Game info: website
Listening: Bandcamp
Info
Tancla is a Spanish composer I’m largely familiar with through their original tracks posted on SoundCloud or included in compilations by organizations like STAFFcirc, though he’s done a little bit of game music too. Like this game! WYRMHALL is a short, goofy vibes game where you’re a goblin who cleans junk off of magical artefacts that people bring by your stall. No one likes a grungy cursed item of power, after all.
Naturally, since we have a medieval fantasy setting here, the dominant mode of the soundtrack is calm, villagey folk music; it features a lot of wind leads, lute, and hand percussion, with some live violin on a couple of tracks. There are a few tracks that get more ambient or jazzy/funky, and these tend to have more variety in their instrumentation: synthetic noises in the ambient tracks, more PS1-ish instrumentation in the funky character theme (“An Actual Wizard”), etc.
It’s pretty fun and cute. There’s also a whole lot of odd time in it, which I don’t remember Tancla going as hard in on as in other stuff I’ve heard by him, but maybe this has always been a thing that’s juiced his music and I just never noticed until now. There are some nice jazzy chords and ensemble writing here and there as well.
Recommended tracks:
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“Toosday” has some nice syncopated chord changes and over-the-bar melodic phrasing to keep things a bit unsteady rhythmically
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“Grummuth” adds in a real pretty clarinet line with some nice rhythmic contrast at 0:34
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“Lazyday” is a loungey jazz number, and so one of the more instrumentally out-there pieces for the soundtrack
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“Mask of Sorrow” is one of the ambient pieces, pretty sinister
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