Thanks Layla for coming up with such a cool post!
For this jam, I knew I wanted to try and make a 'complete' sounding OST, so I spent the first few days of the jam really planning out the story beats, thinking about what kind of moments would be needed to make something feel like a fully fleshed out game narrative.
I then planned out how I could most efficiently hit those story beats with the least amount of tracks, wrote out what kind of emotions and atmospheres each track would need to deliver, then wrote an estimated run time for each one to make sure everything seemed to be in scope/doable in a week.
Once I was happy with my overall story and track list, I sketched out all of the character themes, and planned how I could incorporate them throughout the OST. Coming up with the themes beforehand let me cut down a ton on the time I usually spend blindly looking for good melodies, which in turn helped me finish everything on time.
After all of this, I finished my planning phase by writing out a composing schedule for the rest of the week, writing out by which days I would have sketches, then rough drafts, then final versions of each track. Whenever I fell behind schedule, I either downsized the scope of the piece, cut a track/story beat, combined pieces together, or as a last resort, worked a bit later into the night to make sure I was on track.
For the actual composing, I usually start with improvising melodies on a keyboard, which can take some time to get right. Since this jam had pretty tough time constraints, I took a different approach and instead composed by writing out the accompaniment, percussion, and other rhythmic elements of the music first, to make sure that even without a melody, the tracks were 'breathing' at the right pace, and hitting the emotions and atmospheres I was going for in the overall scheme of things. I then looked for places where I could fit in the themes I sketched beforehand, adjusting them as needed to fit with harmonies or rhythmic patterns. I also kept a basic list of instruments and sounds used in each track, and did my best to minimize overlaps between tracks, especially ones that play right after another, to keep everything sounding texturally different and interesting.
I think a very unique aspect of game music that really sets it apart from any other kind of music is its ability to be interactive, so I also wrote a few tracks that were designed to be integrated with gameplay systems, like my 6th track, the combat theme, and the 7th track, an area theme that's supposed to grow grander as you complete quests for a certain faction in the game. My hope was that doing so would make my submission sound even more like a 'real' game OST.
I hope something I wrote was helpful for someone! Also, I'd be super happy if you checked out my submission, thanks!