of the best ambient tracks I've heard so far. You have a great ear for pacing and space, which is so important in BGM for building atmosphere. When I played taiko we would call it "Ma", the space between the notes. Great use of Ma :)
I enjoyed the progression of energy throughout the soundtrack, going from the eerie forest ambience to the mechanical dance/electronic action. Really well done!
Thanks a lot for taking a listen and the kind words! :)
That's a really nice word and concept. Went down a nice wikipedia/google rabbit hole (with some really nice looking artworks) looking that up.
The atmosphere and sound choices are all solid, the bass synth that comes in around 0:34 was a really nice touch. You have a nice style and the tracks sound really nice. Sometimes the mix feels a little muddy in the stereo field (could probably be fixed with a mid/side eq) but I don’t think it detracts too much from the overall submission. I really like these tracks, great work!
Thank you for giving it a listen and taking the time to give me some advice. Really appreciate it!
I indeed find the stereo field part of mixing/producing very difficult. I mix exclusively on cans (small thin walled apartment) which probably doesn't help much. I think the headphones that I use are also quite forgiving when it comes to mud (I usually don't hear it until I listen to it on someone else's sound system). I should probably read up and/or watch some tutorials on how to get better at this, because I think it is one of the things that is holding me back.
Anyways, thanks again! Loved your submission btw!
I really liked the first part. It fits very well into the theme and has the same tension.
Thank you for listening to it.
Wow that's a lot of material, you've done a great job honestly.
I really like the mix of detuned pads and glitched percussion, all the tracks fit perfectly with what you say in the description and the production is great, a very consistent and deep sound. I especially enjoyed the last track, it made me want to run with that 90's beat!
Thanks! That means a lot!
I really like high energy music actually. But I rarely find myself in the right mindset to produce it. That's why I decided to go with a bit more of a mysterious feel than an actual run-focused soundtrack. Maybe next time!
Love the synths! My favorite track is Remember the good times, for sure.
Thank you! The synth sounds were produced with some homebrew synth code :D
Had a lot of fun in this compo to try and make a coherent soundtrack with it.
You nailed something I rarely hear, that cinematic dimension, that feeling a world is living beneath the music... maybe also because electronic music and synthesizers do tend to resonate with me and that I really like the story you told, with this mechanical forest and kid messiah thing. I feel that we might have approached the theme identically, with quite some work done on designing environmental sounds and music to blend it with.
Thank you! That's really kind of you to say. I do really like the process of coming up with a story and trying to write music to it. I feel it makes it a lot easier for me to come up with sound ideas.
And wow. I just listened to yours and ... incredible! Really impressive.
You've created a whole new world with this music. I like the repetitiveness in some of the songs, it works for the total atmosphere. Favourite: Woodland Machine Reveals Itself. Good transitions from sound <> melody
Thank you. Even though timing was pretty tight, since I only had a handful of evenings to work on them, I had a lot of fun working on these. Maybe I will revisit this world one day after the compo :)
I really like this, you managed to make something that sounds both futuristic and forest like! I like the story you envisioned too, nice job!
Thank you. Had a ton of fun.
Great soundtrack! I really like the vibe, certainly fit the theme very well! Nicely done!!
All riiiight, this sounds really futuristic I like it. Well mixed on everything good quality I like the synths pluck and pads going for some synthwave-esque from time to time. First song has the longest fade ever that I thought another track was starting after ! I liked all the tracks except Mechanical Forest although you nailed the "mechanical" sound to the track, I listen to 10 secs of the main "mechanical" synth and its aggressing my ear in the long term. Other than that well done.
Thank you!
Yeah, I was doubting about that. In retrospect I should've probably pushed that mechanical synth further down in volume and cut some of the more painful frequencies. Sorry about that!
Great job. There is a good use of motifs helping keep the whole thing together. I really like some of synths you used here, not to harsh but just right to give that mechanical feel.
Thank you! I was really wondering whether the synth on track 5 was too harsh. It definitely seemed on the border xD.
Random fun fact: most of the synths used were homebrew, which I hoped would give it a bit of a unique feel. Challenging but incredibly fun to make something in such a short time.
Track 1: I am immediately in love with this rumbly, bassy mix of electronics and strings. With absolutely no percussion, you convey with just one chord the urgency of the situation.
Track 2: The groovy bassline took me by surprise! Now I'm starting to get an idea of the identity of this soundtrack. The techno-beat in front of an eerie ambient background is a really cool and effective thing.
Track 3: if text-painting is a thing, what's the word for music-painting? Hearing the skittering percussion in the beginning of this track helps me envision the clanking of the forest automatons.
Track 4: this concept is very, very cool-- I am living for the idea, and hearing it unfold both in the description and in the music itself. This track is full of cool-sounding synths!
Track 5: It's incredible when a great concept and a great composer meet. This outlandish idea is put into music perfectly.
Track 6: This track feels a lot more empty than the others, and it's definitely an outlier... though I can't figure out what element of the story this correlates to?
Track 7: Ah, the tragic twist! This is yet another cool track with a really rich swath of synths. I did find the chords to be a little repetitive here.
Track 8: pretty upbeat ending! While, again, the chords are a little repetitive, when you think of it more as dance music all is forgiven. It's been so cool hearing this soundtrack evolve into a techno dream, mirroring the evolution of the forest into a machine.
You are a brilliant composer who has found their voice for sure. I'm not sure how you accomplished what you did, but it was beyond cool and I'm really impressed! Keep writing, bravo!
That's very kind of you to take the time to review them all.
I'm glad track 2 and 3 evoked the intended feeling. I think those are the ones I worked on longest (esp 3).
I was doubting whether to cut track 6. In retrospect I probably should have. It was supposed to be for after she returned the child to the forest (lonely feeling), but I don't think I managed to land the mood right and ended up with a track that was well, not that interesting.
I was also doubting about whether to make 5 a little less harsh. Some harshness was intended to make it sound mechanical, but I should've maybe toned down the volume on the mechanical synth a little.
And yeah, I should've really added a bit more variation to the chord progression in track 7. Well, maybe after the compo ends I can make some tweaks!
Overall, still had a blast working on these though! And thanks again!
I really dig the sounds here. Real chill foresty vibe. I think it fits the image perfectly.
Thank you :)
I love the ambient tones used throughout the soundtrack. You created a great sense of space that gives of an impression of how alone the character must feel on the journey. Great submission!
The 2nd, 3rd, and 6th tracks really give me some Risk of Rain 2 vibes, and the last two tracks give me short of the 80s/90s Sega Genasis type of a vibe! As well mixed with those cool-sounding synths this is ear candy!
Oh wow, thank you! I appreciate it.
A lot of the synths were homebrew. They have lots of saturation in their filterbanks, which hopefully gives them a bit of that old time 80s-like feeling.
bonus points for some very funny synth sounds!
Ghehe thanks! :)