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Thanks for the feedback! I suppose you're heading towards a dark fantasy music palette for your project?

The Team: We are Black Pigeon Games. An ue dev, a musician and sound designer and a write that met through a successful game jam and decided to team up to create a video game studio!

A new game development studio currently developing a singleplayer, story rich, survival horror game in Unreal Engine 5. RatKiller. The team currently comprises of 4 members spread across the globe from the US to Brazil. Currently, we are a programmer, musician, and a writer. Every team member is also either a student or working full time and contributing towards this project on a part time basis and thus we aren’t expecting someone to dedicate all their time to the project.

The Game: "In the far future, a primitive rat killer who lives in a planet-sized computer realizes the people he worships as gods have disappeared. While he searches for the missing gods, something grows hostile, hunting fellow rat killers inside the endless dark maze of wires." We created a short demo of the game as part of the ScreamJam2024 game jam and are looking to build on the game and eventually release on Steam. The time frame for release is currently expected to be about a year as we are still in an early stage of development. We want to create a handcrafted experience for players and not another quick asset flip. The music for an initial trailer of the game as well as the game play for the jam is down below:

Gameplay Video:

Trailer Audio: https://soundcloud.com/fictiumsounddesign/ratkillers-official-trailer

The Role: We’re looking to expand the team with another highly-skilled artist, working remotely, who can create visually appealing models and textures with a low poly count and low resolutions as well as take part in ideation and game design document decisions. Skills:

• Low poly 3D modelling: rigged characters, props and architecture
• PS2 style textures

Desirable:

• Some level of industry experience
• Creating concept art
• Animation
• Importing your assets and creating materials in Unreal Engine 5

Compensation: An equal profit share split once the game is generating revenue. Please send an email to fictiumsounddesign@gmail.com if interested!

Hi!

Latest free rpg music here!

Character Theme:

Waltz Theme:

Latest free piano music!

You can license it via attribution crediting me as "Fictium Sound Design."

There's both a complete and loop version.

Like the video and subscribe to the channel for more!

Hi! I'm a RPG composer and I like goth aesthetics and the guilt theme is very interesting! I'll be looking forward to see your next steps!

Hi! I'm a big fan of Graveyard Keeper and also an RPG composer. I'm looking forward to see how your project will unfold! I think since the your ideas are quite good it'd be interesting for you to use Unity as it has more functionalities!

Do you like Anime Music?

Here's a free one, just don't forget to attribute me credits:

Here's my next free 2D Platformer Pixel Music Pack featuring 11 free OSTs.

Just give me credits if you use it to properly apply the license!

Happy game developing!

Hi!

Here's my newest free pixel music pack for you!

Just give me credits if you use it to proper use the license!

https://fictium-sound-design.itch.io/free-2d-platformer-pixel-music-pack

Thanks!

Thank you very much for this! I used one of your background image on my free pixel music on my YouTube channel.

Thanks! More will come!

Hi! I've got free music pack for you:

Free Fantasy Music Pack (25 osts):
https://fictium-sound-design.itch.io/free-fantasy-music-pack

Free Horror Music Pack (8 osts):
https://fictium-sound-design.itch.io/free-horror-music-pack

All I ask of you is to give me attribution and credit me as "Fictium Sound Design".

Enjoy!

~ Fictium Sound Design.

Hello!

I decided to get rid of all the AI image I was using out of respect for the VG artists and republished all my free music using licensed and free cover art.

Here are the links:

Free Fantasy Music Pack (25 osts): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nyTW_xWQuc&t=3s

Free Horror Music Pack (8 osts): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgJUsiU_a1A&t=2s

I didn't know there was a genre called "kinectic novel" thanks for the clarification.

I think it was 1.01.

Perhaps in this case if you'd add more advanced cutscenes and cinematic VFX alongside some well crafted SFX that would take your next project to the next level.

Hello again, sorry for the delay giving the feedback.

Pros:
- I felt like watching one of my usual philosophical underground movies where I have to strain my brain with powerful effort in order to understand what's going on. lol. I'd say that's good, but good for a very small audience probably, so it's a pro in this sense but a potential con pertaining to audience target.

- The art style is interesting, I specially liked the color pallete, is it what they call duotone?

- The ambience music is simple, nice and effective, something I myself struggle to maintain for projects like this (since I tend to be the "complex harmony / melody  /sound design " kind of composer. lol.)

Cons:
- I think you probably decided this deliberately but I really missed more interactivity, like the traditional web of player-choices having different game outcomes, it's cliche but it works for games like this.

- I also missed the possibility of pausing and saving the game whenever. While not being able to do that at will forces the player to engage with the game that can be a bad idea for players with little time to play (I had to leave the game open in order not to lose progress before I could finish it).

Good job overall.

LOL, sorry about that I was working so much that I didn't even notice! I'll check your game soon then!

Hi, VGM Composer here to give you feedback!

Pros:

I really liked the plot of the game as in the "purge" idea, that hook in itself brings a lot of other potential questions for a complete version of the game, in that alone you got a lot of points already.

The choice of dark ambient music was good, considering that I myself compose this specific type of music I'd say it's always a safe choice.

