SotW 1.7.2 (OST!) now available

While there are a bunch of bug fixes associated with the current release, almost all of my energy for the last six months has been spent working on an OST for the game. This consisted of a false start, and then what's felt like five marathons.

Starting out, I thought I wanted a chiptune soundtrack. I'm in my early 40s, and the NES was a central, boxy part of my childhood. But after a week learning FamiStudio, and creating an overworld theme for the game (which, incidentally, I think sounds great!), I came to realize that my heart was somewhere else. I love chiptunes. But they didn't seem to work with the game, and with the amount of repetition involved with roguelikes.

So I tried something else.

Last year, I got into using MuseScore for my own purposes - mostly transcribing music for viola, and notating music for classical guitar. But MuseScore also offers the ability to export to WAV/OGG/MP3, and the latest version of MuseScore (MuseScore 4) offers MuseSounds, a set of realistic-sounding instruments. So I spent a week writing a woodwind quartet as a way of familiarizing myself with MuseScore. The result sounded good! So I sat down and began to write everything else.

In retrospect maybe I shouldn't have gone at it as hard as I did, using all my free time in the evenings, day after day after day. But: I finished. And I finished faster than I thought I could. The result is a soundtrack that hovers between video game and minimalistic and full-on orchestral, and it's something I'm deeply proud of.

Shadow of the Wyrm v1.7.2 is the first version with full music support,  with a full soundtrack. It feels like one of the biggest releases I've ever done. Enjoy.