itch.io

Awesome! I'll check it out.

Thank you!

Question about the Hazard Addon and future addons, how do we install them and do we purchase them seperately from the GuyEngine itself?

I cannot stress enough how I think GuyEngine will become the standard for GameDevs / Composers trying to capture the 32bit / Retro era of sound design. 

An absolute staple going forward for my Gamejam and comissioned work.

Glad everyone is enjoying the game, for anyone interested I've uploaded the OST - https://turtlebox.bandcamp.com/album/wake-ost 

What're your rates?

I hadn't noticed that, about half way through it has the same sort of vibe. I just did a whole sample CD inspired by Save Room music earlier in the month, I probably had Save Room on the minds for this release, lol.

I think it's just also the scales used, as well as everything being in 3/4. 

I'm glad you enjoyed it.

The Palindrome jam still haunts me. I believe I was the most voted on submission something like 73 votes, but a lot of people didn't really understand the challenges and it made voting really awkward. 

I think it was cool that a lot of people got super mad that I released a 40 track sample CD an hour before the Jam started and then exclusively used that sample CD to compose the tracks for my Jam submission too, lol. 

I had a lot of fun with that jam, creating a workflow to compose symmetrically was most of the work too, sucks that people didn't quite understand the challenge levels. 

I like the scope of these Impression jams, the composing aspect. It encourages people to do more than just open up a software and click "generate random song". It encourages the study of art and the grow as producers and composers. 

I appreciate you listening to this often. 

Hi, I'm Turtlebox, an award composer who with a portfolio consisting of over 100 game jam submissions, multiple commercial releases, and a history of composing for film and television aswell.

I have a professionally built home studio setup with access to both vintage analog synths, acoustic instruments, and a large collection of top of the line Virtual Instruments and Software collections. I've have been composing and mixing music for quite some time, with 10+ years in experience in writing singles, eps, and full soundtracks.

Here is a link to my discography via BandCamp and below is a list of my successful commercial releases, as well as some award winning Gamejam projects

Letters & Memories (Horror inspired Sample CD) - https://theturtlebox.itch.io/letters-memories

Murdurm (Palindrome Composing Jam finalist) - https://theturtlebox.itch.io/murdrum

Six6Six (Bandcamp Ambient release of the week Award) - https://turtlebox.bandcamp.com/album/six6six

Inside My World (24 hour Composing Jam Finalist) - https://turtlebox.bandcamp.com/album/24-hour-composing-jam-challenge-inside-my-world

PsychePath ( MetriodVania 2023 Finalist) - https://gsogaming.itch.io/psychepath

Dead Terminal ( DreadXP BoneJam Winner ) - https://olinkalex.itch.io/dead-terminal-prototype-demo

When it comes to Game Jams, I'm willing to do this all free of charge, and like my intro says a good handful of Developers and Studios can vouche for me and my work such as ScumHead, Mortal Crux, DDMmeow_Games, and many more.

Post it unmuted in the discord, we'd love to listen.

Thank you! I'm very glad to hear many people saying they found peace with this soundtrack.

Thank you! I'm very glad you fell in love with one of my tracks. I wish you two the best in your relationship. 

How're you mixing the guitars? I'd be happy to give as much advice as I can.

Thanks, everything is rooted in F Minor. The feedback / harmonics washing out in one solid Root (F or  C# for each track) really helps me explore the actual harmonics within both scales. It was a cool experiment in seeing how quickly I could find these harmonics and tones on a bunch of different instruments and make them sound well in a mix, lol.

Thank you! The Art Exhibit comment means a lot to me, I set up wanting the visualizer for this project (youtube upload) to be focused on Japanese Artist, but with Itch being down for a few days I just went with Procedural TV noise. 

Thank you, I took a lot of influence from the Japanese Ambient composer, Hiroshi Yoshimura ( 

Thank you!

I uploaded a version of the opening track with just the isolated guitars and violin. It's weird that I kept it and worked with it and now folks keep bringing up the guitars, lol.

Thanks for your comment, I'm very glad you enjoyed the tracks.

The sort of Lo-fi Hiphop direction threw my off, but these are otherwise good tracks. 

First off, it's not bad. 

This is actually really nice. For someone so young you have a lot of potential, you clearly have an ear for specifically video game music and I hope you pursue production further. 

Really solid work. Has a really vintage and unique style to it.

This is probably the most cinematic and interesting opening track in the Jam. Really powerful and well composed. 

I would probably just dial back the perc a little bit, some segments it seems like the percs are fighting with the drums. If that's your goal, awesome. I personally think cutting like .12 / .16 Db from the percs could help a little bit in those segments is all.

Otherwise, fantastic workj.

Really charming, strong composition on display here. Something I would recommend to help out with your mixing would be to layer an instrument that you want to really define the EQ of, assuming you don't use expensive EQ software.

Layer one with a regular EQ, how you think it should sound, how you're aiming to EQ it. Then on the second layer, run a LP or HP (Low pass / High Pass) and cut it until they bleed into each other in a balanced way. You don't need to do any fancy side-chain stuff or anything crazy. Just curve them out as if they're one composite track.

This helps create a sense of depth and texture, and the LP / HP layer also helps you pick out frequencies in the standard track that you want to close in on. 

The flutes in the last track are a great example, there's some loose high end, cut out all the highs and slowly just bring them up as one filter / pass until it sounds right, then match that range in the normal layer and just very subtly blend them.


This is a great OST, really solid work.

Really lovely listen, I love the attention to volumes. I just wish the tracks had a bit better ends to them, they seem to just stop abruptly, or mid foley. 

