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This is fantastic! Both songs are so full of lovely details and the mixing is excellent. I love the drip samples following the melody on the first track, and as many others have said the guitar sounds fantastic on track two! Really relaxing and serene, both songs fit the theme very well too. Great work!

Thank you :D

This is a fantastic submission! Your composition is excellent, and each track is full of emotion and clever instrumentation. I love the game idea, and you represented it perfectly through music. My favourite track is probably Summer Night Festival, it’s surprisingly dramatic but it really works as a cathartic ending to the game!

Overall brilliant work!

Thank you for the feedback! The main thing I need to take from this jam is to make better use of the high end of the frequency spectrum, I am still learning how to mix well so this is a great action I can take to improve my songs.

With Nephropus, King of the Lobsters, I didn’t really want to go too far with the militant theme, in my head the character would be a friendly king who leads an army (but I didn’t put that in the description). To be honest, looking at the responses so far, I think this is people’s least favourite track, so maybe if I did lean more into the military theming it would make the song more interesting.

Thanks again for taking the time to leave this comment!

Thank you so much! I love the Secret of Mana soundtrack, great to hear that comparison :D

Funnily enough I have been listening to a relaxing PS1 music compilation lately and Chrono Cross songs keep coming up - you have really nailed the PS1 RPG sound! The variety in each song is impressive, I love Vivid Village's unique instrument choices and the way Something Wrong slowly pitches down makes for a lovely creepy feeling. My favourite track has to be Suspicious Forest, the guitar loop sounds fantastic, I love the Mitsuda-esque percussion and the choir adds a great, slightly supernatural atmosphere.

Incredible work overall!

Great submission, I love the live instrument playing, it really makes this soundtrack stand out! There's lots of great composition in there too, I like the weird time signatures you use throughout. The genre variety is also impressive! My favourite track is probably Just A Girl, despite the quality issues of the clarinet lead I really love the melody it is playing and the accompaniment sounds great!

Fantastic work!

Thank you so much, glad you liked it enough to put it on your playlist!

This is fantastic, I can't believe this took you a single day! Really great ambient piece, the instrument choices fit the image theme really well - I love the inclusion of the shakuhachi to represent the Japanese aspects of the picture, and the piano with the heavy reverb at the end really sells the underwater setting!

Excellent job!

Wow! Thank you so much for such a detailed comment, I'm currently grinning from ear to ear! I really appreciate this :D

I love how you thought about how these tracks might actually be used in game, for example with the "action" version of the overworld theme and the save room theme. The save room theme in particular shows off your fantastic composition skills, the chords are really stylish (and it reminds me a bit of one of my favourite songs from the Majora's Mask soundtrack, the Milk Bar theme). I also love the tonal shift for Mechacanthine Chaos, I always appreciate a good breakbeat.

Excellent work!

You are spot on with those influences, I am a huge fan of the Mother soundtracks and yes I was going for a more SNES-like style for Dolphin Taxi Service. Thank you so much for the feedback!

Your composition skills are phenomenal, the piano parts of each track are some of the best composed parts out of all of the submissions I have heard! The chord progressions and harmonies in all of the songs honestly leave me in awe, I aspire to be able to create such emotional depth in my music. I also love the use of bells to represent bubbles, it ties your songs back to the image theme really nicely.

Fantastic job!

Thank you :D

Thank you! I really tried to make each song fit as closely to the ideas I had about the game as I could, good to hear that it seems to have worked :)

This is really good, your composition skills are impressive and the songs have an excellent atmosphere! I love Lights off, it is a fantastic ambient piece which leans a bit more into the horror aspect of the game. My favourite song has to be Real though, I like how stripped back it is - the melody is perfect, there is just the right amount of creepiness to it while still feeling quite calming and serene.

Excellent work!

Thank you so much!

I relied quite heavily on LABS - I'm bored at the moment so I'll give you a list of everything:

• Follow the Ghost: Glass Grand (Glass Piano), Soft Piano (Soft Piano), Violin (Frozen Strings), Harmonic Birdsong Violin (Frozen Strings)
• Coral Town: Long (Strings), The Grand (Autograph Grand)
• Cephalopod Shuffle: The Grand (Autograph Grand) x2, 1975 Kit (Vintage Drums) x4, Soft Piano (Soft Piano) x2
• The Village Atop a Whale: The Grand (Autograph Grand), Long (Strings) x3
• Dolphin Taxi Service: Long (Strings) x4
• Nephropus, King of the Lobsters: The Grand (Autograph Grand) x2, Long (Strings) x2, 1975 Kit (Vintage Drums)
• Sunken Mausoleum: The Grand (Autograph Grand), Cello (Frozen Strings)
• Farewell, Father: The Grand (Autograph Grand)

I'm not sure if I'll end up turning this into a real game, but it's great that you think it could be made into one :D

This is an absolutely brilliant submission! I really love the extra thought you put into how the songs will work dynamically with the game mechanics, it makes me wish I had done something like that. Your mixing and sound design is unique and phenomenal throughout as well, fantastic job!

