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HARUKA's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Composition | #13 | 4.389 | 4.389 |
| Overall | #38 | 4.056 | 4.056 |
| Impression | #46 | 4.028 | 4.028 |
| Creativity | #82 | 3.944 | 3.944 |
| Quality | #86 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Correlation to theme | #109 | 3.917 | 3.917 |
Ranked from 36 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Description
The Game:
Imagine the worlds from Hayao Miyazaki's anime, but in the form of a game. The main character, a girl named Haruka, finds herself in such a world.
The game will take her through several main locations (spirit forest, sea, mountains, cloud kingdom). In each location, she will have to complete several quests in order to pass on.
The gameplay and graphics are similar to games like Genshin Impact and Sky: Children of the Light.
The game is mostly linear.
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Music:
I was mostly inspired by anime`s and some game`s (Genshin Impact and Sky: Children of the Light) music. To make it sound more "japaneese", I used some traditional instruments, such as koto, taiko and flute.
Most of the soundtracks are orchestral. During this project I used Abletone Live 12.
1. "Haruka`s Waltz"
The game has just begun. Haruka finds herself in a large flower meadow and explores the place. One of the main themes of the game sounds.
2. "Dark Ceremony"
Night. Haruka enters the Forest of Spirits and witnesses a mysterious ceremony. The girl has to free a dragon that has become a prisoner of the spirits, without being seen by anyone.
Inspired by traditional japaneese music.
3. "Catching Rabbits"
At the edge of the forest, Haruka meets a rabbit mother whose rabbit children have run away. Haruka decides to help her catch and bring them back home. In a limited time the player has to collect all the rabbits :)
The track was made in the last 4 hours of the Jam... Really wanted to include it.
4. "Playful Waves"
After the forest, Haruka comes to the sea, where she has to learn how to swim and catch a big magical but harmful carp to go further.
With the music, I tried to capture the waves of the sea as best as I could, playing with the rhythm patterns. Here I was inspired by the picture theme of the Jam.
5. "Temple"
The girl's path lies through the mountains. She stumbles upon an abandoned temple where she needs to solve puzzles to find her way further.
6. "Up To The Clouds"
Haruka climbs higher and higher and as the fog clears, the girl sees the Cloud Kingdom.
The theme of clouds plays (second part of the track)
7. "First Fly"
The girl's goal in the Cloud Kingdom is to learn to fly. I tried to write music that sounds like flying.
As in the "Playful Waves", I experimented with a rhythm, which reminds me a wind`s blowing.
8. "Escape To Reality"
Haruka realizes that she is being sucked into this world and needs to get out of it as soon as possible. The player needs to control the girl's flight to get back. This track accompanies this process.
Here you can notice that the main themes of the different locations are played in reverse order, as we move towards the beginning of our journey. First the clouds theme is played, then, the sea. Here (planned cutscene) Haruka starts to fall, but at the last moment she is picked up by the dragon she saved in the forest and carried forward (the triumphant theme from the waltz sounds).
9. "Kakusei" ( eng. "Awakening" )
Haruka wakes up in a school classroom. Her teacher comes up to her and says (in Japanese):
- Haruka! Are you sleeping in class again? Wake up!
The girl realizes that it was all a dream, in which she was traveling through worlds from her fantasies.
This is the end of the game.
Message from the artist
Many thanks for opportunity to participate, it was really fun and I have good experience. I wish you good luck and thanks to everyone who listens to my work! Would appreciate any feedback from you, guys!
Theme
How does it fit the theme?
At the end of the game, Haruka wakes up at school. It turned out that it was all a dream, and the world she was in was her own, inner fantasy world.
The picture theme is not the main theme of the whole game, but it inspired me to create the track "Playful Waves".
Link(s) of the submission on streaming services
https://soundcloud.com/tommy_max_brian/sets/haruka?si=aeae6dc3da4f4c87ba134ef556879ec7&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Number of tracks9
Genre
Soundtrack use permission
Any non-commercial project
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Comments
Oh my! Yes Ghibli! Perfect inspiration. Such great movies and my did you get the right atmosphere! Great job, I really love them and the story behind your game. The music is really good. You really did get the Japanese feel and vibe in your songs as well. They really fit the theme very well.
💕💕💕
Extremely expressive, and I love the use of traditional instruments! One of the best entries that I've listened to so far.
