itch.io

As a Wildhearts fan, I can definitely hear the inspiration and it's awesome. I love the idea of the Freefall sections, they make this really easy to imagine as a soundtrack for a game, I feel like those sections would definitely stand out to me while playing it. Really impressive and clean submission, it was a nice listen.

🦞

Very atmospheric and fitting, I think this would work really well for the type of story you're telling. The final track is my favorite, the breathing adds to it immensely, gives it this human element that's really nice.

I kept this submission for near the end of the voting session, I wanted it to be one of the last ones I rate. It didn't disappoint. The production on this is absolutely crazy, each song feels so professional, cinematic and full. If this isn't a 5/5 for Quality, I don't know what is.

Here's my team's: a forgotten Dreamcast game, including a song that was considered lost media.

https://itch.io/jam/ost-composing-jam-7/rate/2844625

Big fan of the instrument choices here, you create a vibe that's super cohesive and pleasant. My favorite song is Ebbing Tide, I especially love how the synth fluctuates throughout the song, gives it that bubbly water feel.

Using soundfonts and chiptune for the world inside the mind is cool, and the ones you used work together great. I'm a big fan of the Mother series and games inspired by it, this kind of thing is right up my alley. Really catchy stuff, final boss theme is my favorite song on it. The fact that this is made up of a lot of shorter songs is nice, gives it some good variety!

Nice stuff! The main character's dynamic with leaving their bubble is a smart way of interpreting the theme, and I think your songs convey the emotions you're describing well. I especially enjoy the calm and emptiness of Stuck in Time.

Very impressive connections with the theme. The bubbles being interpreted as fragility and impermanence is especially memorable and smart. I think the song reflects those ideas super well, making for a result that feels really thought out and high quality. Checking out the Miros was a nice touch as well!

I do love weird synth instruments and there's plenty of that here in the tracks, as well as, of course, meow synth aplenty. The bass-line on the alley cat song sets the tone of it well.

-Chey

This is pretty good, love the chord hits & violin, and the fact that all we get to hear is the final song makes for an interesting process imagining the visuals and game. Speaking of the visuals, the cover art is also great!

-Chey

As someone who also spent a huge amount of time putting effort into making my submission's game concept fleshed out and believable, it's clear there's a lot of passion here. My favorite song is the tutorial song, I enjoy the vocals on it.

-Chey

The song for the battle against the Nautilus is definitely my favorite song on the album. I wasn't expecting something with organs like that, but in a weird way it feels really fitting for a nautilus, I can imagine a lot of fun gameplay for a fight like that, and this song sells the vibe well.

I love this song's instrumentation, it's very well mixed and paced, with each instrument coming in right when it needs to. The tremolo strings especially stick out to me, really beautiful sounds. I'm sorry about your injury, I would have loved to hear what you'd made if you had more time. I'm hoping you'll participate again in next year's jam!

I like how you seem to have thought out the game's story/world/gameplay in your head first, then designed the music after it. It really shows, this would really suit a puzzle platformer.

The final song is my favorite, its instrumentation and feel compliment the gameplay you're describing perfectly. I think if this were a real game, it'd make for a super memorable sequence and ending. Great work!

The first track flows well and its instrumentation is nice. It has bits and pieces that are a little discordant, but since it's meant to be a little bittersweet I find it fitting. I like the way you use the piano in the second song, it feels very organic and free, I like its little flourishes.

I'm not a professional composer or musician, so I don't feel comfortable giving you any direct criticisms on what you've made. However, I can give you my personal advice, and that's that if you enjoy making music and wanna get better, you should keep going out of your comfort zone and trying new things. This can be participating in jams, trying to make songs in a new style, maybe learning a new technique or bit of music theory and trying to apply it to a song. In my opinion, all of that is what'll make you learn the most and realize what you enjoy making. That's how a lot of people find what they want their main style to be. I hope that helps!

Regardless, nice submission, I had a good time listening!

I like the main character's design quite a bit. I also like the blend of chip-tune and real instruments.

