Description
I imagined an atmospheric adventure game set in a forest with some spooky supernatural stuff going on. The main character runs away from home for mysterious and sad reasons (because of course they do), and discovers a dark secret lurking in the woods they traveled into. I pictured a top-down pixel art style for the game.

"Forest Runaway Main Theme" would be played on the title screen.
"Woods Exploration" would be played while the player moves about the forest world, discovering secrets and solving puzzles.
"Secret Under the Village Ruins" would be played while the player explores an area that appears to be the ruins of an old town. They find their way into an underground chamber where they will have to fight a boss.
"Dark Encounter" plays during the boss fight.
"Memories of Home" plays during a cutscene in which the player re-lives their childhood experiences, as well as the reasons for why they left home in the first place.

I started on this project by brainstorming melody ideas in Sibelius, then pasting the MIDI data I wanted to use into Logic to make full arrangements. Most of the mixing was done in Logic, with a final levels check in Pro Tools. As for VSTs, I used Kontakt, Reason, Massive X, BBC Orchestra, and Logic stock libraries, as well as Creative Commons Licensed audio files from Freesound.

Runtime is almost ten minutes (not counting loops), managed to make 5 tracks. I'd say the style is... electro-acoustic? I used all VSTs, but there is a combination of synthesizers and sample libraries of acoustic instruments in each track.

Theme:

Runaway

Picture theme

How does it fit the theme?
I imagined a story in which the player character runs away from home, and then comes upon a forest with a dark secret. It was difficult to portray "runaway" specifically in the music, so I tried to reference that by having a more emotional "Memories of Home" track. As for the picture theme, I attempted to invoke the image by including flute/reed instruments (that I've observed are often associated with woods and greenery), as well as a track that uses a recording of birds chirping/forest ambience.

Link(s) of the submission on streaming services
https://soundcloud.com/hendershot-music/sets/runaway-2022/s-hWRMw0kbY4b?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing