Play The Will of the Wisps here

I thought I’d write a bit to add to Adam’s piece about the development of the music and audio for The Will of the Wisps. This was a wonderful project to work on, and I’m hoping you all will like it as much as we have.

The Concept

Music is always a tricky goal for a game jam -- like a game’s concept, it can be hard to guess how long it will take to nail down a musical idea. With that in mind, I started early this time, and began playing with musical themes toward the end of the first night, once we had the rough idea of our story in mind. It was roughly a 3 day process from there, as I revised, arranged (and rearranged) the parts, and (the most difficult part), divided up the different instruments to be able to be faded in and out dynamically, as things in the game change.

The game is a dark and spooky journey through a haunted forest, full of dangers both hidden and visible, and it was important that the music help create the mood to match the our artist's gorgeous visual world, and to help convey a sense of interaction with it.

The Composition

In total, the game’s main theme is divided into 5 tracks that each play for the full duration of the song (roughly 2:30). The main melody follows a piano, a small string quartet, and a few other instruments as accompaniment, which play throughout. Overtop of these, there are:

• a pair of “twinkly” tracks, twinned in a celesta and harp, that fade in upon collecting a firefly, meant to give a sense of magic to them;
• a percussion ensemble that begins to pound a kind of heartbeat into the song upon the presence of danger (I won't spoil the source of that danger),
• and a larger string section to add a kind of frantic rhythm to the melody when the danger gets to its nearest.
• The remaining fifth track is a looping set of ambient environmental sounds -- creaks, winds, moans, etc. -- to help situate the spookiness of the forest.

These all layer together as one song in the editor, which I then mixed down individually and balanced to be able to fade in and out dynamically, without hurting the overall mix. (Or, at least, that was the goal. I’m terrible at mixing, so….)

Making it Interactive

The technical side of that works through a Unity script I wrote to basically play and loop all five of these at once, setting the volume down on the “dynamic” four tracks, and then allowing scripted events in the main game code to kick off co-routines that would either fade in, hold, and fade out these tracks, or selectively set their volume to a particular value. (We used the latter to swell the “danger” tracks to particular volumes that correspond to your character’s proximity to, well, danger.)

The Tools

The music itself was written in Cubase, with instruments from both the Native Instruments Komplete set (their various synthesizers also providing the excellent creepy sound effects, in the form of some truly terrifying synths within its Absynth library), and Symphony Series. I also used a few instruments from CineSamples (the solo strings and handbells) and SoundIron (the harp).

I've been writing music for years, but each of these tools was new to me for this jam, so it was a great chance to dive into them and learn them within the context of a project. The dynamic/interactive audio work was all done in Unity.

I would truly love your feedback, so please do let me know if you have any questions, thoughts, or suggestions! Thanks for reading this, and, more importantly, thanks for trying our game!

First off, the three of us wanted to extend a huge thank you for all of the kind support and feedback you've given us for our game, The Will of the Wisps. We have been inspired to keep working on it, thanks to the encouragement and constructive ideas we've heard from so many of you. It really means a lot to all of us!

We are very excited to share a new take on this game, which we've been working on since the jam ended! (Links to the Post-Jam are in their own section of the game's page!)

What's New:

The Post-Jam version adds back in many of the ideas that time and editing decisions kept us from adding during the Jam itself. This version features:

• An expanded map with new areas and new artwork
• New threats hiding in the shadows, and elsewhere
• A faster, more dangerous enemy
• A new game mechanic the main character can use to try to survive
• New animations and ending sequence
• A ton of small bug fixes, visual improvements, and tweaks to the layout and pacing

Importantly, many of the additions here were things we had originally imagined (and in some cases even started to build) during the Jam. But as the limitations of the 72 hours became clearer, we moved away from a few of them in order to make sure that what we had felt complete.

All of the new artwork here was actually completed before the Jam ended, so it was important to us to give it a chance to finally be seen and included in the game. The music is a slight revision to the jam version, and now better paired with some of the (new and improved) sound effects and ambient audio we'd developed during the jam to make the world feel more atmospheric. And the gameplay features were things we'd been brainstorming, hoping they will make the game a bit more tense and interactive.

But, most importantly, we hope the changes make wise use of your feedback and constructive comments and critiques! Several of these changes were things we definitely agreed with as we read through your comments. We hope this smooths some of the original rough edges, and also explores some of the suggested improvements to the overall gameplay and feel.

Most of all, we very much hope this feels like a natural extension of the Jam version. It's a slightly different take on the same idea, and we'd love to hear your thoughts in comparison -- from anyone who has tried the original before, or anyone who is curious to try a before and after version now!

Please try the new version (and the old version!) of The Will of the Wisps, and let us know what you think! Thank you all again!

Hey everyone! We wanted to share our game, The Last Word, a strange little combination of the two incompatible genres of Real-Time Strategy and the Visual Novel, which we hope captures the strange and uniquely wonderful melodramas endemic to both of those genres.

You are ~~Imperial Space Marine~~ Human Legion Captain Fureus Maximus, a cheerless far-future hero, and captain of a planetary force, fighting back a swarm of aliens that have overrun the planet. Train and command your troops, and destroy their insectoid hive within the Spaceport they have overrun!

And, really, who needs boring old combat when you can have the thrill of colorful portraits and flowery prose?! (Yeah, we had a lot of fun with this theme.)

Try our game here! All feedback is greatly appreciated!

Looking for more reviews and feedback on my solo jam game, Proton!

Proton is a mini-puzzle game about a Battery Bot trying to restore power to a robotics facility, but he must use his own charge to activate the panels, doors, and conveyor belts that stand in his way. Along the way there are electrical hazards and recharge tiles that help get you through.

This was also a study in character animation, interactive effects, and audio -- I'd love to hear what you all think! All ratings and feedback very eagerly encouraged!

Find the game and more information here!