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A jam submission

The War of the Foolish Wish OSTView project page

OST Composing Jam #7
Submitted by kkairos (@Kaikairos) — 7 hours, 31 minutes before the deadline
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The War of the Foolish Wish OST's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Creativity#2153.6523.652
Correlation to theme#2173.6523.652
Impression#2933.3913.391
Overall#2973.4263.426
Composition#3433.3483.348
Quality#4643.0873.087

Ranked from 23 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Description
Basic VGM, targeting RPGs with a sort of attempt at adaptive music. Made in FLStudio.
Main Theme - Just the main theme!
Foolish Wish - Cassie works a well-paying but soul-crushing job and raises her kid brother Carl after. On a very bad day she finds her kid brother's toys all over--he's been building an imaginary world. She tells him to clean it IMMEDIATELY. When she leaves, he makes a wish that "my sister could see how cool this is." The fairie king appears, and offers him his wish. Carl says yes, and the king brings all the toys in the house to life, and shrinks Carl and Cassie to toy-size. It turns out the fairie king is (paging Labyrinth) in love with Cassie. He will only let them leave if she gives her hand, or if they can defeat him in combat, tactical-RPG style.
Town - The safe toy-town Carl has been building, away from danger.
Battle - A regular battle. Played continuously, designed for adaptive use: Wait/Move phase, Attack phase, Item or magic phase, Attack phase (intense variant), Victory stinger
Shop - The quirky miniature "shop" Carl plays with has come to life!
Boss Battle - A boss battle. Structured the same as Battle.
Defeat - Stinger for loss in combat.
Ending Theme - Reprise of Main Theme. The fairie king is defeated and Carl and Cassie are back to normal size.

Message from the artist
I feel like a I grew a lot this jam!

Vocal credits:
https://toastmortem.itch.io provided two vocal samples to me fairly last minute, he's the one in the Victory/Defeat stingers.
I'm the one in the shop track.

Continuous mix and original proof of authorship at https://youtu.be/2126huI4Ztw

Theme

Inside my world

How does it fit the theme?
The protagonists are forced into their own imaginary world, which in reality belongs to the fae, and to learn the rules of that new world in order to make it theirs.

Link(s) of the submission on streaming services
https://soundcloud.com/dan_lower/sets/the-war-of-the-foolish-wish-ost
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxS2Rrqt5A1hd-NDTc7nDMkWnFFmwbv_w (proper playlist, songs play in flstudio for proof of authorship)

Number of tracks
8

Genre

Orchestral
Rock/Metal
Jazz
Classical
Pop

Soundtrack use permission

No

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

The main melody is very memorable - interesting choice of using the viola as your lead instrument! All 8 tracks feel consistent and unified as a whole, maybe a bit too much; I wish there was a dramatic shift of atmosphere at some point in the middle. Still, I really enjoyed listening to this soundtrack. Good luck!

Submitted(+1)

Covert art is amazing! Music, totally related to the genre, but with a different kind of sound, I love it!

You've made music for an entire game, that's incredible!!! AMAZING JOB!!!

Submitted(+1)

Overall a solid, complete game OST that spans the entire story, so great work there! I love some of the musical ideas you've got going on here, and I think your instrument choice fits into the fairy-tale world you're describing very well. I absolutely loved the slightly low-res voice samples (especially in the Shop Theme,) they gave me a nostalgic SNES vibe. Town, Shop Theme and Defeat are all short, sweet, and to the point; they fit their intended purpose well.

I think you had some great ideas here and definitely some budding talent as a composer, so my highlights below are intended to help you build on those solid foundations for future musical endeavors. (In other words, I'm dropping you a wall of text in hopes that it is useful to you!)

My biggest advice would be trying things like: adjusting the release time/making the notes fade for the longer chords. Especially for Foolish Wish and Town, the organ and accordion-esque sounds feel like they are a bit overpowering as they turn on and never really stop, especially in Town where the accordion creates some dissonance with the other instruments playing towards the end of the bar. Having them fade into the background a bit at the end of the note could help break up that "constant wall of sound" and give the rest of your instruments some room to breathe. 

