Jentu's First Jam!

This was my first ever jam I've participated in, itch.io or otherwise! It was a lot of fun even if it was nerve wracking trying to get everything done in time.

The type of game I had in my head while composing was some sort of "HD-2D" type aesthetic since there's a lot of blending of traditional SNES-era sounds as well as more complex virtual instruments. I draw a lot of inspiration from traditional RPGs and I figured this would be a similar kind of game, but in space.

I composed The One Who Swims in the Stars first since I was coming up with a ton of ideas and thought it would work well as a sort of "title sequence" type piece. The other two pieces took themes from the original piece as a starting point to try to flesh out a new situation or environment.

For Meteor Shower, the working idea was "battle theme", but it eventually, after adding more twinkly arpeggios, it started bringing up mental images of traveling quickly through a meteor shower. The piece isn't all stressful though; I tried to convey the mix of emotions someone might feel as they surf through the meteors- dangerous but beautiful.

For Moonlight, I used the first melody of The One Who Swims in the Stars to create a slower, more reflective piece.

DAW: Logic Pro X

Cover art created by me in Aesprite

Post Competition Reflections

So from other people's ratings and reviews, the main thing that I should work on for next time seemed to be mixing and theming.

I think I do need to practice mixing in general since I've solidly ventured away from chiptunes with this kind of music. The tracks I created were very center-focused and more instruments might have had more room if they were away from the center at all

Theming is a bit difficult. And this might be the biggest reason why I haven't actively sought out professional video game composition- I find it so hard to encapsulate a vague theme that sounds unique to my own sound that focusing on releasing albums individually might just be what I choose to do for the foreseeable future. Who know, I might get better at it. Though there was another jam I decided not to participate in because the theme was "freedom".

I am a bit worried with how highly I scored since it now gives fuel to the anxiety I'd inflict upon myself the next time around to maintain or improve my score. But if my creativity has to create new avenues to alleviate the anxiety (be that compose in a different style so I don't feel so personally attached to the score comparison or making it way more minimalistic a composition so there's less to worry about) I might come up with something new and interesting! The next jam I hopefully will be able to join and finish is on August 29th 2025. See you there!\