circle was intended to be the soundtrack to the unreleased game of the same name. The game was under development by TIGSource user Giuseppe "eclipse" Navarria. The entire album is licensed under CC BY 3.0
Official descriptions
Discarded game. People say this soundtrack is good though.
circle is a game project I worked on in 2008 with a dev friend who, I think, works at Unity now. It was a very cute game where you grow planets that have cute faces, and you make all the inhabitants do kind all kinds of work, like build houses and such. The album art is very reminiscent of what the game used to look like.
A couple years ago I kinda discovered the indie games scene and started idling like a full hardcore nerd in some of their irc channels. Their turfs, yo. I ended up talking a lot to a developer with very ambitious ideas. One of them was Circle, and we got into talks of me doing the soundtrack for it. As I was highly interested in doing music for a video game, I ended up with this in just about two months. Unfortunately, the game Circle was TOO ambitious and was forgotten soon.
Though people like this little album, so I think I at least did that right!
GOD DAMNIT, CIRCLE, NOT CIRLCE
Hello there lad. hm, I make it short... it seems like circle is very abandoned now, and the music I made has gotten very dusty. And I don't want to keep it away from humanity anymore. So, would you mind if I take the music for other projects? If you ever would come back to circle and decided I should make the music again, I would want to start from scratch anyway. Hm, sorry, this pm seems harsh. But it's been a while :)
Tracks
sleepless
HOLY SHIT IT'S sleepless
The song name describes the state I was in while creating it. Man this is long. And quite old actually. 2 years old? Probably. Aged well.
—C418, Bandcamp
Trivia
- Despite the remarks about how long it is, this is only the eleventh longest C418 song. It is notable for being the same song all the way through rather than multiple songs merged together (or a remix of multiple songs). If tracks such as The C418 and Alpha are discounted, then it is the fifth longest song.
- sleepless and deldee were likely an inspiration for several atmospheric tracks in Minecraft - Volume Beta, such as Dead Voxel and Warmth.
- Featured by /u/Dozyjones as /r/C418's seventeenth Song of the Week.
- sleepless is the longest track of circle.
deldee
My personal favourite. Everyone else likes sleepless.
What to tell about this...
It's extremely long, which is surprising to me because making long tracks doesn't seem to be that easy nowadays. And the last part is the absolute favourite of the entire album to me.
—C418, Bandcamp
“deldee” probably has my favourite chord progression in the entire album, at around 6:30. I still occasionally go back to it to listen to that part.
—C418, c418.org
Trivia
- Part of a pair (with sleepless) of similarly ambient and atmospheric tracks. It is unknown what they were intended for in the game.
minimal
TEE BEE THREE OH THREE
This one is probably badly mastered. but I didn't want to fiddle around with two year old wav files... sorry.
—C418, Bandcamp
“minimal” was the song I created for the robotic planets full of worker bee figures.
—C418, Bandcamp
love
love!
AMBIEEEEEENT
—C418, Bandcamp
Trivia
- In the original download of circle, love is dated 2010-03-21 while the other five songs have the date 2010-01-24, suggesting it was a late addition to the album, or the other tracks were finalised long before it was.
subtle cupcake rhythms
Cupcakes!
Yet another ambient track.
—C418, Bandcamp
“subtle cupcake rhythms” makes no sense as a title. I just asked
Kyle Pulver what to name an ambient song, and he suggested that.
—C418, c418.org
Trivia
- Despite being the only track on the album with a title longer than one word, it is also the shortest track.
depado
This song says good bye and thank you
And that's it.
—C418, Bandcamp
“depado” is sort of a remaking of a much older song of mine. The dev kind of requested I make it again for them, so I did. I guess you could consider it a theme song of sorts? Who knows. There is no game after all.
—C418, c418.org
Oh my god that thing is so old, I'm almost embarassed it still exists.
Connections
- Some believe it to be a remix of the first segment of splattered_brain, owing to the similarities between the two tracks and the fact that C418 posted splattered_brain on his blog during the time that circle was under development.
- The developer does not remember which song he requested to be remixed, but recalls it being "something he linked on IRC that I liked" and remembers a "few tracks with random edgy titles".[1]
Trivia
- The meaning of the track name has been lost to time[2], although it does roughly translate to "purified" in Italian and "deposed" in Spanish.
Album trivia
- On C418's Bandcamp, circle's release date is incorrectly listed as 2006-03-22. The album was actually released in 2010, with the music made during 2008. Archived versions of the Bandcamp page around when the album was released show the correct date, so the error was added later.
- The original download from C418's blog includes a text file with credits:
cover art credits go to eclipse. basically all credits go to eclipse. I made this music for circle a few years ago. and eclipse, if you ever reappear and want to do this project again, I want to make the music from scratch. thanks everyone.
—C418
- The album's release was first mentioned on 2010-01-24, the same date as every track except love. This suggests that love caused the album to be delayed for an unknown reason.
- The music from circle was at one point going to be included in Minecraft.[source]
- The dev has confirmed that no surviving videos or builds of the game exist, as they were all stored on an old hard drive which has since failed.
- Eufloria was inspired by Circle's original concept.
Gallery
A screenshot from circle while it was in development, showing a planet similar to the album cover.
Another screenshot, depicting a planet that appears to have a monocle.
A screenshot of Ableton Live, showing the album being worked on.
References
