Description
Inspired by the likes of Animal Crossing, MySims, Stardew Valley, and a few others of that style, Kitty City is a game where you can live a life in a dynamic and vibrant cityscape!

When envisioning this game, there were three main features I wanted to exist: different locales, a day/night cycle, and a seasonal cycle. All of these features influence the music in unique ways. The locales affect the pacing and overall mood, the time of day affects the brightness, and the season affects the warmth (or lack thereof). Here's a breakdown.

LOCALE = PACE/MOOD
Urban - High Intensity, Exciting
Suburban - Mid Intensity, Familiar
Rural - Low Intensity, Nostalgic

TIME OF DAY = BRIGHTNESS
Afternoon - Bright, High Ranges
Morning/Evening - Balanced
Night - Dark, Low Ranges

SEASON = WARMTH
Summer - Warm & Airy
Spring/Fall - Balanced
Winter - Cold & Crisp

I also needed a connecting motif to glue these parameters together and make the music within relatively cohesive. As you may notice, I mostly ended up abstracting this main motif into oblivion. Regardless, it served as a good foundation, and somewhere within each track you can find bits and pieces of it if you listen carefully.

Now on to the tracks themselves. From each category above, I selected one influence at random. I used a combination of Finale for notation and Reaper for mixing. I did my best to make them loop. Here are the results.

1. Summer Mornings in the Suburb (Suburban/Morning/Summer)

This first track takes a lot of inspiration from some of my favorite tracks in the original Animal Crossing. The main motif is most noticeable here as well - everything the Flute plays, more or less. It only gets more abstract later on.

2. Winter Evenings in the City (Urban/Evening/Winter)

I wanted all my urban tracks to be groovy, and I think I did a pretty good job on that front. You can hear the motif in the bass line once everything gets going and a little more near the very end.

3. Winter Nights in the Country (Rural/Night/Winter)

Here, the motif is once again in the bass line ostinato, but only the first few notes of it. There is one spot in the Kalimba part where I took the motif and reversed it. One final note: unlike the first two, this track's loop is fake! While it could technically loop just fine, I decided to give it a proper ending.

Message from the artist:
Art by Shigemi

Theme:

How does it fit the theme?
To me, the theme represents the cyclical nature of time. Minutes, days, and seasons all loop back on themselves, just like the hands on a clock. The game I envisioned features cyclical, free-flowing time as a major component to the gameplay.

Link(s) of the submission on streaming services
Youtube: https://youtu.be/H7kNNspWkPc

Soundtrack use permission

Yes (CC BY-NC)

Any non-commercial project