The presence of cutscenes is always a must for that extra mile and you did it, so good job.

Basic game mechanics of burning stuff and tunnel vision in the dark were okay.

The diverse range of facial expressions of the protagonist went an extra mile as well, good job.

Cons:

Related to things you could and should fix right away are mostly related to sound and music. Let me explain why. Your art style is decent and its obvious that to improve that it'll be possible to be done in the long run. It's the same with the gameplay mechanics and level design, as is, for a game jam you did a pretty good job already.

Now with the sound issues:

Silence is an actual "composition technique" and you used it, but IMO it didn't work that well as it's probably best to use it in very high tension game levels such as the interior of the protagonists house when it got dark. In that regard you always have a choice of having a bgm in there or silence.

Where there should've been either bgm or ambient SFX: inside the hospital, inside the protagonist's house in the beginning and inside the police station.

During the street riot the scream SFX weren't looping properly, that really breaks immersion for the player.

So, if you didn't want to use music, then you could've used ambient SFX such as "room tone noise ambiences", footsteps and random noises from the ambient.

Also, the standard volume level of the SFX could be slightly lower as well.

That's it, good job!

Oh, if you did it all that's awesome! Congratz!

Hi! Game composer giving feedback here!

It looks a lot like Undertale's aesthetics, obviously, lol, but it looked a lot cool at any rate! I found the cutscene's art very well done, they look amazing.

The flow of the narrative and plot sound a bit weak although, but more because it ended too quickly, I suppose there weren't enough time to develop it little bit more during the jam? Which is totally fine if that's the case! If you'd work further on it I'm sure that'd be fixed!

Also, for  the SFX it seems to be there's clearly a sound engineer behind it as it's great! Nothing to add or criticise about that, except, maybe, the door SFX which should be changed in a more professional project since I clearly recognized that from the stock RPG maker's assets. However, the radio live music was an awesome addition to it!

The animations of the cutscenes were also great! It totally amped up the game.

Good job!

Hi! Game composer giving feedback here!

Awesome project this one man! Simple and solid.

The dark hand-drawn but with a few tints of colours really made it stand out IMO.

The game mechanics were good enough and I'd say you could go on and expand the game with medium-to-hard puzzles, maybe even avoiding harder ones as there are an audience that prefer to appreciate the narrative, story and aesthetics instead of doing brainy work! (myself included in there).

One potential criticism regarding the foundation of the game, is to make the presence of monsters a little bit less and focus on that "being stuck in rut" theme, which could totally unfold in a slow-burn horror game. Although I understand that for a jam you need to be quick and to the point, so that would be an idea for a further expansion of the game.

Now let's go over my specialty, which is music and sound.

The SFX were okay, but could be improved, depending if a more complex sound pallete would be desired as being part of the overall game aesthetics.

The music also sounded okay, I suppose that free assets were used since they just keep looping the first 2-4 measures without motivic or thematic variation, that works if you want to "play it safe", but can become boring after longer minutes of gameplay.

That's it, good job!

Hey! Game composer giving feedback here!

Your hand-drawn art really stood out, there should be more devs exploring visual art like that.

The storytelling got me hooked too, it's nice how you blend the real with the unreal with psychological and metaphysical horror aspects (the blurred art with the detuned synth music + lava monster).

The game mechanics were also interesting, specially the social interaction view as combat, I'd never thought something like that. If anything your game helped me with further motivation to explore synth music in more depth. lol. Good job.

Did you turn the RPG game into a deck game?

Hi! Cool stuff you started developing your own retro game! Would you be interested in having a free 8 Bit Platformer Mini Music Pack? If so, let me know and if you like it we can see how to further enhance your game!

Hi! Isometic + dark fantasy sounds interesting! Would  you be interested in having a free Elden Ring style Dark Fantasy opening original soundtrack? (I just made it last week). If so, let me know as we can further discuss how to enhance your project!

Hi, I liked the idea of putting some resource management with action RPG elements. Would you be interested in having a free JRPG 8 Bit Music Mini-Pack? As I think my work would probably fit in your game. If you're interested let me know! If you like it we can then discuss how to further enhance your game!

Yeah dude, you're totally right. Thanks for the great insight. 

I know what a MIDI file is. THE THING IS, sometimes the Devs will mistake a 16 bit song with the sound of a MIDI file which is very similar to an extent, I was asking for clarification in that regard.  So much so that it's a very unusual request for a Dev to want MIDI files in his game instead of the classic 8 Bit / 16 Bit / 32 Bit NES / SNES / PS1 era.

Then you probably mean 16 bit (if you're wanting authentic music that "sounds like pc music"), most old school RPGs were either chiptune or 16 bit, tho' nowadays we also have more modern 8 bit that sounds a lot like "pc music" too. 

I'll attach my Patreon link here (where I have some JRPG chiptune songs I've composed for members) so you can see my composition and art style of RPG music. You can hit play and listen to everything right in there.

https://www.patreon.com/FictiumSoundDesign

If you want to discuss further about the project and see if we can come to an agreement, you can add and message me on my Discord: "fictiummusic".

What do you mean in "midi" format? Do you mean chiptune or 16 bit music?

Latest song: