I like the cute pads at the beginning. The synth at :07 was also cute, but had some funky panning that seemed a bit too heavy after a while, especially since not much else was going on in the mix at that point. That riff at :07 contrasts really heavily to the more ominous-sounding riff at :30. I found the chord progression implicated by the riff at :07 to be a bit cliche, but perhaps a bigger problem is that the harmonic progression here is really slow. The piece is minimalistic throughout, and doesn’t unite the themes of the blissful VGM stuff and the more hard-hitting breaks at 1:22 very well imo. The mix is pretty clean, and the drums and crisp and loud throughout. That said, you rarely engage in a sufficient level of harmonic depth, and the beat almost seemed tangential to the structural changes in the piece. At some point, it would’ve been nice to see you strip away the drums and offer some more structural variety. The composition feels pretty directionless as a whole, and you don’t really provide any satisfying harmonic variation of the main riffs later in the piece. That said, I will commend you for bringing the piece full-circle compositionally. It wouldn’t make a bad loop, either. It’s a cute piece with some fun sound design. I think you need to flesh out the harmonic framework a lot more and also add some more variety before I’m satisfied with the composition, though. Keep at it, Yeelp!
6/10
Mixing, mastering, and balance
2/2
Structure, transitions, phrasing, and variety
.75/1.5
Melody, tonality, harmony, and texture
.75/2
Instrumentation and sound design
.75/1
Emotion, atmosphere, and catchiness
1/1.5
Originality and uniqueness
.25/1
Overall (how do the elements above interact?)
.5/1
Composite score
6/10