Really solid work, especially in the really strong low sections. So smooth and subtle, mixed perfectly. 

Thank you! 

I discussed it elsewhere, but I tried live mixing with this release which is why it has a bit more loop kinda melodies and as it goes on the melodies expand and become less repetitive, throughout the 13ish hours playing and live mixing I was lucky enough to get to a really fantastic balance in the mix, and from there it was only another 6ish hours of actually sitting down and mixing out everything else. 

It's actually really funny you bring up Sword and Ice. I initially had it as a bonus track, something recorded with the Violin, Harmonics, and a 12 string acoustic running through my Fender twin's clean and a pedal called the CP-508, an ambient "wonderland" style pedalby the company Caline.

This version of the track also has some Mendini Glockenspiel which I mic'd up and ran through the same CP-508 pedal, right  in the pre-bridge sections. 

The difference in the tracks is the mixing mostly, but the version in the OST has the overall guitar feedback sound I wanted to experiment with and went for. That's what inspired the restructure of the track, adding a third segment to let the feedback have more space to loop.

You can listen to it here - https://turtlebox.bandcamp.com/track/sword-and-ice-isolated-strings It's a lot more straight forward and doesn't trip over itself by trying to have a ton of different tonal sounds coming in and through. I hope you enjoy this one a bit more, but regardless I would love to know what you think of this version.


EDIT: Here's a demo of the pedal on amazon - https://www.amazon.com/Caline-Wonderland-Ambient-Modulated-Aluminum/dp/B0B2BXG7B... Caline is a weird brand, not really known for anything but knock-offs, clones, and cheaper pedals. I like the CP-508 because it's decay is insanely aggressive and in mixes like this it really just kind of sits back and gives that Supermasive type of wash without being super up front in the mix.

If you had a better picture of your DAW we'd be able to actually see what software you used, was my point. 

I think what would really help is if you rolled up your EQ.  Check around the 30-40hz range, make some minor tweaks there and it should be really solid with some panning, dial everything down and add a split doubler (Here's a free one - https://www.kvraudio.com/product/thesplit-by-thezhe ) and sort of dial it up real slow in the mix till it sounds wider and louder without clipping or needing to saturate. 

Yeah, I've done all of these composing jams with a 24 hour limit to sort of challenge myself. I'll usually take a day off from everything, spend the day before setting up everything in my studio so when I  wake up I can just get right to composing, and then kinda just start going. 

Each track gets recorded back to back and I try to mix as I do, or do as much mixing as possible. This session was especially fun because it let me just run analog synths through obnoxiously wide reverbs and then swap cables and run guitars / pickup'd stringed instruments through those same pedals. 

Every track here uses feedback from a smaller amp, I didn't finish listing my equipment but I ran the strings (guitar, violin, ect) through a Fender Ultimate Chrous, and faced that into a Fender Champion 100 with just it's preset Delay and Reverb, both amps on the clean channel, both EQ'd with the Para-EQ, the Ultimate Chorus the classic original Para-EQ Empress, and the Champ-100 ran through a clone called the Para-Q Nano made by Sine Effects I believe? 

Being able to EQ feedback and utilize it to create pads is something I've wanted to do for a long time and felt like it fit perfectly in a project like this. 


I guess I started to ramble, but my point was that I spent 24 hours live recording guitar feedback. Each feedback is 4/4 at 80bpm which let me experiment with double time melodies when I wanted too, and even tempo change from 4/4, to 2/2, and even to 3/4. 

It's cool, I guess. How I end up abusing these projects to just demonstrate how wild composing music in a traditional yet modernized mindset can be. Is recording feedback and filtering it with analog synths composing? I think so. But I was more than glad to throw some cool stringed instruments into the mix! Especially since it meant I could finally just play some scales on my Samiko Mini, lol.

Sound designing and just using a virtual synth aren't quite the same thing, is what I was trying to say. Typically when someone says they designed a sound it means from a waveform or audio file themselves, in something like a sampler or wavetable editor. 

Really lovely track. The volume is very low, but that doesn't really take away to much from the actual track.

I love how this is a nice mix of Foley and melodies, really beautiful work.

Absolutely gem of a submission. Fantastic job.

Very lovely and unique sound.

Reallly nice submission here, great work!

Very lovely piece of work. A little clipping happening in some parts, but overall fantastic.

Very nice compositions, kind of get lost in what's ultimately a not great mix. But overall an incredibly lovely submission and piece. Great work.

Really nice piece, has a bit of Salvage my Dream vibes and the overall mixing is quite well. 

Man this sure is something. 

As someone who really likes to experiment in these music jams, I think this is where the fence kind of gets hopped. This isn't even really bad, it's just such a bizarrely risky thing to submit to a Jam with a clear theme.

Nine minutes of freeform jazz with random instruments, no structure, and a ton of disjointed melodies and ideas is something I think most folks here are going to pass on. 

Great dedication to the bit though. 

Man this sure is something. 

As someone who really likes to experiment in these music jams, I think this is where the fence kind of gets hopped. This isn't even really bad, it's just such a bizarrely risky thing to submit to a Jam with a clear theme.

Nine minutes of freeform jazz with random instruments, no structure, and a ton of disjointed melodies and ideas is something I think most folks here are going to pass on. 

Great dedication to the bit though. 

Without being mixed this is really hard to listen to. The melody in the background is so nice but the saw lead is really just overpowering everything else, including the pad that comes in a bit later.

Really nice work otherwise.