Description
Orchestral/cinematic piece, with touches of electronic sounds here and there. Runtime of 5:23. Made in Logic Pro with the help of the BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover plugin.

Some story: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dLbl3v3gWn-ixz793TSDkvG97k4VNAcWaEKp_Df4mEc/edit?usp=sharing

'Delphinium' is an open-world survival action where you play as a young human girl and her Guardian unit. Think Death Stranding 1's explorative freedom meets Breath of the Wild's combat and survival. You'll scavenge a fallen Earth for energy, food, and flowers, all while trying to entertain a growing human and decorating your underground Shelter while you're waiting out a surface sandstorm.

While exploring, you'll come across ancient mechs reawakened by the meteorites that wiped out society, meteor-borne aliens struggling as hard as you are to get by amongst the collapsed skyscrapers, and even fellow human beings. You might fight them. You might even kill them. None of it matters as long as the both of you stay together and survive together.

Delphinium can't follow you if she can't see you. You'll lose control over the other character if direct line of sight is lost during a battle. Your primary objective then shifts to simply tracking the other character down, lest they perish out of your individualism.

It's a simple day-to-day: find supplies, pick flowers, protect Delphinium. Find supplies, explore collapsed cities, protect Delphinium. Find supplies, watch the sandstorm on the horizon, return to the abandoned Shelter before the sandstorm takes you both.

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You can read a better explanation of what happened over on the itch page! TL;DR; I couldn't create the pieces that would best convey the theme of 'Close To Me'. I lost myself in composing a main theme for these two lovely characters. I promise I gave the jam theme some thought, and that would reflect in gameplay as the player characters having to stay within visual range of each other. The music would immediately change in tone if line of sight was broken, changing to become more panicked and strongly emphasizing a certain character's motif as they try to search for their partner. You can hear the two ideas I came up with in 'Our Garden' and 'Concrete Sandcastles' without the separation context.

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The first and only submission track (Our Garden) is a main theme that encompasses most of the intended motifs I wanted to include in the full soundtrack. Delphinium's motif (the largest orchestrated section at the back half of the song) was initially written to be small and fragile and played with wind instruments to represent how weak she was in relation to the robot, but it eventually became the motif for the game in general. The 'Guardian motif' is just a rhythmic, arpeggiated synth that begins a bit into the song before the darker melodic section. The 'human' motif was written so that I could insert it into any piece that involved humanity in general. It became much darker than I initially intended, but I stuck with it for that very reason. I also included a metallic arpeggiated synth noise as part of the human motif (now I can throw it around whenever I want to have a callback to humans! Yay! Less writing!)

Around the end, I did some sound design tomfoolery to get reversed guitars alongside a solemn piano. I'm planning to develop this in my 'Shelter' theme (which I did NOT finish by the deadline). This will be the sound of safety once you return to your Shelter and your bulkheads seal. This will be the sound of Delphinium and the robot tending to their little underground garden of flowers.

-w-

Concrete Sandcastles (a surface exploration theme that plays as ambience while you scour the overworld for supplies) and Storm Warning (a track that plays when a sandstorm is approaching) are written outside of what I would call the jam deadline (even though Our Garden is already a late submission) so I'll acknowledge them separately from Our Garden.

Explanations for some of the writing can ALSO be found on the full itch page!

Message from the artist
I'm still working on other planned tracks for the soundtrack (by time of writing, I've completed the main theme, a surface exploration theme, and a mockup of a storm warning theme) including some pieces for combat and a piece for Shelters. I'll be updating the Soundcloud AND the itch page whenever I finish something. Hopefully I'll upload these to Youtube soon as well. If you're interested, you can find my Youtube at <a rel='nofollow noopener' referrerpolicy='origin' href='https://www.youtube.com/@rocketbhoom'>https://www.youtube.com/@rocketbhoom</a>

How does it fit the theme?
I stuck to the reference illustration like glue. It was basically inspiration for everything - story elements, names, even musical themes. Since I was drawing so strongly from the illustration, the actual text theme became more of an afterthought - but my interpretation of it was simply a strong connection or bond between the robot and the girl. The robot's last assigned duty was to protect and raise the girl. The girl can't survive on her own without the robot to protect and guide her. They depend on each other to continue surviving, and so have to always remain close to each other - they can't risk leaving the other behind.

In terms of gameplay mechanics, it would literally be the player characters always having to be in visual range of each other. I've explained this idea above.

Link(s) of the submission on streaming services
https://on.soundcloud.com/fm349mtk6WbDbZdi7

Soundtrack use permission

Yes (CC BY-NC)

Any non-commercial project