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Across the miles's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Composition | #6 | 4.516 | 4.516 |
| Storytelling | #6 | 4.387 | 4.387 |
| Creativity | #25 | 4.161 | 4.161 |
| Overall | #26 | 4.129 | 4.129 |
| Impression | #35 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Quality | #114 | 3.581 | 3.581 |
Ranked from 31 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Description
The soundtrack was all composed in sibelius and mixed in reaper. I’ve used live recorded guitar and melodica and a huge number of free VSTs.
Game is a 2.5D puzzle platformer like inside/little nightmares, with cuphead style boss fights.
1 - One Summer night - Title
This track plays during the opening titles and menu. It was written to play over the concept art theme for the game.
2 - Bike Ride - Cutscene
The opening cutscene to the gameplay. The girl is shown packing her bag for a trip abroad and she has a ferry to catch! She then gets on her bike and takes off, with you (a little plushie character) tucked away in a side pocket. She’s riding through the streets when suddenly a raccoon jumps out and attacks you both! There's a struggle as she tries to shake him off and in the choas you are flung from the bag and left behind! Now you're stuck in this massive city, unsure of what to do next.
3 - City Streets
Level 1 - the city streets. You navigate your way through the dimly lit streets, desperate for some direction.
4 - Robert the trash gremlin
It’s that raccoon again! Why is it so interested in you? The theme and dialogue music for the mischievous raccoon that knocked you off the bike.
5 - Karen the krow
You met a friendly crow named Karen, and they have some directions for you! How helpful. The illusive crow’s main theme, played during dialogue.
6 - Boss fight ROBERT
Oh no, it’s the raccoon again and it’s angry. Well, time to get back at that stupid trash gremlin. Boss music for a fight with Robert where he throws trash at you!
7 - Mr Grizzles
Meet mr grizzles, the big scary grizzly bear who thinks you look delicious! Music that plays during dialogue.
8 - The Forest
The deep dark forest! Music plays during the second level
9 - Boss fight GRIZZLES
That bear has finally decided you look too delicious to pass up, despite your pleas! Time to fight for your life! Boss music for the fight
10 - Shoreline
You’re so close now, but it’s a stormy night and you’re not sure if you’ll make it in the end! Plays in the third and final level of the game.
11 - Boss fight KAREN
What’s this?! Betrayal?! It was Karen pulling the strings this whole time! She manipulated the raccoon into attacking you, told the bear you were delicious, and all to get the shiny beads in your eyes! Time to defend yourself against this devious crow! Boss music starts with a short dialogue section with the big reveal, then goes into a loop for the boss fight.
12 - Reunited
You made it to the ferry in time and have been reunited! Congratulations! Music plays during the closing cutscene of the game and hits the credits when the piano comes in.
Message from the artist
I spent most of the week on this project, it was so much fun to make and I learned alot, and I hope to learn even more listening to everyone else's entries! This is my first ever OST jam and I can't wait to do more in the future!
Theme
How does it fit the theme?
The gameplay takes place over the course of the night and ends when you are reunited with the girl waiting for a ferry in the picture.
Link(s) of the submission on streaming services
https://soundcloud.com/r4ry_donovan/sets/across-the-miles
Number of tracks12
Genre
Soundtrack use permission
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Comments
Listening through now! this is great stuff already!
Legend! I'll check yours out real quick!
Hey! this was a ton of fun!
There was great storytelling along with the written idea and it was a good listen. There were a few things Id like to see in the future like some more instruments or exploring conversations between two pieces. Like what does a conversation between the racoon and crow sound like?
As a concept, it was a great time!
They only speak to the player really, I had planned to have tracks for when the crow interupts the other boss fights and her theme would play over the boss theme in a certain way (she's portayed as a saviour and guide until the end when her true motives are revealed). Glad you liked it!
Truly impressive, an excellent work! Approaching your music from the score clearly shows how well you can address orchestration challenges, and it highlights your wide command of different styles. I could also hear your inspirations and the composers you look up to, and it was a real pleasure since they happen to be among my favorites as well. I enjoyed it thoroughly from start to finish; it is very complete and coherent throughout.
I think this would make a fantastic soundtrack for the game, the kind of soundtrack that makes you want to play the game just to experience the music. I would love to hear some of these ideas performed live one day, as it’s always difficult to emulate certain instruments, especially considering the amount of music you managed to create in the time we had for the jam. But your vision comes across so clearly that it hardly matters, I simply loved it. Nothing more to add other than congratulations on such an incredible achievement.