Pan Flute And Dragon goes hard, as others have pointed out. I just love the premise of a dragon main character who's only armed with a pan flute. The Nightmare sounds unnatural and otherworldly in a fitting way. Actually, I just like the instrumentation all around, I feel that they tend to compliment each-other nicely. The Nightmare sinking into Temple, becoming a bit more triumphant, and having the echoes of distant music boxes was atmospheric and nice.

-Chey

I love the instrumentation on Sea Frog with the crazy synth leads, and the rhythm is hypnotizing. I also like how the piano compliments everything on the songs it's featured in. The last song is definitely very grand feeling, and makes me wonder more what an actual Bubble Planet game would be like if this was it's climactic song.

-Chey

Really nice composition and instrumentation, it's refreshing hearing something pop-y and upbeat. I like the use of bubbles, the call and response between layers is on point, and it stays interesting throughout. Great song!

Very nice instrumentation. The songs feel like a mix of the music from Risk of Rain and FTL, you really nailed the space vibes. Each character having their own instrument is neat, I'd say Crash Landing is my favorite.

Thank you for your kind words and constructive feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed the play on Satie in Bioluminesca, it's probably one of my favorite parts of the project. I wanted to capture the feeling of an angler fish in the abyss, with it deceiving its prey with a bright, comforting, familiar light. By building up the intro to Gymnopédie No 1, I like to imagine I'm putting the listener in that same state, where they're comfortable and know what to expect. But the song then gradually deviates and subverts that expectation with something far more sinister. Your comment is very appreciated, I really enjoyed your submission and I'm glad to hear that the feeling is mutual!

I wouldn't call yourself "by no means a good composer yet"! These are great tracks and this submission is very imaginative with how you inserted yourself into it as a means of fitting the theme. Starting with a cinematic track for a trailer is an awesome choice. I especially love the sound effect-like bits that play in the title track, little flourishes like that definitely add a lot to it. The battle theme really reminds me a lot of Mega Man, I could see it fitting in perfectly in one of the NES games.

Overall, great submission! It feels really unique and nice.

-Chey

Interesting cover. New World/My World is my favorite track, reminding me a bit of Pikmin 2, specifically the song Rest Area. The bit of slight stutters that it has are a strangely captivating aesthetic to me.

-Chey

I like the internet aesthetic presented here, it's a fun spin on traditional orchestral stuff. Your use of varied time signatures is great, gotta give props for that as well. The funkwork network is my favorite track on the album, the live trumpet adds a lot to it, and its title does not lie, it is funky, and it works wonders. Cool submission!

The noir theming makes for a creative and unique entry in the jam, really cool stuff. The fact that you're new at composing is super impressive, if you're having fun you should definitely keep pursuing it, you're on the right track!

I looooove how you focused a lot on the gameplay aspects of this, and that the ideas for the music mostly stem from them. The dual world that you can switch between is a fun twist on the theme, and it leading to adaptive music is awesome. I'm a big fan of when songs in games have layers which change depending on where you are or what you're doing, and your songs capture that really well. Of the three songs, Amidst is my favorite, and I think if this were a real game, it'd be a satisfying and memorable experience overall.

Focusing on the bubbles in the picture was a great idea, the execution here is delightful. Seeing the world inside and outside your bubble is a really cool, creative spin on both the picture and text. Super interesting, one of the best interpretations of the theme I've seen so far. O Universe is my favorite song overall, the subtle vocal track really took me by surprise and it's super emotionally impactful, though Burst Into Worlds has my favorite composition out of all of them. Listening was a great experience, good job!

I really like the theming of this game idea and tracks; quirky indie RPGs are my kind of thing. This was an interesting listen because I can pick out elements of Undertale and Stardew Valley's soundtracks, but it's still decidedly in its own style with some nice nautical undertones. Super cool stuff, I think these tracks make for a really believable soundtrack, the shop and boss theme especially.

Glad you think so! Making an elaborate game concept with a credible history was really important to us. I'd say "well thought out" is one of the best compliments we could receive, thank you very much!

