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Yellow-Eyed Child's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Correlation to theme | #2 | 4.414 | 4.414 |
| Overall | #64 | 3.703 | 3.703 |
| Composition | #75 | 3.690 | 3.690 |
| Creativity | #87 | 3.690 | 3.690 |
| Impression | #99 | 3.448 | 3.448 |
| Quality | #136 | 3.276 | 3.276 |
Ranked from 29 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Description
We imagined a game in which a newborn named Helios is chosen to be sacrificed to the gods because of his unique bright yellow eyes. His sister Selene can’t accept that and takes him away and the soundtrack follows them on their journey in the forest surrounding the village.
The soundtrack was composed entirely by @LightBluePianist with minor suggestions from @Jackaljkdan on Waveform by playing a digital keyboard and playing a Sonic Energy Drum live, recorded and edited with Audacity. Playing this drum was really fun, I hope you enjoy!
The image was made with Gimp editing the following images:
https://pixabay.com/vectors/forest-winter-tree-landscape-4824761/
https://pixabay.com/vectors/eye-look-iris-simple-old-runes-1292934/
The font is Shadows Into Light by Kimberly Geswein:
https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Shadows+Into+Light
Here follows the complete story of the game:
A newborn named Helios is chosen to be sacrificed to the gods because of his unique bright yellow eyes. The village believes that the sacrifice of something so precious will surely grant them the favor they need in these times of hardship. The parents respect the traditions and accept the fate of their child, but his sister Selene cannot and takes him away with her in the nearby forest without anyone noticing.
While the forest looks peaceful and welcoming, it hides secrets and dangers. Selene wanders until she finds an old hermit that hears her story and decides to help her. He becomes a mentor for her and teaches Selene how to survive in the wilderness and how to fight. Meanwhile the warriors of the village are on their tracks, so they cannot stay in one place too long.
Eventually, the warriors find them and a conflict ensues. Selene and the hermit are bested while Helios cries. Once the warriors try to reach for him however, he looks at them with his bright yellow eyes and unleashes a great shockwave of energy. The warriors are knocked unconscious and the protagonists are able to escape.
After what happened Selene decides to leave the hermit and travel far away, to find a place where she and Helios can start a new life. Before they leave, the hermit performs a ritual initiation on Selene.
Message from the artist:
We have chosen the names of the brothers because of their meaning in Greek, sun (Helios) and moon (Selene). The game idea was conceived by @Jackaljkdan, who also created the cover image.
Theme:
How does it fit the theme?
The music tries to capture the mood of both the theme image and text. It’s evocative of and onomatopoeic with respect to the forest environment depicted in the theme image. The game and story are centered around both the picture and prompt as well and the soundtrack closely follows our story.
The main theme track is meant to represent the village during a festivity. The music gets darker when the elders decide that the sacrifice must be made.
Link(s) of the submission on streaming services
https://soundcloud.com/user-815121713/sets/yellow-eyed-child
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Comments
Really great choice of instrumentation. I feel like I'm transported to a windy cliffside somewhere in Greece. I'm especially captivated by your ambient tracks. Beautiful blend of pads, winds, arpeggiated stuff. Really pleasant. There's also something about the organic and dry sounding drum that I like too in Training and Conflict. Perhaps it's because you actually recorded a real drum or didn't quantize the midi and the rhythms have a live feeling. Either way, great job overall!
P.S. I think our stories ended up being very similar!
Thank you very much for listening and for your comment! I like live recordings and I always play my digital keyboard. I recently bought this wonderful sonic energy drum and I spent a lot of time playing it :)
I love how relaxing every piece feels! I especially enjoyed the melody of Runaway, it's very unique and fun!
Thank you very much for listening!
Very warm cohesive soundtrack! Loved the transitions in Hermit especially!
Thank you!
Thank you very much for listening!
I enjoy the story and the peaceful, dreamy feel of the tracks, nice work!
Thanks!
Thank you very much for listening!
Really nice diversity of sounds between and within tracks while still staying faithful to the overall theme. My favorite is the Hermit theme. This is simply beautiful!
Thank you very much!