Thank you! It means so much to me that you checked it out and enjoyed listening! I really aspire to make music that I want to listen to so this is the highest form of praise, I'm so glad that everything worked for you! There's not much time left on ratings but I'm definitely going to check your submission out.
I like the variety, great stuff!
This was awesome! Each song is super unique but compliments the overall story very well. Listening from start to finish is like going on a little journey, you can really imagine these scenarios you have created with the music. All of these tracks are great but my favorite has to be Mr. Grizzles, its so catchy. Well done, this is a great submission!
Thanks!Just realising now but that track is basically a full length version of a 6 second track from undertale lol
It's wild to imagine someone could have made this within the timeframe. Wild variety of tracks with expert execution. There's a pretty good chance you'll win your first jam, and a virtual certainty you will win many of them if you keep this up.
I don't know, from what I've heard the standard is incredibly high! Thankyou for your kind words, I'll check out your submission in a sec!
"City Streets" had me nodding my head instantly. Lots of variety in each track while still having a really consistent sound and theme throughout. "The Forest" was an interesting change of pace from what came before it tonally, but still felt very cohesive. We went practically castlevania-esque for the final boss fight (nice guitar work on that btw!) The whole album is very whimsical and boppy, really a fun experience through and through.
And damn, Karen did us dirty.
Thanks for checking it out! On a bit of a break at the moment (finally playing silksong) but will have a listen to your soundtrack when I get a chance!
sweet little collection of songs. I‘m quite astonished on what you‘ve been able to accomplish with free VSTi. And also the sheer number of songs and their length is just bonkers. Incredible.
Each song felt quite unique and with its own identity and told their own little story. Normally I would say, that quality should go over quantity, but your compositions are quite nicely done. So no you have been hitting quite the sweetspot.
I was just here for the crow picture and listening to Karen’s theme I was instantly reminded of some old Monkey Island songs, so it resonated with me in a doubly manner very well.
Geez your mastery of composition is impressive as hell and how did you do so much in one week with that quality is beyond me lol.
What an incredible job you made here, it's a perfect OST through and through I'm just dumbfounded by so much good stuff!
Thanks for checking it out! Did you host indiecritical jam few weeks ago? Did some composing for a submission!
Damn YES I did ahahah I didn't even recognize you from your post on #music-corner that's awesome lol
I felt like I was back on the streets of Sinnoh.
I really enjoyed the journey. The compositions were all fun and unique from one another. The work you produced is fun and definitely would work well with the story provided. I liked the name Robert the Trash gremlin. It made me laugh.
The work speaks for itself and it shows a great level of detail, character and enjoyment.
Solid stuff :)
Think i used timpani and some horns from diamond/pearl soundfonts! Thanks so much for listening!
how did you make 12 tracks in just one week thats insane and THAT ITS GOOD???? it reminds me of like... hmm... cuphead soundtrack. OH WAIT YOU MENTIONED IT IN YOUR DESCRIPTION
anyways i really like how it went out and the story is really impressive. awesome submssion you got here
it's also my first time joining the jam so GOOLDUCK TO USS, to the best of this jam!
Would love to work on a game like cup head:) Yours is next on my list I think!
A really great soundtrack, it actually felt like I was listening to something from a game. I really enjoyed it. I left my thoughts on a few of the tracks, but to sum it up:
The composition for all of the tracks is really strong, and I never got bored while going through the soundtrack. Every song felt distinct and conveyed its intended feeling perfectly, and a bunch of them were just straight up bops lol. On the other hand, the instruments that actually play these beautiful melodies felt a bit inconsistent. Some of them feel very soundfont-esque while other are from "higher quality" vsts (I recognised the BBC Symphony Orchestra clarinets and bassoons at the start of Bike Ride for example, if I'm not mistaken), combine that with a few instruments that are a little too loud, and it can make the experience occasionally feel a bit muddy, especially in earlier tracks (Later tracks fared off better I in that regard I think). It's not a big issue, but it's certainly worth talking about. I feel like if this soundtrack had better instruments and mixing, it would be absolutely masterful.
One Summer Night is a really good main theme. It sets up the game's emotional core perfectly.
Bike Ride is a great track befitting of a cutscene. Some stuff like the bike sound effects feel a bit too loud, but I could actually picture the cutscene in my head while it was playing. Awesome stuff.
City Streets is really good, fits the busy city landscape from the point of view of a small character really well. It reminds me a bit of this song.
The theme songs for each characters are very distinct and recognisable. Rehearing that one part from the opening cutscene when listening to Robert's track was a treat. Same thing can be said for Karen, altho I like hers more, personally.
