One Of The Biggest Obstacles In Writing Irredeamable Was How Large And Spread The Cast Of Characters

One of the biggest obstacles in writing irredeamable was how large and spread the cast of characters had been. Most of the game was composed of disparate storylines whose characters rarely would intersect. One of the objectives of this game is to work with a much smaller and tighter cast of characters, hense the focus on a single extended family. It also brings the benefit that everyone has pre-defined relationships with each other.

This post introduces the flamebearers' main family. They are the main npc Jupe interacts with through the game and occasionally are fought as bosses. Thundercaller Jupe : The youngest of her siblings, she acts as the current matriarch of the family and is the strongest flamebearer alive. Tidebreaker Neptu: Second oldest member of the family. Neptu lives at the far coast with his husband and son, endlessly training amongst the boiling tides to regain his title as the strongest member of his siblings. Winddancer Ouran: Eldest sibling of the family. She lives in a village far above the highlands with her extensive family. She has been drifting away from the flamebearers current lifestyle in favor of caring for her village nad family, but still regularly trains to keep up her skills. Satur: The old patriarch of the family, Satur has since been banished to the forbidden lands for opposing Jupe's current rules. He is a survivor and a traditionalist, looking down on the flamebearers' current practices. Pluron:.... Venu: Elest child of Jupe. Venu has gathered a reputation has the fierce but kindly caretaker of the flamebearer home. Eri: Youngest of Jupe children. Eri is a frail and confused flamebearer, unsure of their place in the world and the power they hold. Jupe is still in the process of training them. Mar: Twin sibling of Mercy, Mar is a thrill seeker, always tracking the next big game hunt. They are responsible for providing food for the family and their servants. Mercu: Twin brother of Mar. Mercy is a frail but agile flamebearer, capable of achieving great speed and distances. His current role is to serve as a messenger, communicating information between the distant members of the family. Most of their designs are currently only at the silhouette level but progress is slowly being made as their role and concept is being solidified.

Composing music for game design and narrative purposes in The Dark Queen of Mortholme

With my lamentably limited knowledge of music, composing the Mortholme OST took than the size of the game perhaps warranted. I'm happy though, since I managed to explore in the main narrative ideas I'd wanted and hopefully made the most of the format's weird limitations.

The gameplay of Mortholme is formed of you as the Queen repeatedly defeating the Hero, and them coming back to try and squeeze a few additional seconds out of every attempt. That means a few things for the main battle theme:

Interruptability required

In the early game, the music will likely only play for a couple seconds at a time. Initially I'd wanted a rather moody and atmospheric theme (y'know, back to the FromSoft roots), but quickly discovered that interrupting a slow paced track just made it sound confused. Interrupting something dramatic, on the other hand--especially a bombastic build-up--sounds funny, which is exactly what smacking some uppity heroic figure into their sudden death with a giant mace should be, for the first time.

2. Further into the track = further into the narrative

The cool thing about the format is that the better the Hero does at the fight, the longer the music has time to play. As the relationship between the Queen and the Hero develops through the deaths and the dialogue, the player will likely get to hear later parts of the song.

It's like a chance at adaptive music without having to learn how to do it! By assigning the characters their own instruments and leitmotifs, the track can develop from "the Queen's domination" to "the Hero persisting amidst it" and finally into "the Queen must acknowledge the Hero" as the Queen's brass section begins to respond to the Hero's leitmotif (while ending on a darker chord).

3. Short is sweet

With the start-and-stop, there really aren't that many seconds the full track can run. I'm not even sure if most player will realistically hear the third passage, if the game ends up being balanced to go faster. But that freed up all my leftover enthusiasm for composing to be used on variants beyond the battle theme.

There's the ominous slow variant for dialogue; a hollow, barely even melodic version for when the Hero is not in the room (the music follows the "player", after all, and a video game boss has no life beyond their visits); a Hero leitmotif heavy dialogue variant; and as the last one being currently finalised, a high tempo battle variant for phase two with synths and rock drums and basically anything I can throw in to make it sound so FINAL BOSS TIME!!! that it makes me laugh. I don't know anything about whatever this genre is either but that's fine, I put an amp on an organ and it sounds outrageous.

Just some shitpost i made this morning out of screenshots from Google.

NieR

Going live soon with Irredeamable by @blackblooms! Come hang out!

Twitch

Twitch

I dont have much left to say about irredeamable (at least nothing im comfortable with spoiling for those who have yet to play the game) So i guess this is about the time where i should start talking about my current project.

Here above is a recreation of the design process for the main character. I had to get it all done pretty early since once i start working on the sprites and animations, i cant alter the design without redoing all of them. Aniway, i wouldnt really know where to begin talking about her, at least not today. So ill leave you all to comment and speculate for now. I`ll provide more hindsight on her character in the future once i figure out an angle.