It has been a while since I have released a set of non-soundtrack music, just for myself. I've been working on a couple of tracks for the last month and a half - I think I have come up with a versatile style based on soft rock with a set of strings and a soft-sounding distorted guitars sprinkled around. It's a sound that I am familiar with, that I feel mostly in control, that I enjoy composing and listening to. And as you might imagine, I'm very proud and impressed with myself right now.

So, before I let it all go to my head and start telling the world of how awesome I am, please go and have a listen to what I have done and share it with people, if you like. The tracks are up on YouTube, and they are also downloadable as a whole, in lossless format, on Bandcamp here.

Thank you for listening.

Neler neler.

Global Game Jam 2014'te üç mükemmel insan ve bir kargakafalı ben birlikte yaptığımız kart oyunu Hangimiz, tam hızıyla ilerliyor. Sürekli bir değişim ve gelişim halinde, ve her gün orasını burasını çekiştirip kavga ediyoruz. Yok onun açıklaması olmamış, yok bunun kartını yanlış çizmiş, yok Doğaç aptal da Murat cahil, Efe suskun Ali hayvan filan. Ama deste sayısını ikiye çıkardıktan sonra çok daha uzun ömürlü ve keyifli bir oyun var elimizde artık, ve ciddiyetli testlere de başladık sayılır. Bundan sonrası habire kafa ayarı ve dengelemece olacak. Yeni kartlar, haberler ve bin türlü meczubat için biritirafımvar'a hemen şimdi git bakalım.

Yes, this is a little late for this, since it's already been more than ten days. But there are reasons, perfectly valid reasons. One of them being I made a game.

And the other one is that I made another, much better game, with three awesome people.

But first the music:

The theme was an intriguing quote, "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.", one I associated with existentialism. There were many interesting takes within the more than 25 games we had in our venue this year, most of them much more enjoyable and game-oriented than my ideas - which were never meant to become a game.

My friends at Gulyabani Game Studios have been working on a sweet platformer based on the exploits of a short and stuffy goblin with an office job getting high out of desperation. Yes, it's as weird and cool as it sounds. I have worked on the game's music and some of the sound effects. Here's a summary:

It's on Android and very soon on iOS (follow them or me on Twitter to know when it's out). But don't forget to have a look at the studio's website - it's playable and very, very cool.

Last weekend I had the honors to attend the Amber Fest invitational game jam. Amber Fest is an annual art and technology festival. This year for the first time the festival included games and game development, in accordance with the theme "Did you plug in?", and they decided to organise a game jam in collaboration with Game Developers@ Turkey and Bahcesehir University Gamelab. The jam had its own theme, "Connected, which proved a very fruitful idea. With about 20 people we have made 10 games, all with very interesting ideas and themes, and they will be exhibited in the Design Atelier Kadıköy, where the jam was held.

Amber Jam was, somehow, a different experience than the norm for me. The fact that it was organised within a larger, wider art festival, and that the venue was practically a technical art and design workshop (there was a giant 3d model of Kadıköy in the midst of the conference area, for example), somehow filtered through to most of the work done in the jam, and the resulting games all feel somewhat more artsy, more deep - much more than the regular game jam games with silly and/or generic mechanics and concepts. And on a personal level, I surpassed my game jam record of four games (in GDTJam #2) and worked on six seperate games this time, sound and music, in addition to having a great time conversing and debating with fellow gamedevs on a variety of topics, so it was a very rewarding experience indeed.

Now, if you please, have a listen to a summary of what I've done over 36 hours, and wait for some words and more words about those topics of debate, for an undefined amount of time.

New Quantro update that was just released today has two new ingame themes, two new menu tracks, new sounds and many new game modes - including competitive multiplayer. Listen to samples below for the music and check out the rest here at the Play Store.

Quantro is a free tetris-like game with innovative additions and twists to the classic formula, with new 3D game modes and rules, 36 unique falling pieces and multiplayer gameplay. It's great. Honestly.