Mr Grizzles' theme is a treat, it's one of my favs, especially the bass + guitar combo with the amazing drumwork. Although the brass at around 0:50 and 1:26 is way too loud lol
The forest is really great. The melody is melancholic and somewhat beautiful, I also find that you got better at mixing the different instruments' volume on this one. It doesn't really have any problems in that regard.
I haven't commented on the boss fight themes, I think them being just the normal themes with stronger percussions and buildups is pretty fun. I enjoyed the electro swing feel on Grizzles' one.
Shoreline is really great, probably my favourite simply because of the guitar. It's amazing.
Karen's boss theme, instead of just adding onto her normal theme song like the other one, is a full on complete remix reusing her leitmotifs. The electric was a big surprise considering the rest of this soundtrack's more orchestral. I caught on a few other leitmotifs here like the main theme's and Grizzles, good job on that.
The big, triumphant orchestral intro of reunited followed by a reprise of the main theme felt really cathartic after going through the soundtrack. I hope someone can make this into an actual game someday lol I'd love to see this play out. The very last notes played by the cello and string was the icing on the cake.
I hope you keep making more music, your stuff has a lot of potential.
Thanks so much for listening and for all of your thoughts, I agree completely with your criticisms! The scope was quite big on this project and I was working on mixing right up till the deadline. If I think it's worth it I'll remaster everything taking into account all the feedback and anything I didn't get around to doing before submitting. Out for a bit but I'll make sure to check out your soundtrack when I get back!
Also I did a lot of experimenting with different instruments throughout the week to get the sounds right and balance the whole soundtrack but found it really difficult without a game to write for, and I couldn't quite balance the soundfonts and sampled instruments (as you say). I'm still quite new to working in a DAW so if anyone has suggestions for sound libraries that will compliment my writing style I would love to hear them! This comment is really helpful, thanks for putting so much thought into it!
Thanks for responding. The fact that you're still new to all this DAW stuff is pretty cool, and honestly the strong composition does help in mitigating the scarce mixing problems. Listening to your soundtrack, here are a few stuff I'd recommend (Assuming you don't already have those) (These go from most likely to be useful to you to maybe not as important, I also assume you already have a soundfont player, but if you don't, Sfzorando is a popular pick, I personally prefer Juicy, it's more simple and to the point):
- The SGM Soundfont is the gold standard when it comes to soundfonts in general. It has probably the highest quality instruments out of any other soundfonts I've used (the pianos are really amazing on this one lol). Of course, as with any soundfonts, it will require you playing with velocity, pitchbending, volume control and effects to get the sound you're looking for, but this one stands out as it already sounds really good out of the box. I wouldn't be surprised if you had it already. If you're not gonna use anything else from this list, I recommend downloading this
- There's a ton of other soundfonts out there that some might recommend, usually a lot of older games have soundfonts made for them by fans, so if you for example played Mother 3 and wanted to use the instruments from that game, you're in luck!
Some soundfonts I use often:
- The free instruments from LABS, lots of really good stuff there. It's mostly famous for it's soft piano instrument, which I find myself using a lot. There's also a few drumsets there I find myself using often (One in particular can be found in the Undertale soundfont lol) as well as some nice guitars and strings.
- MT Power Drumkit is a free drumkit tailored specifically for more rock oriented tracks, but is still really versatile. Its samples are high quality and I find myself always resorting to its hi-hats and cymbals, they're pretty good. It even contains pre-made midi drum patterns that you can use in your songs. While the plugin is free, it does have a weird little "intro" screen that requires you to skip it each time the vst is loaded. The intro screen goes away if you make a 9 dollars donation to the team who made the plugin. It's a bit annoying, but it's more than worth it considering that thing is free (I'm sorry to say that I never made the donation myself haha)
- Kontakt 8 is basically a plugin reader: Letting play other plugins made specifically for Kontakt. There's free and paid stuff in there that tends to be of high quality. The caveat is that Kontakt itself isn't: There's a version of it called Kontakt Player that is free, but will only work for 15 minutes each session before needing to be re-loaded, which is really annoying. Add to that the fact that some free plugins only work in the PAID version of Kontakt, and you've got yourself a few problems. If you're willing to deal with the free Kontakt Player's quirks, the SAM Orchestra has some really nice sounds to it
- I'm not sure whether or not this really fits your style, but S8QL has some really nice retro synth presets you might like. Actually using this thing is pretty hard compared to a more modern synth like Vital, I often find myself just tweaking the presets.
- Similar to last entry, Lokomotiv is a nice synth with cool presets, although they can be quite harsh in actual songs even if they sound good by themselves.
