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the shutdown's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Impression | #302 | 3.353 | 3.444 |
| Creativity | #305 | 3.461 | 3.556 |
| Composition | #337 | 3.353 | 3.444 |
| Overall | #358 | 3.331 | 3.422 |
| Correlation to theme | #382 | 3.299 | 3.389 |
| Quality | #422 | 3.190 | 3.278 |
Ranked from 18 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Description
Story:
"The Shutdown" is a game centered around a scientist working on the first fully sentient robot companion. His efforts are abruptly halted by a global ban on robotics and A.I. technology.
Before the law takes full effect, he decides to explore the world that the AI had envisioned before gaining consciousness. Here, he discovers the vibrant and colorful world dreamed up entirely by the robot, living a day filled with forming relationships and creating new memories.
However, he is eventually faced with the inevitable: pressing the shutdown button...
Soundtrack:
https://soundcloud.com/lexpalth/sets/shutting-down/s-Ni5VNcEMI56?si=6bf4565ec1b7...
All tracks are crafted to blend "real" and "natural" instrumentation with elements typically associated with "electronic" and "computer" sounds, symbolizing the human interaction with a world conceived within a robot's mind.
alive: This song is for a cutscene which plays in the latter half of the game, depicting flashbacks of the player's journey and the decisions they've made. It serves to remind players of the moments experienced throughout their journey—happy, sad, easy, and challenging ones.
our final conversation: Featured during the end credits, this track portrays the emotional difficulty of saying goodbye, knowing it must be done. It unfolds the process of pressing the shutdown button from beginning to end, capturing the rising emotions and memories until that world is completely erased.
Genres are: chiptune, rock, orchestral.
I used Ableton to compose this project.
Message from the artist
Thanks for the jam's organizers and the judges. This gave me a lot of motivation to work on some music!
Also big thanks for letting me submit a tiny bit late because I had some technical difficulties
Theme
How does it fit the theme?
The player plays as a scientists who gets to visit the world dreamed by their own creation, blurring the line between his and their worlds.
Link(s) of the submission on streaming services
https://soundcloud.com/lexpalth/sets/shutting-down/s-Ni5VNcEMI56?si=cedd91276ad1459c8856897e4e0fe933&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Number of tracks2
Genre
Soundtrack use permission
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Comments
Great job on your submission! Enjoyed listening to the various styles that were mixed together in your music. Our Final Conversation was nice and airy, and then that bass was juicy!
The second track gave me home town in an MMO vibes which I liked!
Thats a really good submission overall, I felt the mix was really well handled. Great job!
I like the idea you were going with! I think a couple things though...
I think the mix could be improved! the Bass and chiptune elements got a bit overwhelming but were nice.
I would've love to have heard more of the chiptune elements thrown in. I think you might've had a cleaner sound that sounds more futuristic with a sine wave rather than the square tone you used in the tracks. I think the rock elements clash with the tone of your story. Maybe a mix between the organ part The Who's in "We Won't Get Fooled again
and Bit.Trip RUNNER's "Impetus" track. Hope that makes sense.
But overall I think you have a great idea in your tracks!
I very much enjoyed the second song. Loved the strings!
After listening to a bunch of others prior submissions this afternoon that were kinda sedate the piercing high synth on the first track was a pleasant wake up call to something bolder. The just .. deep sadness of the 2nd one was really gripping. I was super impressed, wonderful work you did here.
1st song, eh. 2nd song AMAZING!
Wow, great work! I love the compositions, they fit so perfectly with what you were writing about. I'm also partial to the inclusion of live instruments in tracks, so that was a major plus for this too. it could definitely use a few mixing adjustments but overall, nice job!
I like the diverse selection of intruments!
alive is cheerful, life-affirming and even chilly!
Our final conversation... Can I be honest? I started crying. I really got into this story, and the music made me cry. Very emotional. And the ending seems to say: "Goodbye friend, thanks for the time spent. I won't forget you."
And I don't know why, but at the end of these two tracks I was thinking about Adventure Time)
Of the minuses, I can only note that in alive the guitar is a little loud in the right ear at the beginning ... (or is it already my hearing problems, lol)
You are right, the guitar is really too loud, didn't notice it!
The material on these is pretty good but I think they need a bit more mastering to get some of the levels where they should be. I think you took the material in interesting places though! I appreciated the motivic development throughout. They weren’t just trancey iterations of the same motif repeated which was nice.