Thank you!

I really love the sound design in both tracks, some excellent synth noises in there! Welcome To The Lands is a fantastic ambient piece, for some reason it brings to mind the menu music from the PS3 and PS4. I love the main theme too, the heavy bass is surprising when it first comes in but it works!

Overall this is a great submission!

Thank you!

This is fantastic, it could easily be the soundtrack to a real Genesis game! Every single aspect is so authentic - the composition style, the song structure, the instrument design...

I also love the little recurring arpeggio leitmotif, it really helps to connect the tracks together.

Excellent work overall!

As many others in this comments section have said, this is absolutely incredible! You have a real talent for orchestration - it's so dramatic and full of emotion, your composition is beautiful, this is such unbelievably fantastic work for someone who only started learning in June!! Keep going with this!

Really nice submission! All of the tracks are very well composed and structured, and have a great dark atmosphere. There are some really good melodies in there, it's a shame that there are a few times where they are drowned out a bit by the rest of the instruments. Maybe if you transposed the lead instruments up an octave they might be able to shine through more easily.

I love Great Ascent, you said that Chrono Trigger is one of your influences and it shows in this song - the piano and tubular bells combined with the droning choir and strings gives it an excellent grandiose feeling.

Great job overall!

Thank you so much! I'm glad you liked the saxophone, the samples sound unreasonably good for the random soundfont I found it in so I had to include it somewhere.

Thank you :D

I hadn't heard of NaissanceE before now, from the trailer the music sounds good so thank you!

This could easily by the soundtrack to some long-lost N64 or PS1 game, you have a really great authentic style! Each song feels perfectly suited to their described uses, and your composition is great throughout. I love Help! My Song Is Stuck In A Tree, it's such a unique take on a jungle theme that doesn't rely on the usual clichéd instruments. 

Fantastic work!

I really appreciate the premise of this game - having also watched as two of my grandparents suffered with Alzheimer's, it really struck a chord. Let's hope they eventually find some sort of cure for such an awful disease...

The music itself is great, too - it definitely sounds authentic, and all of the oddness you included really works to give the songs a sense of confusion. Being compatible with real Mega Drive hardware is a bonus!

Excellent job overall!

This is a really good entry! I love the first track, it is so atmospheric and calming, but there is definitely a hint of the darkness of the second half of the album in there. The final track is great as well, you can imagine some horrific demon staring through you with that fantastic intro noise, and the rest of the track is so hard-hitting and raw. 

Unrelated to the music, I really like the cover art! Great job overall!

This is a great entry! Really reminds me of N64 era game soundtracks, I love the more traditional orchestral instruments mixed with the breakbeats, synths and vocal samples. My favourite track is probably Échoppe Cachée, you really nailed the "video game shop" feeling, and it's really catchy! Fantastic work!

Really nice submission! I love the leitmotif you used throughout, it gives the soundtrack a great authentic old-school feeling. My favourite track is probably the battle theme, definitely reminds me of some of the classic JRPG battle themes like those found in the first few Final Fantasy games. I also love the cinematic trailer theme, a clever way of showing off your excellent orchestration skills while still feeling cohesive with the rest of the soundtrack.

I have one very tiny nitpick, I would have made this an NES game rather than a Game Boy game, as the Game Boy sound chip has some weird quirks and extra features that don't make an appearance in this soundtrack (for example a custom wave channel instead of the triangle channel found on an NES, and the ability to pan sounds to the left or right). I realise that you might not be trying to fit with any specific console's sound capabilities, and really this is completely inconsequential, but I just thought I'd point it out.

Overall this is a fantastic entry, great job!

This submission is so cool - the synth sounds are so raw and powerful, and I love the distorted vocal samples. It has such a dark and interesting atmosphere, fantastic job!

Thank you! I'm glad you liked the ambient songs, I haven't had as much experience making them so it's good to hear they sounded OK :)

Fantastic job, probably the song that best fits the image theme out of all of the entries I've heard. All of the little details come together to create a really lovely sound, and the piano sounds excellent. Would love to hear more, great work!

This is absolutely incredible! It reminds me of some of Jean-Michel Jarre's work, I was completely immersed and enthralled from start to finish. It's impressive how unique each track feels - my favourite is probably Sakurako, I think it contains some of the best synth sounds on the album.

Fantastic job, you get my vote for best ambient work in the jam!

I really like this track - there are some great instrument choices, I love the blend of synth and more realistic sounds. The whole song has a really nice, dreamlike atmosphere. It would have been nice to hear a bit more, because what you have already is top notch!

Thank you :D

This is a really good submission! Your instrument choices are unique throughout and the songs have a great atmosphere. I love the glitchy synth sound at the start of Mindflow.

For me, some of the songs are a bit busy. Maybe you could include some more stripped back sections in the tracks, with just the drum track and one or two pads (a perfect example of this starts at 1:04 in Mindflow). This would make the more complex sections of the songs sound even better, and add to the surreal dreamcore aesthetic.

Overall though this is a great entry!