BLUE

BLUE

In this OST, the story centers around a woman and takes place in the ocean of her mind. The game is intended to be a story-driven exploration/collector adventure game. I was very inspired by both the image and prompt themes and have created a soundtrack that encapsulates both, with themes of introspection and a vast array of internal emotions in the setting of a beautiful ocean-set world. I invite you to read along in the track descriptions while listening. Please enjoy!

BLUE: This track serves as the opening title sequence and opening theme for the game. The game opens with her falling through the sky and eventually crashing into the cerulean ocean. She is now back in the sea of thoughts and memories and is not sure how to escape. Drifting slowly downward in the clear blue water, she realizes that she has a chest tightness as if she was holding her breath, but she wasn’t inhaling the water either. She looks at her hands and feet and realizes that she sees the limbs of a child and realizes that she is wearing the pink kimono her grandmother gave her when she was young. Looking around, she starts to see things moving through the water, hazy at first, but then they become more clear. She recognizes a goldfish swimming by as one from her childhood. Swimming and eventually finding a bed of sea grass, she notices sprouting from the sand the sunflower she watered every day from the seeds she found in a field by her house. Countless memories appear in the ocean and the scene becomes filled with vibrancy. In the distance, though, she notices indistinct shadowy figures with red eyes darting back and forth just out of clarity. She feels calm, but cannot shake the feeling that something isn’t quite right. For the time being, she rests in the soft seagrass as the opening sequence fades into the title screen. In this track, I tried to capture the serenity of floating calmly in an azure ocean through various pads and a lot of reverb on the main piano melody. To get a more natural flow, I also refrained from exclusively using a strict metronome and performed the piano in large takes. I also introduced the feeling of contented worry in the middle section to represent the complex emotions the main character has.

DIVE: As the game opens, you see the woman, appearing as herself as a child, looking up to the sun’s rays shining through the water. She swims upward and eventually reaches the surface where she sees bright blue skies and a calm sea. Expecting to breathe, she still is not able to and feels the uncomfortable weight on her chest still. She then sees a small boat that she remembers from bath time as a child. She climbs on board and rests. In the distance she sees something floating in the water. She picks up the oars and slowly makes her way to the object when she realizes it is the yellow crayon that she recognized as her favorite crayon color. The crayon was enormous though. She lifted it on board and it stood upright in the center of the boat. Nearby, she also found her favorite pink blanket, so she hung it up on the crayon to act as a sail. The gameplay then opens to the ocean surface which serves as the overworld for the game. The boat becomes her dive boat with which she can travel to different areas of the ocean to dive into the various locations. In the overworld, she can collect items that represent memories which she can use for further boat customization, and thoughts that she can use as items with various effects through her adventure. This track was written with an adventurous vibe in 6/8: classic sea-faring track characteristics. I got creative with sound effects and instrument plug-ins to create the illusion of moving from underwater to above the surface to help connect it to the other tracks that are mostly based underwater.

WAVE: After collecting some items, the woman notices another boat in the distance. On board is a small man who looks suspiciously like a doll that she remembers once having. As the other boat approached, the small man waved (yes, that kind of wave) at her enthusiastically. He drifted up next to her boat and she realized it WAS her doll. He was always a comfort for her when she was little and she was happy to see a familiar face. He explained that he also was a collector of thoughts and memories in order to help keep them safe (but he also favored some ideas and memories over others) so he offered to make a deal that he would trade his wares with those that the woman had collected. After bartering, they bid farewell and he sailed off into the horizon. This short theme is intended to be the shop theme for the game and is a nice reprieve whenever the doll shopkeeper drifts by.

FLOW: After exploring the surface, the woman finds a shallow coral reef that she decides to explore first. The sun is high in the sky casting radiant gleams that shimmer through the shallow water and highlight the vibrancy of the reef teeming with life. She dives in and swims with the fish, turtles, and jellyfish. Having fun, she feels the weight on her chest ease slightly. She then notices a bright blue glowing object floating ahead. Seeing this bright glow sparks a memory of a feeling inside that she can’t remember the origin of. It feels warm and cozy, but sad at the same time. Following the glow, it takes her through the reef until she finally catches it. When she holds it in her hands, she remembers parts of her life as an adult. She sees herself crying and staring out the window, not feeling able to move. She can’t remember anything else and the memory fades. She notices other similar glows far in the distance and she realizes that these are key pieces of information and that maybe they will help her return to her life from the depths of her mind. This leads to a key gameplay element in that she has to navigate through the different areas in the ocean to collect the glowing memories. In this track, I wanted a fun but serene groove to explore this first benign area. To help give the song a ~flow~ vibe, I used gentle and overall soft instrumentation, used simple diatonic harmonies, and I automated a lot of panning to gently sway back and forth.

