[Request] Recruiting OCRemixers to create Original Tracks for a Student Game

[Igami]

Hello OCRemix community!

Thank you to all who have contacted me with interest in composing for my project. I have come to an agreement with an OCRemixer who will be handling the entirity of this request. I hope that within a few more months the music will be completed and ready to share with the rest of the OCRemix community. Once again, thank you to all who have contacted me and those who have taken the time to read my request through and through.

My name is Alex Ku, and I am majoring in the Game track at The College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan. Come next semester, I will be diving into my Senior year and producing a Senior Thesis. For a Game student, that entitles creating an independent game, or at least a demo of it. Considering all the elements of a respectable game, I found it necessary to find a means to include quality music to make this project as successful as possible, and when I think quality video game music, the first thing that comes to mind is OCRemix. I have been listening to OCRemix for over 10 years with ‘Kick My Axe’ by Jeremy Johnson, Midee, and prozax being my first exposure, and quite frankly am extremely excited to reach out to everyone here.

As such, here I stand (or sit, rather) with this request for the OCRemix community. I am in search of one or more remixer(s) who is willing to create original music for my game.

Please allow me to elaborate.

Request Workload

Before I jump into a pitch and synopsis of my game concept, I believe it is more practical to begin by establishing exactly what my request entitles.

For the game demo that I will be creating, I will need tracks that fit into the following niches:

1. Title Screen/Game Theme

2. Town Theme in two variations – Winds and Strings version of same melody

3. Action/Combat in two variations – Winds & Strings

4. Moment of high tension/Escape

With everything accounted for, this will be a grand total of 6 original tracks with each track panning out to roughly 2:30 to 3:30 in length. I would like the Town Theme to be a more environmental soundscape that the Action/Combat track would amplify to fit its niche. Tracks do not have to loop. I would need the final versions of these tracks by mid April 2015.

I am also willing and expecting to pay for these tracks.

Audio references will be provided further down this post, but for now this is what it boils down to.

The Concept

In order to get the imagination juices flowing, I would like to take a moment to briefly pitch an overview of my game concept. I am attempting to summarize as much as possible without hashing out crucial information, but please feel free to ask me to elaborate or just ask questions in general if anything is unclear.

Setting: Europe, 1800s-1900s

Genre: Fantasy, Adventure

Art Direction: Realism

The backbone of my concept comes from the desire to create a double story, double main character game set up as featured in titles like Threads of Fate and Muramasa: The Demon Blade. With that as my working space, I began searching for a concept that could hold a duality that would not only make both characters important, but connected. The solution I decided upon was the concept of time and the duality of past and future. As I did further research and communicated with my peers, I stumbled upon something known as psychometry, or otherwise known as object reading, that I could use as a takeoff point and key game mechanic. In a nutshell, psychometry is a psychic ability where the user is capable of interacting with an object of unknown origins but is still capable of depicting those origins without the need of extra research. The story of an object told from an object’s point of view, as I like to put it. With one character who is past psychometric and the other who is future psychometric, I invented a world where time is experienced and manipulated by exclusive human abilities rather than human technology and science.

The game begins in a child arc manner similar to that of Tales of Graces. The two main characters, Kite and Lily, both suffered their own critical family losses as children and encounter one another at an orphanage. Prior to encountering one another, Kite and Lily had never been in contact with another human who possessed any form of their ability. Kite, who is past psychometric, has always lived his life fluctuating between seeing visions of the past and experiencing the present. Lily, who is future psychometric, is victim of a similar situation in future context. As they were growing up with their parents, that was a normal perception of time for them. They had no awareness as well as no control over their gift. However, after interacting with one another at the orphanage, their instabilities with the past and future overlapped, and they experienced a true, continuous present for the first time. This contact opens their eyes to the fact that their experience of time is different from the rest of the orphans, and therefore the rest of the world, and their sense of chronology is lost. The childhood arc is spent establishing that Kite and Lily are the key players, that they have an immature ability that could use some improvement, and concluding with their separation and departure from the orphanage that leads them to take initiative over their own lives now that they cannot rely on one another for stability.

As Kite and Lily mature into adults, they become masters of the art of psychometry and reign complete control over the fundamentals of their ability. They can interact with objects to learn more about the past or future through what that object experiences and use that information to their advantage, whether that is for basic survival or primary story progression. Overtime, their abilities evolve even further, and they become obstructed by other individuals who possess similar abilities and use them to suppress Kite and Lily. Each party becomes obsessed with manipulating time in favor of improving or sustaining their own lives, which usually entitles destroying others.

As the game revolves around the cooperation between two main characters and a possessive, conscious control over the element of time, I have finalized the game title to stand as “Our Minute.”

Within the boundaries of a one year student project, this concept will be executed as a playable demo where the player controls either Kite or Lily as a child within the orphanage. They are able to visit the rooms of their fellow orphans, but instead of the doorways leading to actual rooms, the doors will lead to previews of primary game mechanics that will be experienced as an adult displayed from the intended game camera angle. As Kite and Lily finish their rounds, they will end up in the central lobby where an example of time stabilization will take place between the two, concluding the demo.

Themes and References

Assuming the above text digested well, I believe it would be helpful to communicate some big themes and ideas in order to zero in on the approach to music and mood.

Themes

-The more you learn, the less you know

-Exploration and patient but relentless pursuit

-Hopelessness masked by an unwavering dream

-There is no good or evil, just opposing interests

References – Games that sink in kind of the way I would like mine to

-Threads of Fate

-Legend of Mana

-Tales of series

-Final Fantasy

References – Audio reference for sound samples and style

The biggest influence that I would like to hear the music take from would be from an MMORPG known as CABAL Online. Please take a moment to listen to some map themes.

I don’t know enough about music to talk about what makes me like these tracks as much as I do, but something that sounds like it could fit in this world’s soundscape under the niches I designated above would be exactly what I’m looking for.

I also would like to push strongly for influence from Nier’s soundtrack, such as “The Temple of Drifting Sands” and “Gods Bound by Rules.”

I would like to see where things go from here before I continue to edit and refine this request. This previous semester was spent solidifying my idea and plan for execution, so unfortunately I do not yet have any assets or original visuals to include just yet. If you would like to contact me privately about this request, please direct e-mails to my college e-mail, aku@collegeforcreativestudies.edu

Thank you for taking the time to read this request. I look forward to the opportunity to work with an OCRemixer!

Edited May 13, 2014 by Igami