Description
"In a world of wonder, one hero must fight against those who would steal the power of nature for their own greed. The hero fights the forces of darkness using abilities granted by the spirits of the seasons."


Title Theme: A tour of beautiful landscapes that the hero will traverse to find the spirits of the seasons.

Attack on the Village: The hero is introduced in their village, a peaceful place that lives in harmony with nature, when suddenly a dark force ravages their home.

Battle Theme: There are many kinds of enemies that the hero must face, each more dangerous than the last…

Winter’s Calm: The powers of winter grant the hero the abilities of shaping snow, freezing enemies, and hiding in plain sight.

Spring’s Burst: The powers of spring grant the hero the abilities of growing plants, healing wounds, and causing rivers to rush.

Summer’s Rush: The powers of Summer grant the hero the abilities of summoning light, generating heat, and calling forth dust devils.

Autumn’s End: The powers of autumn grant the hero the abilities of blowing gale winds, shooting lightning, and creating heavy rains.

The Dark Power (Boss Battle / Finale): At the end of their journey, the hero must defeat the source of the dark power: a twisted incarnation of the seasonal spirits’ wrath that can use powers greater than the hero’s. If the hero is victorious, balance is restored to the land and the hero returns home to live the rest of their peaceful life.


The soundtrack is written in a primarily orchestral style with electronic elements. I started by coming up with a concept for a game in one of my favorite genres: adventure! I imagine the gameplay to be third person 3D, inspired by the feeling of Hyrule Warriors' bombastic combat but on a smaller scale where the player is fighting only a handful of enemies at a time. Story structure and art is inspired by Journey, especially the cell shading, environmental storytelling, and that it's dialogue-free.

The first thing I wrote were several chords that represented the emotional foundation for each motif; there are motifs for each season, a dark power, the hero/the village the hero hails from, and various spinoffs that link together from there. Once I had the raw material, I elaborated on each motif, extending them and changing their shape, until I had a solid horizontal structure to orchestrate. Each track took about 4 hours to pen, and an additional hour or so per track to mix and master. I usually write with the mix in mind from the beginning, so that step in the process usually goes pretty fast.

Since I was on a time crunch, I started and ended every step in Logic Pro X. The total runtime reaches 28m34s by my count, a new personal record in a number of measures (pun intended). In the last couple hours before submitting, my wonderful partner Colleen Butters whipped up an amazing piece of cover art for my project.

Message from the artist:
Thanks for checking out my project and I hope you like what you hear! I certainly had a ton of fun writing it late into the night.

Cover Art by Colleen Butters | https://twitter.com/SolarCitrus

Theme:

How does it fit the theme?
In the game, the hero's abilities are granted by spirits of the seasons, turning the hero into an embodiment/emissary of their will. Each of the four primary levels take place in a location that has been upturned by the twisted wrath of the seasons (e.g. level 1 is completely frozen over by a harsh winter). As the hero progresses through each season, they too change.

Link(s) of the submission on streaming services
https://soundcloud.com/user-924995175/sets/a-tale-of-seasons