- Last and maybe least, the VST I use the most is Xpand!2. It doesn't have the best instruments and it's not free either: You could only get it for free for a limited time in 2017. However I always use it as a starting point for a lot of my tracks, and I grew attached to its weirder synths. Some of its instruments are also pretty good, to be fair.
I don't recommend buying it (It's like 100 dollars it's really not worth it lol, people often say it's just a worse version of a plugin called Omnsiphere, which I've never used), but I thought I should at least mention it.
- You can probably find other cool stuff if you go to websites like Plugins4Free, although it's very time consuming. A lot of stuff there just straight up sounds horrible or is literally unusable lol. But if you're bored one afternoon and you don't have much else to do, it can be fun to look there for free stuff.
That's all for the stuff I use, maybe others can point you in the right direction. You already got the important part figured out, which is the composing, so all of this should be a breeze lol
Good luck!
You're the gift that keeps giving! I use soundfonts from earthbound and Pokémon diamond/pearl lol, I make synths in vital, have used the power drums, lots of stuff from labs, there's a the sine player that Berlin orchestra runs in has stuff too. Got Kontakt but nothing from there took my fancy yet. Going to keep coming back to this comment I think for my next project! Listening to your soundtrack now!
Update, the soundtrack is incredible, anyone reading should check it out immediately.
Wow, 12 tracks of this quality in a week is impressive.
Thanks, checking out your game now!
This is so damn good dude. Awesome compositions, super cohesive storytelling, gives a great sense of the characters. The little bit of live instrumentation makes me want to hear the whole thing done live (or at least with really nice VSTs). Well done.
Me too! Wish I had a proper studio, if you isolate acoustic guitars I'm sure you'll be able to hear traffic bleeding through lol
WOW, in terms of composition this is definitely in my personal top 3 for this jam. Crazy that you did 12 tracks. City Streets and Mr Grizzles are my favorites. The drum break towards the end of City streets is amazing. Super well done!
Thank you so much, all my scores are downloadable pdfs if you're curious (not formatted at all and I did some composing in the DAW but big band tracks especially it's all there) Have your soundtrack on repeat at the moment, will leave my comment in a bit!
Wow, absolutely solid compositions, and so impressive how much you did in the time. The harmony and counterpoint is top notch throughout (e.g. the sax harmonies on City Streets!) Some of these would sound incredible with live players (again, City Streets - imagine that with a jazz band!) But the style is coherent as is. Also loved The Forest, I got some David Wise vibes with that and a few others, which is perfect for a puzzle platformer. Well done!
I would love to have done that, if only i was still at college! If I had access to a good quality big band that would have just been the whole soundtrack though haHA Thanks so much for checking it out and leaving your thoughts and very well done on your own entry too!
Bike ride made me smile real big when it became all whimsical!
A lot of the tracks. particularly the whimsical ones reminded me of Mario and Luigi games like superstar saga
The OST is super varied and interesting throughout. It kept my attention well as a very long entry which is important.
Having boss fight versions of earlier song ESPECIALLY reminds me of Mario RPG games. Its a vibe and I love it (:
The boss fight tracks were my favorite since I like high energy stuff.
Great work on the whole OST! A fantastic entry!
Thanks so much for your kind words, I know you're rating a lot of games so it means a lot that you listened to everything!
All the tracks have great cohesion and love the storytelling, awesome work! 💖 Love the boss fight Robert track!
Thanks! That one came out quite well I think! Checking out your music now!
Getting twelve tracks done is quite the impressive feat! "Across the MIles" was fun to listen to, reminded me of the Banjo Kazooie soundtrack. This submission is at its best on the upbeat swing tracks like "City Streets" and "Mr Grizzles"--the harmonization in the former is awesome. Nice work!
Thankyou! I love those little soli harmonizations, they're like little musical puzzles. Plenty of resources on how to do them convincingly if you can get past all the music theory! Checking out your game now!
I enjoyed the diversity of your tracks. My favorite tracks are "One Summer Night" for its melodic piano, "Karen the Krow" for its jazzy saxophone, and "Boss fight GRIZZLES" for its electro swing.
Man that felt like an actual soundtrack right there, can't imagine the potential of this with pro VST's and stuff ! Feels like you listen a lot of Ghibli soundtracks especially the two first tracks felt like it ! If I had to choose I'd say that One summer night, Bike ride, The forest and Boss fight KAREN were my favorites. Great job !
Big fan of Joe Hisaishi's work! Getting free string vsts to behave was a nightmare. If i get hired for a serious game I'll invest in all the expensive stuff haha
Thanks for listening, I'll go check out your soundtrack!