This is my submission to the video game music challenge.

Details:

I was going for a muddy, anxious and mysterious feeling. Kinda like if you were treading in a muddy jungle, where you'd have to shuffle through the branches while having wet leaves sticking to your face. I wanted to emphasize on the fact that prowlers were stalking you through the thicket with the piano, and when they make their move the piano melody starts. I kept it simple to fit the settings of a super nintendo game background music. Not too front row, but still bringing enough emotions to immerse the player with the feeling stated above.

Backstory

Imagine yourself being an adventurer hunting for treasures from lost civilizations. Upon your travels in a local village, you stumble across an old man dressed in rags. He's sitting on the sandy ground, under the shade of an awning from a nearby street market. A glimmer emitted by a trinket hanging from your backpack catches his eye and immediately, he recognizes it. The man makes a subtle hand gesture in your direction, signaling you to come to him. As you approach, the old man grabs a stick leaning on a wall next to him with which he slowly props himself up. He gives you a quick glance, turns around, and starts walking towards a small back alley between two buildings.

A couple of steps down the alley he finds a bench on which he sits. As you get within talking distance, he points at your backpack and says ''The Twilight Jungle, is this why you're here?''. Never having heard of such a place, you decide to sit down with the man and share some words. He explains that the trinket you carry is more than just a bauble that might bring luck; it is an artifact made by a very old line of powerful jungle hunters. Stories passed down from generation to generation tell that these hunters used to protect the land from a threat invisible to the naked eye. Charms were crafted and infused with ancient magic so the hunters could see and fend off the unseen dangers encroaching on the land. Upon their many hunts, they managed to find the place of origin of this threat. It was an area covered with a dense jungle, so dense that during the day the sun barely managed to pierce through the thick leaves, leaving the surroundings in a constant twilight. This jungle was only accessible through the use of a very specific path that the magic charms allowed the hunters to see. The old man tells you that upon discovering this hidden place, the hunters started bringing more than just peace in the land; they brought back treasures of untold nature. Weapons and armors far sharper than any spears they could make and mysterious contraptions infused with otherworldly magic. He tells you that from there on, the stories diverges in many different smaller stories.

As the man finishes his sentence, he grabs one side of his dusty robe and slightly opens it, letting you peak at a very contrasting haft of what seems to be an odd looking knife. Upon closer inspection, you notice that there is a marking on it, very much like the one on the trinket you've been carrying on your backpack. The man tells you that lately the air around here has felt heavier than usual, and that the people of this land have been living hardships akin to those from old tales long forgotten. He is certain that the old threat is back, and that the inhabitants of the Twilight Jungle are once again roaming the land, unseen and dispensing trouble and misfortune. He then says that if you are willing to take up the quest of ridding the land off of these uninvited guests at their source, he would be willing to reveal the path into the Twilight Jungle...

To make this song I used :

Ableton Live 10

Chipsynth SFC (The snes plugin which I made all the tracks with)

Freetousesounds's sample (the crickets and frogs)

I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did making it!

Cheers