Hanako Games

The way Confines of the Crown dropped its song, imo, was amazing, it was very cool and dramatic. It encapsulated what the story would be about while showing it (and Madeleine) is a way that made me super pumped up.

I'm not a big fan at all of the idea of a song at the May Day Ball: PC isn't always going to be in a relationship (or not a happy one, or he might not attend the ball). I'm probably biased because most of my HH playthroughs didn't feature my PC attending the Ball, but for me the Ball always felt post-dramatic.

If there was something like a "reveal moment" for PC, or another suitably dramatic/tense moment for the song to occur, that would be my vote. (At the moment, the moment I'd pick as the Confines of the Crown equivalent would be the Sunday evening the player learns PC is an actual prince.)

At the moment my leaning is for a credits song with, if possible, a instrumental version that can be used separately earlier in the game so that it feels familiar and fulfilling when we hit it. Whether the instrumental would be played at the ball or somewhere else would depend on how the song actually turned out. Now, is the PC's European origin best acknowledged through folk/instruments, or through dance music? (EUROVISION FOREVER... actually who won in 2003? Ah, it was Turkey.)

The advantage of using the Ball as a scene to play the music in is that the Ball scene generally goes on for a while, so a song playing in the background would have some time to get heard. The prince-reveal is a fairly short scene as it is, so any song playing there instead of the current mysterious music track would, for a fast reader, barely even get started before it would be cut off. And it can't really go into a full character-focused animation sequence there the way that The Confines Of The Crown could, because we don't have the right art for that (especially for focusing on the PC).

The journey-to-the-Otherworld scene at Christmas is slightly longer and is a scene that happens for all players, but it's got sound cues designed for it already, and that's more of an emotional cooldown point than a place that needs to be buoyed by dramatic music.

It's difficult to think of any place where people would be willing to sit back and listen to the lyrics of a song outside of an animation sequence or the credits.

Now, one interesting thing about a song for either the Ball or the ending in general is that there's a strong chance of it being bittersweet regardless of route since unlike Horse Hall, WolfPC is supposed to be going back to his country at the end of the year. So if his route's gone badly, that's a sadness for wasted chances, and if it's gone well, that's a sadness for saying goodbye...

Sorry I keep waffling but I really don't know what I want, especially since I'm still writing this thing as I go. Obviously i have some plans for where the plot is going, but semester 2 often takes some big twists when pacing needs combine with throwaway comments I made earlier to give me weird new ideas, so I can't be totally sure how it's going to end up. Sometimes the characters grab the steering wheel.