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A jam submission

Connecting and ReflectingView project page

Submitted by gof256 — 14 hours, 54 minutes before the deadline
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Play soundtrack

Connecting and Reflecting's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Correlation to theme#3483.3843.688
Creativity#6112.6382.875
Impression#6112.4662.688
Overall#6122.5812.813
Quality#6342.2372.438
Composition#6342.1792.375

Ranked from 16 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Description
An action platformer, where you play as a therapist who uses a strange mirror to explore the metaphorical manifestation of their patient's minds. I used Online Sequencer to compose the tracks, and the project page has more of description of my approach.

Message from the artist
Thanks for listening! :)
I uploaded YouTube videos for DAW "proof of creation," please let me know if there are any issues.

Theme

Inside my world

How does it fit the theme?
You visit the minds of three characters who are seeking therapy for different reasons. An easily distractible person is represented by a maze, a closed off person is represented by a library with books that are difficult to read or understand, and a grieving person is represented by a ship lost at sea amongst snow and drifting ice.

Link(s) of the submission on streaming services
https://soundcloud.com/gof256/sets/connecting-and-reflecting?si=27d1316f48dd49dc805e03aace0d2531&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Number of tracks
8

Genre

Orchestral
Electronic

Soundtrack use permission

Yes (CC BY)

Any project

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Comments

Submitted (1 edit)

Heh... It was a lot of fun)

Thanks!

Submitted

I like the opposition between simple electronic music and more dense orchestrations! Nice submission!

Submitted

I love that you dove into the minds of three separate characters! Taking the theme to a new level! 8 tracks for the jam is something to be proud of as well.

Outside of some repetitive structure in the tracks, which I've seen others mention, I'd recommend taking a closer look at your mix! The bass kind of swallows some of the other instruments at times.

"Bitter Cold" is one I gravitate towards naturally (my entire submission was based on the cold lol), but "Alone and Adrift" I think has the most potential of all of them, given some more dynamics and a couple extra parts thrown in there! 

Overall, really nice submission. Nice work!

Submitted

Cool stuff! I agree that it gets a little repetitive, especially in the basslines. I liked Bitter Cold a lot especially!

Submitted

I like the vibe! There is some repetition as others have noted, but 8 tracks in a week is an amazing achievement. Great work!

Submitted

I like your explanation of some of the minds for you to explore!

Submitted

I love the idea for this one, and I think the music really creates the vibe of the strange mirror and reflects each of the characters' troubles and personality. It's really cool that you made this in online sequencer, it's so creative for a software that uses quite simple sounds! I loved "Mysterious Mirror", just a little piece but sounds so cool! And "Alone and Adrift" is beautiful, I didn't know online sequencer could make something like that. 

Similar to what Jon Odate said below, I would have loved to hear Angie's theme develop into a B and C section, but of course with time constraints it's understandable to stick to the A section! 

The idea for the theme and the music you've written is so creative, following Cloud's suggestion below, I think you'd be able to make some fantastic stuff with a DAW like Reaper. Keep it up!

Submitted(+1)

I enjoyed the theme of your game. It's pretty cute and fun. I don't think my comments will be super different to the ones that have already been posted, but adding some more variety to the tracks would definitely boost the effectiveness of your OST a lot. As it stands, a lot of them really only have one section. Taking some time to develop the songs more and give them some contrasting sections would keep your ears from getting tired as the songs loop. Manipulating the basslines in each song would also do wonders as the lines do get drawn out too much. I do you think you have a good base to work off of though, and the overall soundtrack is pretty cohesive. 

I also wanna commend you for doing all your compositions in an online sequencer. It seems very limiting and it takes a lot of effort to push through those kinds of limitations. I don't know about your home setup at all, but if you can, I believe you can use Reaper for free forever *technically*, but nevertheless the license is very cheap if you wanted to invest. Pair that with endless free VSTs online and you can get a pretty good setup going for free/cheap, which would aid a lot in your compositional tools.  

Overall, you made some solid music in a short time frame though and that's a net positive for everyone. Thank you for the entry!

Developer

Thanks! Honestly, online sequencer felt pretty intuitive and easy to use, but of course my frame of comparison is garage band on a small touch screen, so I'll take a look at Reaper

Submitted (2 edits) (+1)

Just a couple pointers but I think you definitely need to focus on a couple things for next time. 1 being that you need to put a lot more variety into each track. 

Think about the OG Super Mario Bros theme. The whole theme is essentially about 1:14 but there are at least four parts (A theme, B Theme, C and D) to that one track. Especially with videogame music you don't want it to appear to be too repetitive because that music of course is going to have to loop a lot.


So just to keep it simple, while you want it to loop you'll want to have some variations (Add a beat, add another layer). Find some way to change it up to keep it interesting! Hope this helps for next time! :)

Developer(+1)

I appreciate it, thanks for listening!

Submitted(+1)

This comment is really gonna show my “Canadian who grew up in the early aughts”-iness but my initial reaction to your description was that the plot reminds me of a show that used to be on CBC called Being Erica, about a woman whose therapist basically sends her to these alternate realities where she can see how her actions would have affected her world and those around her. Anyway that’s a tangent so let me talk about ur music now!

I totally understand the desire to create a whole world for these jams (I’ve definitely been on the receiving end of the “develop the material you have instead of making more” critique!) but I think you could have cut back on the number of tracks to focus a bit more on some of the others. You have some really good material already, a bit more work into a few of them would have given you even better results. I notice your use of motifs from track to track, along with your orchestration, do give it a consistent feel! The cohesion between tracks is there, just a bit more focus on developing those motifs would have bumped this up to the next level!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the feedback! I'll keep it in mind for my approach next time