The Gezi Park resistance was a one of a kind experience for most of us here in Turkey. It was not organized, not ideology-driven, not a worldwide conspiracy like some officials claim nowadays, but a pure and sincere gut-reaction to the creeping oppression by the state within the last couple of years; and the next weeks for most of us was a thrilling adventure of hope, fear, rage and pure joy. Check out the last part if you haven't heard of it, or would like to know more.

In the midst of this turbulence, we at the Game Developers @Turkey group decided to show our support to the resistance and add to the dizzying array of arts, crafts and creations surrounding these events, so we did only thing we could: we made games.

GeziJAM was at first a week-long jam, if I recall correctly, but between joining the protests in the streets, helping each other and following the news, the deadline was moved forward more than a couple of times. At the end it had been a little less than two weeks when we decided to wrap things up. All in all there are 12 games containing trademark characters and groups of this last month such as the Lady in Red, çArşı, Necati Sasmaz and others. You can view the presskit here or just check the games out here.

The Jam was featured in a number of Turkish and foreign gaming portals such as IndieStatik, Indiegames.com, Oyungezer and Urfa Bulteni. The IndieStatik feature also includes some more words by me, who had the honors of answering a couple of questions with millions of words, so don't hesitate to skip that one (I'm joking of course, it's actually a great piece).

Click Read more for a list of publications that have mentioned GeziJAM, and samples from my work in it.

So. New Year, finals, lotsandlots of games, TIGSource Musical Challenge, GGJ 2013, and some more games - result: a very neglected website. Many things I've forgotten to mention. Let's go chronologically.

Once it turned out that the world wasn't ending on the 21.12.12, I decided to release an album under my own name, comprised of various acoustic-medievaly tracks I've made for Archstone and other games, called Cascading Waters.

Along with it I've retired the name Polimat, since it wasn't getting much action and doing power progressive metal with synthesized guitars didn't prove to be as rewarding and enjoyable as I thought it would. This doesn't mean I don't like what I've done under that name or I won't do metal ever again. Therefore I've compiled a kind of a bestof of three Polimat EPs and a couple of new songs under the album Chronicles.

So the second GDTJam was last weekend with the theme Epidemic, and I had the chance to work on four seperate games, again! This time it was even more awesome since I prepared everything specifically for them. Last time I had came up with a couple of loops before any devs remembered that they may need some music, so it was comparatively easy sailing. This time, though, I didn't have time to prepare anything for reasons I may or may not reveal some day. This resulted in me having a lethal last 10 hours, all of which were exhilirating, so no complaints there.

Anyway, jump in after the loop for the links, and a summary of what I did in two days.

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Addendum: Serious Porky is on the Google Play Store now, so go check it out if you are a filthy peasant devoid of an iOS device, like me.
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Blue Libra 2, the sequel to the spacey wacey real time strategy game of the macro persuasion, was released last Saturday. The game, of which I have done the music, has a new campaign, much prettier visuals and multiplatform multiplayer support this time around. Click here for more details and a trailer.

The game is also on Steam Greenlight, so it'd be awesome if you spared a couple of seconds and voted Yes We Can.

Quantro, the free tetris-like game I've worked on, has been finally released. It's not only available on Google Play, but also has multiplayer - so go check it out.

Game Developers Turkey organised their first game jam last weekend, an online jam that lasted 48 hours with the theme Extinction. Being an audio guy, I was prepared to work on multiple projects due to the expected absence of soundworkers in a game jam, and I was right - I had the opportunity to provide music for four different games, and all of them with different sounds: one electronica, one chiptune, one orchestral, one oriental. I also did some sfx for a couple of them.

You can find the updates and food photos that were shared during the jam, as well as some post-mortems and wrap-ups at the jam website. There's also a catalogue of games completed during the jam. The four games I've worked on are:

Arrhenius
Psychedelic Run
Sogan Olsun Mu?
I Want to Eat Meat

I'll possibly add the tracks or samples of them here some time in the future, but don't count on it. Just try the games, they are good in addition to having awesome music.

P.S. Most of the text in GDTJam.com is in Turkish, so now you have a reason to learn another language! You should thank me.

A summary of music and sound work I've done for the iOS game Serious Porky by Lazybit Games.

Check it out on App Store.