Shujinkou Release Day!

The moment I’ve been eagerly anticipating for the past six years has finally arrived! Shujinkou, the most ambitious indie game ever made, is now released. So is its enormous 158-track soundtrack, most of which is unified by dozens and dozens of unique themes and motifs. It’s a veritable melting pot of styles, influences and tone. And as lead composer, I couldn’t be more thrilled to share it with you!

I can’t even begin to describe what an incredible experience this was. I’ve made lifelong friends, my chops as a composer and audio professional have grown immeasurably and I was able to write the kind of grand, thematic score I’ve always wanted to write. My heartfelt thanks go to Rice Games for the opportunity, and indeed the creative freedom to do what I wanted to do a solid majority of the time. That’s pretty rare in the industry these days. And rarer still was not only accepting thematic/melodic tracks, but asking for more!

One of the cool things the team and I discovered a couple of days ago was that we earned RPGFan’s Editor’s Choice Award, with an overall score of 95/100 and a staggering 98/100 for sound! Read more about it here.

EDIT: Another heartwarming review with glowing praise about the soundtrack can be found here. Specifically, it says:

I was so worried that connoisseurs of the genre would bounce off my western-slanted orchestral stuff and my traditional Japanese instrumentation approach, but here they specifically call those out. My long, long journey with my fellow comrades-in-arms on the music team has been vindicated.

I have a mountain of behind-the-scenes content in the pipeline, including a series of commentary videos on my favorite tracks. But for now, I simply have links to both the full OST on all major platforms and the game itself, all of which is well worth your time. You can find all of this on my Shujinkou page below.