Description
The game I envisioned in my head, after much deliberation, was actually not a type of game ive ever played personally. As I find that most of my favorite games have shallow or repressed stories and focus time into the gameplay aspect.

A Walking Simulator

I couldn't look at the combination prompt and see anything interactive or an objective to complete. I hardly even saw an avenue for growth outside of blanket curiosity for the material.

In this game, you play as someone insignificant to the plot alone in a town which once harbored the regular hustle and bustle of common folk. They worked a job, used the land around them, made food, and gathered together for festivities. String lights and lounge chairs by the beach where the elderly would talk about their past, the men and women would fish, and the children would socialize in play. All of this no longer exist, as there are no people in this town, rather, just echos that there used to be.

The player will navigate the map and stumble across projections of the sights and sounds of the people who inhabited this place before. Throughout the snippets of story, the player will slowly start to hear murmurs from the echos of townsfolk indicating that some great upcoming excursion was taking place. More and more people unsure or unwilling to take this great journey with the rest of the town slowly being reminded of their importance and value, ultimately causing even the most stubborn old folk to embark on an expedition by sea to join a bigger population.

There is no great mystery, there is no impending disaster, there is only a community of people who once used this space gone to seek out bigger communities and grow a larger and more loving family.

Message from the artist
I used a blend of Minecraft OST and some of the work of Takashi Yoshimatsu's compositions for piano and strings to plot out these tracks.

This is my first time composing complete songs, and two of them to boot! I am a percussionist and had to learn how to write for stringed instruments and horns throughout this jam. Following numerous YouTube videos and hours lost to experimentation, I came up with these two songs and barely completed the arrangements and setting relative volumes (Which I botched) before the submission timeline closed.

Theme

One Summer Night

Picture theme

How does it fit the theme?
On watching the prompt appear for the jam, I felt a disconnect between what was said and what was shown: "One Summer Night" originally instills the feeling in me that this should be a fun, upbeat, high energy piece. When I think of summer, I am flooded with memories of nature, heat, togetherness, comfort, putting aside responsibility for the sake of self fulfilment to an extreme. I spent my time leading up to the jam listening to high energy and technically complex music from many of my favorite artist and games, so at face value, this prompt seemed like it could match. The Image posted along side the prompt left a deep schism between my understanding of the prompt and initial creative ideas. When viewing the image, I spent a decent amount of time taking in the colors and pieces, coming to a final conclusion that this doesn't look like a summer night. This looks like dawn falling on a lonely sea; somber. I see a singular person, seemingly lost in thought, with larger/baggy clothing as if preparing for a chill. She is standing under lights on a pier providing a warm glow with minimal surfaces to bounce from minus the dark wood of the pier and the surface of the water. To me this feels almost isolated, a bit cold, and out of place. Where are the people? Where are the boats? I couldnt help shake the feeling that this is a place where people used to be, but now sits abandoned. Someone saw this stretch of water and decided to build this tower extending out over the ocean like the first step of a staircase. Someone had to have ran wire from a main vein to power the lights shining down. Someone had to have thought this point important enough to install lights in the first place for night use. Where are the people or old rope or fishing line or nets or chairs? I oftentimes struggle with understanding my emotions so I brought the two pieces to my wife (a non-musician, but much more vividly articulates her feelings) and asked her for an opinion on what she feels with both of those pieces together. She said that in terms of games that made her feel something similar, she brought up Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, and Undertale. We both listened to a few of the songs she felt were relevant, I couldn't help but shake the feeling that these songs perfectly encapsulated the written theme, but did not touch on the image itself. When I told her my feelings about this disconnect, she basically just said: "Well, it is up to interpretation", in a manner that actually suggested: "Perhaps you are just wrong." - Point Taken and probably true (She made the cover art for me so she is also correct by default)

Link(s) of the submission on streaming services
https://soundcloud.com/ryan-ringo-179352904/sets/ost-composer-jam-8?si=9726b6e4d56d4f04903806f31bbd337f&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Number of tracks
2

Genre

Soundtrack use permission