Nice compo, fits well the theme and every tracks seems to fit with each other, the only thing I would work on is the mix is very muddy, its most of the time only in the mid-range, some balance with instrumentations and range could change the tone and make it more enjoyable imo. Good job though.
Thank you very much for listening and for your feedback! I'm working on improving the quality of the sounds and mixes
The sacrifice mention in your theme explanation quickly got my attention - big stakes indeed. Pleasingly, the tracks matched my attention - they are clean and concise, and each communicate their part of the story. One track that stood out for me was "Training" - I could almost picture the montage as it played.
Thank you very much!
i get a lot of earthy calming energy from the tracks. sounds windy ,this soundtrack feels like it’s outside if that makes sense . I think the tracks needed a bit more differentiation but it did contribute to how cohesive the album felt. I thought the effects on the wind instrument were a little confusing because it seemed like there was a degradation effect on it but it was intended to sound more natural in the mix. My favorite track was Initiation. Great job!
Thank you for listening ane for your feedback :)
Really nice story and soundtrack! The story you wrote does a great job of setting the stage for the music. My favorite tracks are Yellow-Eyed Child and The Hermit
Thank you very much!
Nice forest-like vibes! Very nice ambience and instrumentation throughout.
Thanks!
Thank you very much!
Great work! Just some random thoughts I jotted down while listening.
I really like the melodies on display here. My favourite is probably The Hermit's theme. Here I really liked the small hammering sound you started with, the lovely guitar and the flute. This track has a really nice feel to me. I can just imagining visiting this hermit somewhere on his cloudy vista. I also feel that the verby sound really worked well here because the notes were spaced out quite well.
Regarding Runaway and the Main theme. I enjoyed the theme in both of them, but I felt that sometimes the reverb made it a bit more difficult for me to hear all the lovely things that are happening. It might help to automate the reverb in places. Dial it down a little when it gets busy (more dry, less wet signal) and back up when it's quiet. Or push the reverb back a little somehow. It still sounded great though!
In Yellow Eyed Child the melody itself was a bit more spartan, which allowed to reverb to breathe more.
Training started very relaxing. In this one, I felt that the reverb addded an almost dreamy quality. One that I quite liked actually. Then, once the strings kick in, it felt like it was kicking into a higher gear with enough energy to propell a game forward. Very nice!
With Conflict I felt that all we trained for. All the people we met, we're all leading up to this moment. It felt like it was a bossfight.
Parting ways was gorgeous.
Thank you for your thorough feedback, we appreciate the advice and will try to do better!
Thank you very much for listening and for your feedback!
I'm really enjoying this soundtrack - I love the polyrhythms in Conflict!
Thank you very much!
First and foremost, no stress about this mix, even if it's not perfect. I am more impressed by the use of live instrumentalists than anything! You redeem yourselves with an incredibly rich story, beautiful atmospheric music, and a lovely closing track that was one of my favorites of all the 30 soundtracks I've listened to so far :)
My only advice, moving forward, is that a tighter mix with less reverb will benefit you! Instruments with more attack will sound less loose and delayed. Other than that, the music itself is quite beautiful and this is very well done! Keep writing!
Thank you for your feedback! We still have a lot to learn, we will try to get better and greatly appreaciate your advice!
Nice work. I really like the overall sound and the compositions are good. When the drum comes in, it can get a bit rough just because of mixing live recordings with MIDI instruments can be a bit tricky, but it's overall very well made.
Thank you! It was tricky indeed, definitely wasn't perfect but we thought it sounded good enough anyway.
I like the Hermit's theme a lot!
Thanks <3
A little messy at times but it gets the mood across pretty well!
Thank you! We would really appreciate if you could be more specific so we can try to improve next time!
Interlude gets a little all over the place with all the instruments kinda doing their own thing I feel, and I swear there was a part in like the main theme which felt like it had the piano doing too much but I can't seem to find it right now.
I feel like the strings you're using might also have too much attack and not enough release.
But overall it's pretty good, so good job
love it, really nostalgic feeling on every track!
Thanks!
Great job! I love how your story and music really fit the themes! Training is probably my favorite!
Thank you!
How soothing and mysterious this sounds! Enjoyed listening to this a lot :).
Thanks, glad you enjoyed :)
Thank you very much!