One thing that I've learned over many years of practicing composing is often times, less is more. This applies in two ways directly here; the first being choosing your notes carefully.  It's tempting to just fill out your piano roll with tons of notes, but rests can be just as important. Said a different way, the less notes you have, the more impact each note carries. In your Boss Battle theme, you've got the right idea by slowly introducing in some instruments and then dropping a couple of them out to create a sort of breakdown segment. It breaks up the monotony and keeps things interesting, very well done with that. But towards the end, there's a lot of things playing at one time and things get a bit jumbled up. You could fix this by removing some notes, but there may not be anything wrong with the notes you have in this case, so less is more could be applied a different way: volume automation. 

Turning the volume down of the notes that are supporting to let the lead stand out more will draw the listener's ear center stage to what you are designating as your lead instrument. Part of the music production process is making those hard decisions on what to turn down and what to make loud, especially if you're like me and think "but ALL of these are important!" Regardless, making good decisions here and highlighting the lead parts of your track will make the piece come together much better as a whole. In addition to volume, EQing out frequencies that aren't important to a specific instrument will also achieve the same result (though the necessity of this varies a lot depending on the samples and source material of your instruments.)

Some other reviewers commented on the general impact of your battle themes, so I'll keep this part concise: Raising the tempo, adding some more action/variety to your drums, swelling certain instruments in different areas, adding more tension, etc are all techniques that can be used to add to the impact of the track. Compositionally, I think your Battle and Boss Battle themes both have solid foundations and are definitely headed in the right direction. I would encourage you to play around with them some more after the jam, practicing how you can change them  up in beneficial ways. This will prove highly beneficial to you in future compositions!

I look forward to seeing what you come up with in the future!

Submitted(+1)

I love the RPG vibe from this OST.  My favorite track was Shop and the voice lines lol I'm a sucker for quirky songs :)

Submitted(+1)

yo! this ost is giving me major adventure/exploration rpg vibes. super fun and magical feeling to me. i appreciate how much time was put into the game concept/story! your music works really well with you game ideas! good stuff!!

Submitted(+1)

The game idea and story is great, and your music does an awesome job at helping me picture your 'world'! I don't know how to describe it, but your music has this unique sound and vibe to it that remained really consistent, and helped immerse me in the 'game'. One thing I noticed is that for your battle and boss theme, the music felt a bit too chill. I think a touch more dissonance, and some more sub-divisions in your percussion and rhythms would help create more tension and excitement in those tracks. Overall, great job though!

Submitted(+1)

Cool tracks! They fit with your game idea well. There was a lot of cool harmonic ideas which I enjoyed. Love the game idea and the cover art as well.

I think the boss battle themes could’ve used a little more energy, maybe some brass and harder percussion could help. And some more instrumentational variety would make the soundtrack even better.

Good work!

Submitted(+1)

Really neat story you made to fit the theme!

I really liked the voice lines that would happen. Especially the shop ones.

Submitted(+1)

I loved the fact you tried to play around with adaptive music in the tracks, I liked the fact that the boss battle theme being a different version of the normal battle them. The use of the music box instrument as your main motif really adds the charm to your soundtrack being a child like setting.

Submitted(+1)

What a fun OST! I could totally see thing going hard in a rpg maker game. The little voice clips made me smile "victory!". Fav song has to be Boss Battle, I could totally see an epic fight going down to that. Great job with the motifs too. Loved this OST, its very charming.

Submitted(+1)

This was really nice to listen to! I love the story around it, and I think you nailed the feeling of kids playing with toys and having fun, I liked your instrument choices as well, everything felt super connected to your overall theme and to the rest of the soundtrack! I love your interconnecting moving lines, they all play really well off each other and make the melody stand out really nicely.

