Featuring over 4 hours of original music, the Shinogi Chess Club OST is finally available to the public!
Get the soundtrack here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1919300/Shinogi_Chess_Club__Soundtrack/
Content details
This is the complete soundtrack for Shinogi Chess Club, written and produced by Matt Enad, solo developer at RobProductions. Includes nearly 4 and a half hours of original music from the Shinogi Chess segments and novel scenes! This release also contains the full versions of tracks made for cutscenes and marketing, portions of which were previously unheard in the final game. Mp3 files are provided in addition to high-quality FLAC exports for all songs.
This OST features a variety of moods and themes which accompany Himiko's story as she explores the school and battles opponents across each chapter. The motifs of certain characters are repeated across multiple songs during key moments of the game. Many references from previous RobProductions games are also showcased, including full remixes and remasters of original music from those titles! Disc 1 contains story and cutscene music from all 4 chapters, along with the menu and credits themes. Disc 2 contains the Shinogi Chess tracks from all opponent matches and tutorials.
Download size: 650 MB, or 2 GB for HQ FLAC audio
The Soundtrack is 10% off during this first week, so grab it quickly if you're interested!
My Music Journey
In the realm of music production, I've come a long way since my first Steam game! Skyway featured only a few original music tracks and they were quite out of place compared to the rest of the experience. It was only when Burden of Proof started development that I devoted time to crafting a consistent theme to accompany the game's tone. So I played around with some themes on the piano and came up with a few songs to accompany the testimony scenes for the game. Expanding off of those, I tried to keep the same instrumentation and key for the investigations and things seemed to fall into place from there! These songs were pretty simplistic compared to what I'm able to do now, but they worked well to provide a solid mood for the trials. However, I was still only able to make about 50 minutes worth of songs which wouldn't truly cover all of the game content, so I had to pull from freely available song libraries as well.
Iron Reckoning was the first game I worked on which featured a completely original soundtrack. This is where I really started to bring in my "listening music" composition techniques to my "game music" tracks. I'm talking about audio mixing, EQ, sidechaining, reverb effects, and layered instrumentation. I tied in many of the songs through a few key instruments - the organ, a background string section, certain synths. I really worked hard not only to improve the quality and complexity of these songs, but the quantity too. I created over 2 hours of music which was just barely enough to provide unique tracks for all the levels and cutscenes. But it was at this point that I realized associating melodies with specific characters or ideas would yield huge payoffs when they used across multiple songs.
For Shinogi Chess Club, I really considered this OST as an extension of the principles I took on for Iron Reckoning. You can probably hear the similarities when it comes to the organ and synth choices, but I also tried to bring back the core of what BOP set up by introducing some new hip-hop elements to the mix. "Persistence Clarified" ended up being the first true song for this game, and most of the other tracks are based on some way off of that. I really loved the main theme played by the single violin and after reusing it so many times, it resulted in a key idea which I felt was practically overused in the OST haha. Wanting to challenge myself, I tried to come up with new ways of using the violin theme without making it sound exactly the same. Examples: the piano version played in "Fate of the World", the 3/4 version played in the "Performance" set, the chord version used in "Fracture Individualized", and the Iron Reckoning-infused Monarch theme version in "Cultivated Suppression". I'll probably talk more about how I use the different themes in a future post, but it goes without saying that I tried very hard to perfect my craft and improve on what came before in every aspect.
Motif Revivals
Since Shinogi Chess Club ties in closely to Burden of Proof, I knew I had to go all out and return the themes and instruments of BOP while still updating them to demonstrate what I've learned since then. I ended up remixing entire songs such as the Cross Objection theme and the Theory theme! Making these tracks has been a blast, and it was so fun to experiment with familiar motifs in new ways, such as the chord progression switch halfway through "Panic Absolution", or conversion of the 3/4 testimony theme to a 4/4 version for the "Panic" set.
The musical connection to Iron Reckoning is also highlighted with "Cultivated Suppression" and even the final Shinogi Chess theme: "Summation Destabilized". Speaking of that song, it is probably the ultimate example of everything I've learned making music for games. It starts with a brand new theme that stays true to the "sound" of SCC, and slowly transitions through almost every single Shinogi Chess theme before mixing straight into the main theme of Iron Reckoning! That gives way to a revival of the introduction and a closing chorus infused by IR's most recognizable instrument - the arp synth. I'm very proud of the Shinogi Chess tracks as a whole, and I think they demonstrate the biggest ideas going through my head as I wrote the OST: association/reference, consistency, and intensity.
Closing Thoughts
As you can imagine, this soundtrack was the result of many, many hours of work. I've done a lot to improve my skills over the years and I hope that it has paid off, since many people have expressed interested in my songs for previous games. There's always more to learn, and I'm certain that I'll be coming back to these themes for Shinogi Chess Club 2 and future projects. But I'm also hopeful that new ways of thinking about music for my games will come to light.
So if you're able, getting the soundtrack from Steam is one good way to send a little extra support my way! Thank you again to everyone that has played the game and listened to my music :) I may post some partial mixes featuring these songs on YouTube in the future so keep an eye out for that! That's all for now and I truly appreciate all the support and feedback that you've given over Twitter, YouTube, and here in the Steam forums. Enjoy the soundtrack!
-Matt