New Feature - Music Menu + Musical Revolution

What's up, guys!
A different but important update today: We have a new feature, Music Menu!
In addition, 19 songs by other composers received an original arrangement made exclusively for the game Living in a Brothel.
If that wasn't enough, 12 songs were also composed by our team exclusively for the game Living in a Brothel.
The headline was a bit long today, but we have a lot to talk about all at once, so let's get to it:

MUSIC MENU

In the current version of the game (v0.4.1), there is an achievement called "Radio Director," which is obtained after the player listens to all the songs in the game.

However, there is a problem: it is not possible to check how many songs have been listened to so far, except on the Results screen at the end of the game, nor is it possible to freely listen to songs that have already been unlocked, should the player like a song they heard during gameplay and want to listen to it again.

Because of this, we always felt the game should have a Music Mode, which would solve both problems: allowing the player to listen again to songs they liked and demonstrating progress towards the "Radio Director" achievement. However, we had never implemented this until now due to the high complexity and time required to create such a feature.

This time, in version 0.5.0, we finally decided to tackle this project, as we want to bring to reality what had been planned previously, but we never had the opportunity to do so.

Speaking a little about the Music Menu itself, it's like a Media Player commonly used in our operating systems.

It has the following functions:

• Pause / Play

• Next track

• Previous track

• 3 Loop Modes: No Loop / Repeat All / Repeat One

• Shuffle: Plays the playlist in a randomly defined order

• Advance 10 seconds

• Rewind 10 seconds

• Volume Slider

• You can click anywhere on the progress bar to jump to a specific part of the song.

In addition to the features mentioned, you can also see information about the currently playing music, such as:

• Song title

• Artist name

• Whether it's an original arrangement or an original song composed for the game's soundtrack

• Album/single cover art to which the song belongs

Although not shown in the video, it is also possible to temporarily change the music on the game's Title Screen, according to the music selected in the Music Menu.

You can see a demonstration of the Music Menu features in the video: 0:00 to 1:07.

MUSICAL REVOLUTION

In addition to the beauty and functionality of the Music Menu itself, we also decided to give the game's sound design the attention it deserves.
We decided to put more effort into the game's music, given the importance of good music in setting the right atmosphere for the scenes.

We chose to call this musical evolution "Musical Revolution" because it's the watershed moment for this project in terms of music.
We divided "Musical Revolution" into two topics: Original Arrangements and Original Soundtrack. Let's look at them:

Original Arrangements

Up to the current version (v0.4.1), we've used music composed by major royalty-free music producers, such as: Kevin Macleod, Bryan Teoh, Alexander Nakarada, and Rafael Krux.

Their music is of excellent quality, but because it's royalty-free, you've probably already heard it somewhere on the internet.

Because of this, we felt that the sound aspect of our game lacked a bit of originality, so we decided to create our own arrangements for these songs, in order to bring the spirit of our game to the soundtracks, while still maintaining the original concept of the composers.

We didn't create original arrangements for all the game's music; some tracks are of extremely high quality in their original state, just as the composer released them. But for some of these tracks, we felt that an original arrangement would be welcome, and we made our own version.

In total, 19 songs received original arrangements:

1. Acid Trumpet - Kevin Macleod

2. Bass Vibes - Kevin Macleod

3. Cool Blast - Kevin Macleod

4. Covert Affair - Kevin Macleod

5. Deuces - Kevin Macleod

6. Dirt Rhodes - Kevin Macleod

7. Disco Medusae - Kevin Macleod

8. Disco Con Tutti - Kevin Macleod

9. Eighties Action - Kevin Macleod

10. Fantasia Fantasia - Kevin Macleod

11. Finally See The Light - Bryan Teoh

12. Get Fabulous - Bryan Teoh

13. Loopster - Kevin Macleod

14. Overcast - Kevin Macleod

15. Secret of Tiki Island - Bryan Teoh & Kevin Macleod

16. Semi-Funk - Kevin Macleod

17. Shenzhen Nightlife - Kevin Macleod

18. Sidewalk Shade - Kevin Macleod

19. Slice of Life - Bryan Teoh

Before we are developers, we are gamers, and we are big fans of SEGA when it comes to the soundtracks in their games.

We took inspiration from the Persona series, due to its musical richness, and we believe that a good soundtrack composed of good musical genres increases the player's immersion during gameplay.

That's why we chose to use musical genres such as Funk (Soul), Blues, Jazz, Samba, Rock, Disco, and Electronic.

Original Soundtrack

If all these original arrangements weren't enough, we also decided to compose our own music exclusively for this game.

If what we were looking for was originality, there's nothing more original than creating your own compositions, right?

In the case of our songs, since we've never released them before, they don't have an album/single they belong to, so we also decided to create unique artwork for each song, simulating what their album cover art would look like.

Modesty aside, although the work of these authors is exceptional, we believe that we are in no way inferior in terms of quality when it comes to our own compositions.
We believe we composed songs with personality to create the original soundtrack for the game.

In total, 12 original songs were composed exclusively for this game:

1. Bar's Rock and Roll - Mastur Bar

2. Big Crazy Guy - Mastur Bar

3. Dawn of a New Day - Mastur Bar

4. Feeling Blues - Mastur Bar

5. Funky Samba Blues - Mastur Bar

6. Here Comes the Shark - Mastur Bar

7. Lady Killer - Mastur Bar

8. Lost in the Wind - Mastur Bar

9. Night in the City - Mastur Bar

10. Samba Blues - Mastur Bar

11. Sentimental Blues - Mastur Bar

12. Vegas Night - Mastur Bar

You can hear a snippet of all the songs listed in this post, both the original arrangements and the original soundtrack, in the video attached to this post, from 1:07 to 29:03.

The timestamps for each song are also available in a YouTube comment on this video.

The post ended up being a bit long, but we really had a lot to show you this time.
We hope you enjoy the new feature and the music.
Be careful not to start dancing! 😉
That's all for today, folks!
Cheers! 🍻