Submitted(+1)

Lol... you made the whole soundtrack in one project file? Cool...

AAH your posting is so cute! I love the atmosphere of the old RPG! (Even though I'm not a fan of this genre of games).

P.S. Hehehe... those voices at the end of the tracks are a separate kind of art (WICTORY. DEFEAT).

Submitted(+1)

Main Theme: upbeat retro rpg vibes. Love the chord choices.

Foolish Wish: Music box is unmatched for a wish feel. Like the addition of organ.

Town: This is so fun. This is my favorite track here!

Battle: Love the groove. Love this more lighthearted battle theme, fits the story.

Shop Theme: Makes me wanna spend money lol. Fun vocal sfx!

Boss Battle: Yeah I'm loving this rhythm! More urgency than the standard battle theme. 

Defeat: short and effective!

Ending Theme: A nice conclusion to round out the OST. 


Love the use of motif throughout. Great work!

Submitted(+1)

So fun! I loved using the vocals like a retro-style game to help tell the story. That was super creative! The shop theme was wild too, I loved the ending of it

Submitted(+1)

This is one of the most "complete" entries I've seen in terms of readiness for an actual game. It's even got a track for defeat!! And it's very cohesive in sound and style, with recurring themes well suited to a retro RPG. Great work. I love the Shop theme.

Submitted(+1)

Oh my, all your OSTs give me some serious RPG game vibes. I don't know what to say other than that you really did a great job!

Submitted(+2)

Main Theme: This unique theme is very memorable and would work really well in a title sequence. I love the driving drums that come in with the bass to sell the adventure/RPG aspect of your soundtrack. I think it’s really creative that you used elements of the dorian mode but also borrow many chords and notes to give the entire piece its own color and flavor.

Foolish Wish: Using mallets to start out a game is a really effective way to lay the foundation for lots of emotion to be built on top of it throughout the story, especially for RPGs!

Town: I love the rhythm you’ve created (12/8 time is such a versatile time signature). The use of a modified version of the Andalusian cadence for your harmony is a smart choice for a town theme as it gives the sense of calm and safety underneath your energetic melody and percussion. The overall result leads to a great town theme. There are sometimes music jams called “Town Theme Jams” hosted by an artist that goes by TheSnowly. I think this type of track would stand out in that collection! You should check it out!

Battle: The organ rhythm sold me on the battle theme. Holding back and not giving the driving rhythm the whole time is a nice choice to keep me listening wanting to hear more of the driving parts of the battle.

Shop Theme: I really like the vocal samples you made! It helps give life and social context for your tracks which helps me imagine the game even more.

Boss Battle: You let go of the restraints from the common battle themes and went for full energy here, very appropriately leading to a nicely composed boss theme. I like that you included the victory theme on the end of this track in the way you did!

Defeat: Great adaptation of the victory theme to convey the opposite sentiment.

Ending Theme: There is a great sense of finality in this track t really enjoyed and that would accompany ending credits very nicely.

Overall: I really like this soundtrack as a whole! I have a personal sixth rating category that is “game readiness” and you scored very high for me on that! You have stingers, voice acting, a town theme, two battle themes… all the basic building blocks for an RPG! I really enjoyed listening - great job and thank you for sharing!

Submitted(+1)

I love this a lot! each track is pretty complex without having too much going on! loved the town and shop themes, and the ending is really nice too, having callbacks to the main theme!

Submitted(+1)

Well, I had been teased about this entry but there is a lot to like. Overall a solid cohesiveness, with a clear idea of the game it's made for. Each track felt on-point, notably Town and Shop. Battle is the one that stood out the most for me. It's complex, and I find it very ingenious of designing the track for adaptive purposes. I considered it as a normal song structure when I first listened to it, and then I read your commentary and realized how much thought had been put into it. Loved the little voice samples (never would've realized for the Shop theme had I not read the description!). The End theme is a nice wrap, loved that it's a throwback to the first track. Loved your submission!