Turnstyle
University of California Santa Cruz Senior Capstone 2022
Turnstyle is a turn-based RPG where you balance five party members on a rotating pentagon. Each turn, you can rotate it, so three of them are in and two of them are out of battle. The longer anyone is fighting, the more fatigue they get, so be sure to give everyone plenty of breaks!
Navigate a public transit system infested with monsters, budgeting the party's cash and their patience with each other as you make your way around the city.
Music
My main role on the team was as the composer and audio implementer.
Since the game was themed around commuting, I aimed to capture the light, airy feeling of waking up early to the crisp morning air and going to school with the track Morning Commute. It was the first track I made during development. The early tracks aim to represent an initially optimistic and "business-as-usual" vibe, while the later tracks represent the anxiety of the interpersonal conflicts that build up during the story.
My favorite track is Fashion Frames, aka Amery's Theme!
Technical Audio Design
I worked with the engineers on the team to integrate an audio triggering system into the visual novel implementation they created within Unity. It allowed me to link the starting and stopping of different music, ambiences, and sound effects to specific dialogue sequences. This allowed the visual novel segments of the story to become much more immersive.