SINK: The woman explores many areas in the vast ocean and recovers many memories, both pleasant and unpleasant, but all leading her closer to remembering how she ended up stranded in the ocean of her mind. One of the last locations to explore was in an area of the ocean that is stormy and littered with sharp rocks. When she has collected enough memories and thoughts, she is able to fortify her ship well enough to traverse the treacherous narrow passageways. This theme plays when she makes the dive and finds herself in sunken ruins. The shadowy figures were now numerous and darting very close by. She was now able to make out the shapes a little better because they were so close, and they looked like ghostly swordfish and squids. Each time they swam near, she could feel her heart beating faster, her stomach tighten, and her throat close up in a fearful panic. She deduced that these creatures must represent her emotions of fear and anxiety. She wondered why they were so densely populated in this location. Using many positive thoughts and memories that she collected throughout her journey, she was able to fend off the enemies that were starting to make attacks at her. Making her way through the ruins, she finds the last glowing object, but this one is much larger than the others and is a grisly crimson color. When she reached out to grab it, suddenly a deep and dark memory was unlocked and she was filled with horror. She remembered being a little girl wearing the pink kimono, coloring with her yellow crayon, with her blanket and her doll, and sitting in a dark room alone for hours waiting for her mother to return. Her mother would often lock her in that dark room for hours, hungry and waiting often through the night before her mother would return. One day, her mother did not return and she was left for 3 days alone in the dark room before her grandmother found her emaciated and sickly. It was at this time in her life when she learned that, in order to survive, she had to retreat into her own mind to protect her from the harsh realities of the real world. She never saw her mother again, but through the rest of her childhood and into adulthood, she would occasionally involuntarily fall into the ocean of her mind. As a protective measure, her memories were dispersed to shield her from the pain of her traumatic childhood. This track uses more synthesized instruments to demonstrate that the main character is getting out of touch with herself and the fear and anxiety is making it difficult to remain calm. The strong kick drum is meant to represent the heart palpitations she feels.

DEEP: Now having collected the majority of her memories, she was desperate to return to the real world. She could not figure out why she was still stuck in the mind ocean. Suddenly the sky darkened in the distance in a direction she had not ventured before and a large glow emerged from the sea. There must have been one last memory that she needed to collect, but she now could feel the shadowy bad emotions growing in number and were traveling closer than they dared before. She knew that going to collect the last memory would force her to face something terrible. Going to the area of dark skies and glowing water, she made one last dive. Swimming deep through the dark and murky water, she felt low rumbling vibrations through the water and noticed that in the dark below, it seemed there was something big with bright red eyes swimming rapidly toward her. She deftly propelled herself to the side and the creature streamed past her. She could then see more clearly that it was a large shadowy sea serpent that made her heart sink and almost completely immobilized her. This sea serpent was the embodiment of the trauma she suffered and has never been able to face before now. This time was different though, there was one more memory that she knew that was more important than her fear of the snake. Using everything she had learned and collected throughout her journey, she fought the snake head-on with a newfound bravery. After a long duel, she eventually vanquished the beast. The last memory appeared before her and glowed a brilliant blue. Tired, but with her head held high, she reached out for the memory. This track is the final boss theme for the game. Using tropes from other water villains (like low double basses playing neighboring tones from Jaws, as an example), I created an epic battle theme fit for the serpent. I tried to encapsulate the emotions that the main character would be feeling in this situation, starting with mystery and fear, leading to dread, then determination. When the violin melody emerges, it has an element of courage to it that wavers with stabs of anxiety, and these emotions all intermix throughout the battle, until finally there is a somber resolution. 

BREATHE: Grasping the final blue glowing memory, she suddenly felt all her worries and fears wash away. She heard the sound of a crying baby. Her own baby. She remembers that she is now a mother and the intense fear of turning out like her own mother is what had cast her into the ocean at the start of the game. But now she had faced the trauma and finally would be able to move on with her life. The shadowy figures were darting away far in the distance and she could feel the tightness in her chest lifting. She felt more serene than ever before. Every muscle in her body was finally able to relax after so many years of visceral anxiety. She was able to let go. She closed her eyes and started floating upward toward the surface. A blue light shone brightly from the surface and she felt nothing but desire to go toward the blue. When she emerged from the water, she was finally able to breathe, and there she was no longer in the ocean. In her arms was her newborn daughter. She knew then that the ocean would always be there, but never again would she be cast in involuntarily. Finally, it was time to start living.