I can definitely hear the inspiration from Lena Raine's music, the melodies and progression of the song do a great job capturing what make her music great. It's got everything I like in a song like Resurrections with that little Risk of Rain twist over it near the end. It being 8 minutes is good, it gives it plenty of time to develop its ideas, and with it being somewhat segmented in two I'd say it expresses the split between wonder and discovery well. Good stuff!

I like this one, the orchestration and composition is very cinematic and immersive. I especially enjoy when the instruments swell and fill all the empty space together, like at the end of Dreamscape. Overall just super neat seeing an orchestral submission like this that sounds super professional and clean.

Really interesting that Psychonauts was an inspiration here, the way the fish were drawn in the picture also reminded me of the figments from the series a little, and subtly influenced our submission as well. I think it's cool that the music goes in a completely different direction despite the game having similar gameplay; the techno/EDM influence is a total vibe. I think you did a great job of capturing what invading the mind of a robot without their consent would sound like. Android Insomniac is my favorite, the instruments are on point, feels like alarms are blaring and I'm not welcome. Plus the song has this factory-like rhythm that's really catchy. Great submission, super memorable.

I'm a sucker for experimental stuff like this, I think the synths you used give it a really defined identity, and the composition being super freeform and varied left an impression, Battle Of The Rains being my favorite. I could imagine this working great for a game like LISA that just does its own thing. I would have liked for it to fit with the theme of the jam a bit more, but it was still an enjoyable listen. Also, nice on you for using Mixcraft! Very fun program, glad to see people giving it some use.

This is a really out of the box interpretation of the theme, I love how it started with imagining the bubble person as malicious and just spiraled into something completely new, that kind of thing is what jams are all about to me.  The final boss theme and intro tracks are my favorites. I love how moody the intro is, it sets up the tone of the album beautifully. There's some good variety here too, which I think is a nice choice. It makes it so you never really get used to a constant vibe, which makes the fun shooting range track stick out from stuff like the boss themes. Overall, great ideas and great execution!

I love to see others so passionate about what they create, and reading what you've written is inspirational to me and makes me want to try to incorporate more of the elements you've written about into my own music going forward. The album has a great tone, and reading both the commentary and story through the itch page itself was great. I enjoy the setting being a lake rather than an ocean, which it seems most people ended up going with (including the project I worked on). The acoustic guitar, whistling, etc. gives it the really nice feeling of a camping trip. GIANT ROBOTIC EEL WITH LASER EYES was one of the most intriguing things to read about and when I eventually heard it, it did not disappoint. Finally, I want to compliment the album art, as well as the art of the titular GIANT ROBOTIC EEL WITH LASER EYES seen on the side of the itch page. I can definitely envision a short RPG Maker game akin to Ib when listening to the game's soundtrack.

Overall, just a great submission.

-Chey

It's cool that you made a little interactive visualizer, and I like the aesthetic of it and the cover art a lot, as well as the synth choices for the tracks.

-Chey

Good work, I enjoyed reading about your process behind creating the songs. Good choice of child-like instruments as well. I found that "Searching" stood out to me above the rest and it was cool to learn why exactly that was. I also enjoy the drawing you used for the album cover a lot.

-Chey

Fits the theme very well, I think the songs are very cohesive and they create a nice dreamy atmosphere. Incorporating a real piano was a nice touch, it gives the album that touch of humanity that fully digital music lacks sometimes. I also like the fact that all of the tracks start with A, it's a nice touch. My favorite song on here is Ashes.
Good work!

Very interesting! The blend of natural sounds and digital aesthetics is very unique sounding to me. I really enjoyed Booting Up with the mouse click/error noise beat, and /dev/null reminds me of some of the harsher BGM tracks from Steven Universe (harsher in a good way) such as Sugilite's theme.

But In My World... wow, great job. Nothing could have prepared me for that drop.

-Chey

This is a really unique interpretation of the theme, and I think it does a good job of capturing the Ace Attorney style in terms of composition and instrumentation. Very fun submission, I enjoyed listening through it and getting a look into Octo Gonner's world.
PS: The judge being a hammerhead shark is super quirky, definitely a highlight for me