Shout out to nightcore, anime, vocaloid, the old creepypasta from like 2012, crappy no-grammar online roleplays, my emo phase, writing fanfiction, binging cheesy shojou romance manga, and every other thing that was considered awkward, cringy, or otherwise annoying by outsiders while I was growing up.
Because even though there’s even some stuff that I personally cringe at now, at some point it kept me alive when I was at my lowest. Even though they made me seem weird because most of it was more niche stuff, they made me smile (some still do) and that’s what matters.
My message for my fellow chaotics today: if you love something, then love it. If you like how a certain style of clothes look, wear them. If you make a mistake, learn from it and laugh about it later.
Life is WAY too short to waste regretting the more misfortunate events that have happened. And yes, everyone has events like that, memories that they want to forget and pain that hasn’t quite healed. So if you’ve ever loved something that makes you go red in embarrassment now, however many years later, own that shit. Because at one point it made you smile, and that’s good enough.
Hey there! I’m Soren Laulainen, composer and sound designer for TRUNDL.buddy and the Ghostly Wi-filactery. After spending a little over a decade scoring films and webisodes, this is my first foray into interactive music – which, to me, continues to be a relatively nascent and unexplored territory.
TRUNDL.buddy is a deliberately small project with high ambitions, designed small so that the inevitable scope creep doesn’t capsize us. An exercise in creative opportunities borne from constraints. A game which certainly won’t fully realize every creative goal I would love to accomplish – immersion! synesthesia! synchronicity! – but might break new ground all the same.
Finding the “musical soul” of the game is an exciting process. Our character begins life as mindless, expressionless robot, but those eyes are brimming with idiotic bliss: the impulse to just drive imbues him with a sort of dogged enthusiasm in spite of his empty mind. And what better way to capture both a lack and extreme intensity of emotion than with Vocaloids?
Vocaloids are synthetic pop singers who have become very popular in Japan. You write lyrics and melodies and the Vocaloid software synthesizes vocals automatically. I’ll be using them for the main theme in TRUNDL.buddy, which we return to a few times throughout the game. My goal is to have them convey parts of the narrative and adapt to various choices the player makes throughout the game. Here’s one of my first music sketches with them.
