Thank you so so much for your comment! Regarding the genre, musically I might have subconsciously taken some stuff from Floex's work for Amanita Design games, specially Samorost and Machinarium OSTs, which I have listened to a lot during the past years, but I lack the expertise to emulate his lushly layered work properly, so I am afraid that even if I tried I would end up sounding different and "thinner". I also have a fondness for basic hip-hoppy kick and snare, eighth note claps and shakers for percussion, and minimalistic ala NIN bass lines design, so that might add to the "out of genre" feeling. As for each of the songs in particular, I had recently listened to some amazing post-rock guitar work by Grunt., and I thought it would be interesting to try and mix our styles and see what came out of it. Using a kind of 50s rock typical ballad chord progression seemed also to me a cool nod to the jam's theme. For the rest, I kind of was guided by the mood of the previous tracks I finished, except for "Symphonia", where I took inspiration from Anastasia's main theme "Once Upon a December" for the waltzy vibes, adding a subtle time signature change to add to the weirdness. As for "The Maintenance System", my plan was to create four songs, one for each of the sectors of the game focusing on a different quality of the plant's song (harmony, melody, rhythm and texture/counterpoint) and a physical element of the garden (waterfall, water stream, stepping stones and lake), but I ran out of time, so I tried to condense the "microscopic bug wandering around an electronic circuit" vibes in one track.
Very happy to hear you liked the story too! I was directly inspired by Desolate Hope plot (shoutout to ZaffaZone87 fellow jammer for sharing that inspiration with me!) and Samorost 3 world. I might come back to this at some point and develop it further, looking for the help of an artist for the visuals.
Thanks again for taking the time to rate and comment our entry, and I am looking forward to listening to more of your awesome stuff!
<3