Hey gamers!  Borealis here!

It's time for episode 4 of my behind the scenes devlog series!  This time, we journey into 2019 to take a good look at the creation of Venus: Improbable Dream's soundtrack, which was written and recorded entirely by myself, with the exception of a few special musical appearances!  Hope you enjoy this insight into the creation process.

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2019

New Year came and went, and I carried on writing with fervour.  In March, my commitments with the band I was in ended, giving me a lot more free time to work on the game.  To be honest, I had started to feel a bit bogged down by the apparently never-ending writing process.  I’ve always really enjoyed writing stories, but of course, I’d never attempted a visual novel with multiple endings and branching paths before, so it brought about a lot of rewriting and serious thought over how to make the story seem natural, believable and enjoyable.  However, I kept plugging away at it, and eventually, I sat there one night in shock – the entire story, with all its endings, had been solidified.  A little taken aback that I was finally there, I decided to give myself a break from writing narratives and focus on the part I’d been looking forward to almost more than anything – the soundtrack.

Before I began to write and record new material, there were a few instrumental tracks that I’d already created years earlier for other things, which got edited for this new project.  In fact, three of the tracks for Venus: Improbable Dream were reworked from the soundtrack I was making for a friend’s fangame for the YouTuber Markiplier, as the game unfortunately never got finished.  After re-purposing and sprucing up these pre-existing tracks, I went to work on writing and recording new ones, custom made for the game, and including both some tense and gloomy pieces to compliment Kakeru’s often downbeat and pensive moods, as well as some soft, brighter pieces to go with Haruka’s quiet optimism, as in addition to all sorts in between.  In the end, the soundtrack grew to a 34 piece album, including a special full vocal song!

Outside of the main soundtrack, there are also pieces that appear in the game that are by famous classical composers.  I decided to have classical music as the focus of the story’s music club for a somewhat personal reason; I took classical piano lessons as a young child, and so it’s a large part of my make-up musically, something that reminds me of being young and carefree.  I won’t reveal what they are, but there are seven different famous classical pieces for you to unlock in the game, depending on what your choices are, and one of them makes up a BIG plot point for the novel.  You’ll have to see if you can find them all once you play!

Overall, the soundtrack took only a few months to record, and I really enjoyed creating it.  Everything you’ll hear was performed/programmed by myself, so it really comes from the heart.  After this was over, I paused for reflection, and then realised that I needed to jump back into narrative mode – what came next was devising the actual dialogue that would appear in the game.  Now THAT was fun to start, and by fun I mean daunting.  I had to turn a massive document full of “the next day, Kakeru goes to school and this happens, and he feels this way, and this this happens” into an actual script of dialogue, complete with visual and audio cues that would signal how the music, backgrounds and character sprites would behave.  It was exhausting just to think about, but at the same time, I was excited to get started, so with Winter well and truly on the way, I set about putting myself into the first person perspective of our protagonist, Kakeru.

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Thanks for reading!  On Friday, we'll move into 2020 and explore the game's scripting/coding, as well as some other exciting areas of the game's creation!  In the meantime, have a good week~

Borealis