Before being a game developer, I've been a professional music composer for many years. I've also been a lifelong fan of RPG music, idolizing composers like Nobuo Uematsu and Koichi Sugiyama and being inspired by singers like Jennifer Stigile. Technically I worked on my first RPG soundtrack music as a high school sophomore, back in a time that would be dating myself. As a professional, I ended up working on many visual novels and dating sims, and an anime band I created became popular. But I never worked on as many RPGs as I wanted to, and never had the opportunity to do a complete RPG soundtrack. So this was (eventually) an opportunity for me to reach that goal.
The first piece I wrote for Paladin Dream was a vocal song called "Adriel's Hymn." Prior to Paladin Dream I was in demand writing vocal theme songs, and won an award for "Seasons Of The Wolf" from a game review website. However 2020 was also a difficult year for me involving an unusual amount of reliability issues with singers on important client projects. Because of this, I first arranged "Adriel's Hymn" using Vocaloid software in lieu of a real singer. Fortunately I had a positive relationship with a singer named Mioune, and I decided to offer her the opportunity to sing. While she lives in France, she also speaks English very well with a strong British accent which was a wonderful aesthetic choice for a game inspired by Arthurian lore. Suffice to say, Mioune's performance breathed tremendous medieval fantasy credibility compared to the robotic Vocaloid version. (Had she passed on the project, I probably would have kept the Vocaloid version because I was so frustrated with singers in general!)
A significant number of the tunes in Paladin Dream are songs that I first conceived in high school and college for friends who were aspiring game developers. Obviously I have more advanced skills and better production tools than were available in those days, but the melody and chords are the same. I also changed some ideas from my original arrangements to better fit the tone of the world of this game. Generally I wanted the player to feel relaxed while exploring a dream-like world with religious themes, accented by music box and choral singing elements. After doing client work for 10+ years, it was refreshing to know exactly what I wanted and do exactly what I wanted. I find myself to be more effective when I am able to play the game, compared to when a client tells me to copy a piece from some other game. In this case I didn't have to spend time trying to figure out how somebody else thinks.
Paladin Dream - Majestic Building
Paladin Dream - Starcross Mountain Range
Every cool RPG has an epic final boss battle theme, so I created a secondary arrangement of "Adriel's Hymn" to sound more lively and intense. Additionally, Mioune recorded vocals on an evil demon cult ritual worship hymn with made-up words. Later when expanding the scope of the game, I would love to create more vocal music and I'm still thinking about the approach. I'm not sure if it's appropriate to have a longer anime-like theme song for a story like this, or whether it might be fitting to create another religious hymn. Or both? It's always energizing to get feedback from players in terms of making further creative decisions.
"Nazarah Kadai Rahm" - Demonic Ritual Hymn
Currently Paladin Dream has 23 original music tracks totaling nearly 30 minutes of music. I hope that the players enjoy the music I created as a labor of love, and of course the soundtrack will also be available as DLC.
Please wishlist the game! Thank you all for your ongoing support of this project! I really appreciate it. 🙏
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1592120/Paladin_Dream/
All the best,
Matthew
HitherYon Games