*sending u waves of gratitude*
I loved the instrumentals so much in this track, the use of different instruments that fit the Japanese setting while keeping the fantasy elements. the Escape to Reality song is absolutely peak with it feeling like a climatic scene in a ghibli film.
Now about the protagonist Haruka, I don't know if you are inspired by the game or not but the character design for it looks so uncanny for the Touhou Project's main protagonist Reimu Hakurei if not for the red ribbon on her head:
I know its not intentional since Touhou's style goes entire different than yours but I'm just here to point that out since no one was talking about it, just saying.
thanx!
i’ve never heard about Touhou Project, but yeah, Haruka really looks similar wow. Is it worth playing?
No, unless you're into bullet hells and shoot'em ups like in Space Invaders, except absolutely harder.
The Touhou Project is an ongoing franchise that started as early as 1996. It's one of those arcade games you see where they get praised for its absurd difficulty and high scores. The game was created by one guy and managed to spawn in one of the biggest and loyal fanbases in the internet despite the gameplay being absurdly difficult and the Artstyle being very lacking.
One defining feature of Touhou is the music being one of the best kind of music for a game that mostly looks like this:
the songs itself are particularly high quality and mostly absolute bangers, here's an example for one of the theme song of the final boss in one of the more recent release 4 years ago:
Not only the songs in the main game is amazing, the remixes of every song by the fans is amazing. The amount of remixes for the music on this franchise is spectacular to quote a webpage (source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/AwesomeMusic/TouhouProject):
"To put the sheer number of remix CDs in perspective, there is a torrent which weighs over one terabyte (specifically 1.8 TB or 1,817,738,246,162 bytes) of over 3000 Touhou remixes, and that only includes the ones that the (English-speaking) maintainers of the torrent have added. It would take over a decade to download it all, and it's getting bigger as more remixes come around."
How is this even possible in a week. You just bumped people out of my top 5 this is amazing! Escape to Reality is one of the most amazing tracks I have heard in this jam. You took my breath away!
thank you very much, Kevin!
btw i now understand that you are the author of Tsuya, the first work that i liked when i started listening to other’s entries. you made a great(!!!) job too, it sounds really like from a dramatic japaneese movie. so unique vibe
I hadn't listened to your entry up till now, I'm happy someone of your caliber liked my first composition ever basically ahaha.
Thank you so much for the kind words!
Loved your arrangements! I can hear a lot of east asian influence in the melody construction + instrument sections. A lot of careful section choices made the melody flow from sections to sections really nicely. I was also a big fan of your ethnic instrument use in certain tracks, especially in setting smaller scenes. Small bit of feedback was that they felt segmented from the traditional orchestra compositions (in ghibli-esque style), and I would've loved if one of the larger tracks such as Haruka's Waltz andEscape to Reality also included them in the mix, it would've brought it to a whole other level! Other than that, really great compositions!
hii Don Gi and thank you very much for your words!
actually, want to work further on this project and compose more music, so, yeah, definitely should marry them together. it should sound interesting!
looking forward to it :D
Amazing compositions! Very high level! I really like Haruka's waltz I was getting a lot of studio ghibli vibes from it. Great work!
thank you very much!!!
Nice orchestration and all is well written! Would love to hear real instruments play it!
Wow "Escape to Reality" is an absolute banger!
thanks! i wish i could too :c
In september, I go for one year in Japan, I hope to learn a bit about the Japanese music there!
wooow, where are u going? or will visit different cities?
I do 3/4 month in Tokyo and then move in other cities I think! I've been preparing this trip for so long, I don't realize it's like, in less than two months!
so cool, wish you amazing trip and forever memories!
ty <3
Really cute and beautiful! Can definitely see the influence, more strongly towards Miyazaki with the more lighthearted and orchestral parts and a hard Inazuma Genshin taste with the Japanese centered tracks. I think some tracks need to be mixed more evenly or a bit louder, but the panning that you have right now for all your tracks are fine! I haven't heard of Sky: Children of the Light so I will definitely check that out!
thank you for comment!
going to buy monitors soon and revise all the mix, so want to ask, if you can explain a lil bit (if have time ofc) more about loudness. you mean put some more lufs? i did -14 as for spotify and etc. should i increase it or just use some maximizers/compressors (but here i’m afraid everything could sound like there is no air).
