Canticum is a musical puzzle-exploration game. In it, you play as an ethnomusicologist in a post-apocalyptic world where the internet, electricity, and all digital record-keeping has long since collapsed. Travel through the forgotten villages of Vockslip County to listen to the songs of the past, sung in fragments by locals. Melodies, lyrics, and historical anecdotes are added to your Canticum Compendium, where you can piece the fragments together. Match lyrics to melodies, identify the origins of songs, and find the bigger picture of what their stories tell. As you explore and grow your compendium of folk tunes, you will uncover more about the past—and the calamity that haunts the Countryside to this day.

Each song in Canticum has a double-meaning. They reveal a parallel between the millenia-old tales of gods and deities, and the history, only a few hundred years old, of the apocalypse. How you interpret the information you uncover, and how you report your research throughout the game, shapes the story.

Canticum is my entry to the OST Composing Jam #9, and was entirely composed in Studio One 5, using a blend of VSTs and live-recorded vocals and violin, played and sung by me. VSTs include those from Cinematic Studios, Kontakt Factory Library, Fracture Sounds, Spitfire LABS, AGML, 8Dio, and more. The way music changes over time is an aspect of the gameplay, so the soundtrack was written to reflect that. Some tracks take on a more directly folky sound, while others are abstract, like fragments of melodies floating through vacant space. This is accomplished through a blend of intimate guitars, harps, piano, strings and chimes, and huge, sweeping reverb.

Track 1: Canticum (Title Screen)

The opening track to the game, and the first I composed, introduces the ‘Scarabellum’ motif which returns often throughout the soundtrack. Many fragmented vocal lines were meant to be included in the soundtrack's ambient tracks that had to be cut due to time. More of them can be heard in A Whispering Past.

Track 2: Who Were They

You, the character, are long-dead. At the start of the game, a narrator begins to tell your story. This is the character creation screen.

Track 3: Into Vockslip

This track plays during the opening cutscene, when you enter Vockslip County for the first time. You are travelling alone with only a bike and a guitar as your companion.

Track 4: A Whispering Past

Originally, the game was going to have separate tracks for a windy field, a rushing river, a hilly place, a rainy place, and a mountain. These would be places you could go to meet locals on your travels, and collect melodies for the Compendium. Due to time, only one of the ambient ‘location’ tracks was built. This would play in the windy field. I recorded many violin gestures to create a layered, windy atmosphere, and included some fragments of melodies and gentle drones to evoke a folk-ey feel.

Track 5: The Lamb and Hammer

There are two locations you frequently visit throughout the game. The first is The Lamb and Hammer, a local pub where you can talk to locals and ask questions about the melodies you’ve collected. There is a very upbeat and sentimental vibe here.

Track 6: The Inn

This track is a calmer take on the pub music, featuring the Cor Anglais.