The Cold Realm Within: The mallet instruments and plucked strings convey a sense of cold in your environment. Contrary to the following track, this track doesn’t feel solitary and it seems to convey the small town, but even though it’s abandoned, somehow there is something else there.

Alone: The use of high piano, strings, and mallets without a foundational bass layer holding it up the whole time is really great musical imagery for loneliness in my opinion. It’s like an upside-down pyramid, where there is significant instability, which is kind of how one’s mental state feels when they experience significant loneliness.

Snow Buried Village: The light and bouncy feel of this track seems to contrast with the loneliness from the previous track. This maybe is conveying an early area in the game where the main character may be fairly defenseless, but the area feels safe enough to explore.

Footprints in the Drifts: The mallets you are using are getting lower in pitch and darker in timbre which I think is a nice artistic choice as the main character is climbing up the mountain. 

Shades on the Trail: The pulsing strings with syncopated war drums and a march-like snare is a formula for a Fire Emblem (or other JRPG) battle track and you created one here that I would absolutely believe you if you told me it came from a big game like that!

Failure: The i-bVII-i cadence works very nicely in this desolate sounding sequence for a game over theme. Creative idea to include this!

To Claim Oneself: The cello and double bass ostinato that comes in part way is so great at creating tension with the pulsing motion and straying from the tonic by a half step before coming back. I’m a fan of the use of choir to create an elevated heroic theme.

End of Self Discovery: The story comes full circle. With the boss absorbed now, it feels like there was a lot that had happened, but some of the same coldness still exists. Similar to Snow Buried Village, there is a sense of lightness in this track, but it also has a trudging feel as well, as if maybe there is another mountain still left to climb.

Overall: I think your game idea is a creative interpretation of the theme and you executed the cold-realm vibes very nicely! Great use of strings, mallets, choir, and percussion throughout to aurally describe the scene and the story. Well done and thank you for sharing!

Love the story you've created, and the tracks work as one perfectly! Awesome!!

I love the story. The music portrays this inner journey quite well. :) Nicely melanchonic but not too dark...

I really enjoyed the trip! Really like the vibes, I felt the cold of the mountain with sounds you use! I really like Footsprints in the Drifts, it remings me to Final fantasy X and it fits really well for me on a exploring section.

Also I really like To claim oneself, that strings staccatos sounded really well for me.

Congrats! Definitely one of my favourites entries!

This is gonna be a doozy of a review as a heads up (all good things btw! dont worry.)

Started off by reading your story that you paired along with this, because the artwork you selected was really striking, and I'm going to be entirely honest when I say the tone I expected from this soundtrack was going to be a lot darker in nature, but was pleasantly surprised to hear a lot more of an upbeatish sound, especially through the first 4 songs. I don't know if you have heard of Slime Rancher, but this reminds me a TON of that! Absolutely check it out because if you don't already know it I think it would really help you develop these ideas even more, and seems to naturally mesh with your orchestral writing style.

I think something that surprised me a lot was to do with the actual arrangement part of this, based on the other media you shared I felt this would be darker as i mentioned and I instead got pretty different vibes from it, and after reading your explanation in the discord it really helped me nail down a bit of what I think is happening here. If you listen to the slime rancher soundtrack (going to highlight ember valley, moss blanket) you will hear they sound super playful, and I would argue one of the main proponents behind this is the arrangement and orchestration of it all. Both of these songs are characterized in different ways through their lighter and more spaced out melody ideas, with very little solid strong underlying chords which makes them feel very bouncy, and especially in ember valley these rich and full swells come in to create intrigue and awe for the listener.

I think where things got lost in translation for me is that you do a lot of similar things to the slime rancher soundtrack, but with the intent for different results. Your writing is absolutely gorgeous don't get me wrong, I'm going to be transparent and say i had this at a 4 star in every category save for quality and impression which were 5s because technically your work is amazing. The more cognitive dissonance for me stems from the fact that you have these more emotional and introspective ideas, set over a comparatively thin orchestration, that leaves a lot of the space that creates the bouncy feel that the two songs ive mentioned so far have, especially when paired with the pizzicato strings and percussion elements. This in turn makes a song that can have these incredible questioning and sorrowful melodies have a maybe on edge but also playful feel. I think this is best illustrated in Footprints in the drifts, where the emphasis on percussion and the space sometimes separate from the rest of the harmonic ideas creates a more bouncy sense, which I think tends to evoke adventure and wonder.

Something I think you could do while also sticking to your ideas because you do them so well is experiment with those more fuller sounds and more constantly present harmonic ideas to help reinforce the emotions behind the songs you are making. This is where im going to reference Ancient Ruins more because while still adding some of those elements that you have in your songs that really make you feel like you are trekking up this mountain (the moving percussion and plucked string basses), the Ancient Ruins theme still has that distinct feeling of introspection, and almost a sense of timelessness and loss in it. I think one of the driving factors in this is the use of a much more constant harmony, note the evolving texture of the string chords that adapt to the melody and really match that emotion, going higher up in the more playful parts but not afraid to sit on the lower end in the richness of the cellos when the melody gets darker (like the descending melody line at 0:55). I would recommend finding the Ancient Ruins Night theme as well if you want to really hear how this theme gets more darker and has an entirely different emotional feel just based on the context.

So this is a very long winded way of saying, experiment with the thickness of your ensemble! Diving more into the middle and low ends to really solidify the more haunting harmonies you do have present in here in the audience's ear will help to draw out that emotion as much as you can, think again about the grand swells in the ember valley theme! The thing about the  constant moving parts that you have throughout these songs is that the audience will often wonder why everything is moving. Is it to create confusion? Keep you upbeat? Maybe something exciting is happening? But without that through line sometimes these complicated ideas can get a little bit lost in translation, which is such a shame because you have such great ideas here, and even if I didn't interpret them the way you had intended I really want to make sure you know that! I do actually think you got on the right track to doing what im talking about here in your more tense themes like Shades on the Trail, To Claim Oneself, and Alone. The simple, higher ended string chords create a very tense feeling in that song, and the dissonances help sell that even more! The other events happening around it help to create a feeling as if the character is pacing back and forth, not sure where to go next, and I think of the first four songs this was the one I was able to connect to your story the most with how you intended it.

Overall though, really incredible work. I know this seems like I had a lot of negative things to say, but its honestly because your story and composition style really really spoke to me and I wanted to figure out a bit more why I felt the way I did, and why that might not exactly line up with what you were thinking. I Hope that laying out my thoughts like this help you come up with more ways to approach your writing and conveying that artistic intent, while still making more really incredible works, because you have a gift and it shows in this submission!

Really good work! It's incredible how you get such a polished work in so little time. Looking forward to listening to more of your work.

This is really high quality work! The choice of instruments are so fitting! I love it! 

very high quality work, and so different though in the same style.

Great soundtrack! I loved the drama in "Shades on the Trail" and "To Claim Oneself" (LOVE the organ at the start) and the vibes of "Snow Buried Village", very different atmospheres but both executed perfectly, and they fit so well in the progression of the soundtrack.

Massive output for the jam duration! 

Lovely orchestral timbres you used here with a large amount of diversity between tracks.

Orchestral percussion was on point too. 

Favorite Track: To Claim Oneself

Hey awesome job on this!! I love your musical decisions. It really feels like a tailored vibe specific to the story. A lot of variety with these tracks that all really fit.  I especially love the progression from 'Shades of the Trail' to 'To Claim Oneself'. Both excellent battle themes, but you can feel the stakes rise in the second one. Felt like the music itself is telling that story, which can be hard to match up. Really impressed that you got this in a couple days. Keep it up!! :D

Wow, this entire soundtrack is arranged beautifully. Every track fits really well within your game and the composition is pure class. It's wild to me how you were able to produce so many tracks within the given timeframe. Definitely one of my favorites to listen to so far!

Really nice composition, you can listen to the whole album in one go and its all super coherent, the vibe is very gentle and can get intense if need be, well done, good arrangement and mix :)

Always impressed by how people can make so many tracks that are that good in this relatively short timeframe, outstanding work!

Thats really chill at the start and well mixed, i love the consistency in instrumentation, it create its own universe :)

I must say it lack a bit of dynamics to get a better impact! Claim oneself was a blast and will i think benefit a lot of dynamic change.

Overall great consistency enjoyed it ^^

Good OST and interesting story with interesting turns)
Percussion maybe little bit hursh, but overall album is nice to listen to!

Revisted this to listen again and I realized I forgot to leave a comment D:

I love these types of soundtracks! Heavily reminds me of my early FFIV days and I think you nailed it as a whole OST.  You replicated the feeling of "cold/bitterness" pretty well with your sound choices and instrumentation (esp. marimba arrangement).  I personally would've used drones like LABS Frozen Strings, but that's mostly due to my laziness (and because it says frozen). The whole OST feels really thought out in all categories, really enjoyed how your arrangements followed a thought-out narrative in all of the tracks.  

Favorite track has to be  Shades on the Trail, I love how upbeat it is and the you arranged the strings fits very splendidly! Really enjoyed this entry!

Very good ost, reminds me a bit of high fantasy soundtracks for CRPGs, and has a gorgeous atmosphere

I really like the variety in your OST! You explored various different types of tracks you'd find in a soundtrack, and you maintained a cohesive sound palette throughout all of them. Nice!