This is an amazing entry. Absolutely gorgeous instrumentation and an OST I could listen to on repeat (and I will after the jam is over!)
Escape to Reality gave me the same feeling as hearing pieces of the Final Fantasy 10 soundtrack for the first time. Excellent work!!
ooooh, i’m a fan of FF music and also was inspired by it, but not a lot, so didn’t think should mention it. however, happy to hear that you have this association :)
Really good! Love the aim for more japanese harmony themes pieces and then the change to western harmonies in Up to the Clouds. Your music tells the story well, great job! :)
EDIT: Forgot to mention that I am blown away by the amount of composition and orchestration you have done in a week, wow!
yeah, had to experiment a lot with harmonies here. thank you!
Beautiful album and story! Perfect choice of instruments and great composition. That`s very nice journey)
Дякую)
Wow, what a beautiful OST! I agree with what others say about MIDI-like piano, but otherwise, these orchestrations had me completely immersed in the world from the very first track. Most of the instruments sound great, and the production is solid as a whole, but the actual composition work is great. I love this! :D
thank you very much for your kind words :)
Loved the Japanese influences in this. You cited Genshin Impact as inspiration and I could've seen your OST in the game, it's great work. There's texture in Temple, it was a very pleasant listen. Enjoyed Escape To Reality's feeling of floating in the sky. Goes hard at 1:25. Appreciated the school bell and the teacher's voice on Kakusei, it's the sort of nice flavor to have and adds up to the personality of the work. Great job!
really glad that you liked it and that you feel what i wanted to show!! thank you
From start to finish I love it. Excellent music!!
"Dark Ceremony" catch my ears from the first note. Reminds music that I enjoyed a lot, like Samurai Shodown main theme or even Nioh menu screen.
"Escape To Reality" it's very expressive and the orchestra with the piano drawing fast background lines reach the Ghensin Impact mood and atmosphere really, really well.
hi!
was very happy to read your comment. thank you!
Absolutely nailed the anime vibe, the composition is exceptionnal, very very well written if only you could record with real strings instrument this would sound gorgeous. I was scared the piano playing would sound too "MIDI" at first but no i'm just too picky on those, the whole arrangement made me forget everything, well paced, coherent. Beautiful work.
arigato!!!
ooh…. if only I could access real orchestra….. it would be really cool
Exceptional work. My only "gripe" as a pianist is that the piano had that midi sound. But my ear is really sensitive to that because I play the piano.
This is very well composed, and it all fits together very nicely. It's a very, very strong entry. Good work! :)
i really appreciate your words and can`t stop to listen to your entry, which touched my soul sooo much.
agree with you piano comment. unfortunatelly, didnt have good piano libaries and my comp was dying, so i had to work just with what i have.
by the way, if not a secret, what libraries/vsts did you use in your project? im really interested in both good piano and theese nordic strings.
Addictive Keys by XLN Audio. I then postprocessed through Ozone 9 Elements for a nice stereo enhancement, then the reverb I use, which is my favorite, is Neoverb. I actually have two reverbs set to different sizes, to emulate the effect of a natural space a bit more, one smaller reverb to emulate local acoustics, and a longer one to capture that longer sound.
I appreciate your lovely comment. Reaching another's soul with my own is my main goal as an artist, and the fact that it sounds like I did has really made my day.
Dark Ceremony was by far my favorite track I have listened to in the submissions so far!!
Dark Ceremony was by far my favorite track I have listened to in the submissions so far!!
Dark Ceremony was by far my favorite track I have listened to in the submissions so far!!
thank you! tried to make this dark japaneese vibe :)
This is a really nice submission, loved your instrumentation choices! Each track feels like they could fit to where you described they would go. Track 9's build up and release is great too, probably my favourite in the whole soundtrack, and 10 using that alarm sound to show it was a dream was a nice touch too.
Not super related but if you weren't planning on keeping strictly to Japanese instruments I'd recommend replacing some of the tracks strings/ woodwinds with either and erhu or dizi, really expressive instruments that'd fit perfectly in this kind of soundtrack
heeey thank you very much for nice words!
I was planning to download some more national instruments, but my old laptop was already dying from everything :( well, and not all the tracks can fit them in, of course. if I finish it, I'll definitely check out some libraries