Project: What Remains of Me
Developer: Studio FullFrontal
Platform: PC / Steam
Genre: Story-driven visual novel
Music required: Approximately 35 – 45 minutes
Position: Paid freelance commission
Applications close February 15, 2027
About What Remains of Me
Studio FullFrontal is looking for a composer to create the original score for What Remains of Me, an upcoming character-driven visual novel for PC and Steam.
Set in a small American town, the story follows Jake as he returns to a place filled with familiar faces, old memories, complicated relationships and parts of his past that aren’t quite as settled as he may have thought.
Rather than a large-scale adventure, What Remains of Me focuses on people: conversations, friendships, romance, nostalgia, difficult choices and the emotions that come with reconnecting with a place and people you once knew.
The game will feature full voice acting and a strong focus on character performance and cinematic presentation. We want the score to work alongside those performances as part of the storytelling, rather than simply existing as background music.
Want to get a better feel for the project? You can find screenshots, artwork and more information about What Remains of Me in our press kit.
The Sound of What Remains of Me
We want the soundtrack to reflect the game’s warm, intimate, small-town atmosphere.
Our current direction leans toward a subtle contemporary folk influence, with organic instrumentation such as soft acoustic guitar, piano, strings, restrained percussion and other acoustic elements where appropriate.
We’re not looking for a country soundtrack, nor do we want every track dominated by acoustic guitar. Think of the folk influence more as part of the musical texture of the town: warm, human and slightly nostalgic.
The score should have room to be understated during an ordinary conversation, warm and playful during happier moments, and genuinely moving when the story becomes more vulnerable.
Telling the Story Through Music
Rather than assigning every location or character an unrelated theme, we currently envision much of the score following Jake’s emotional journey.
Some of the emotional families we expect to explore include:
- Warm / everyday
- Playful / upbeat
- Reflective / nostalgic
- Sad / vulnerable
- Romantic / intimate
- Uneasy / tense
- Dramatic / emotional
We’d like multiple pieces or variations within important emotional families so longer sequences don’t depend on a single repeating track.
We’re particularly interested in recurring melodies and motifs that can develop alongside Jake. A melody might appear warm and optimistic early in the story, then return later on piano in a slower, more vulnerable form. Elements of the main theme might quietly find their way into other pieces without the player consciously noticing them.
None of this is intended as a rigid track list. We want the selected composer to have creative input into how the musical structure of the game should work.
About Studio FullFrontal
Studio FullFrontal is an independent game studio focused on character-driven narrative games.
Our development history stretches back 15 years, with our first games released in 2011. Since then, we’ve developed and released numerous commercial projects, including Super Health Club, Hunk Empire and Springs of Ardor.
What Remains of Me is a new IP and a step forward for us in both presentation and production values, with a fully voiced cast, original soundtrack and coordinated Steam release.
The project is fully funded and already in active development. This isn’t a speculative team being assembled around an idea. We’re building on 15 years of experience to create something more ambitious than our previous projects.
Who We’re Looking For
Both established professionals and newer composers are welcome. Previous commercial game credits are not required. We’re primarily interested in your music and your ability to tell a story with it.
If you’re relatively new professionally but your portfolio makes us stop what we’re doing and listen, we want to hear from you. Experience composing for film, television, theatre, podcasts or other narrative media can be just as relevant to us as previous game work.
We’re particularly interested in composers who:
- Write strong, memorable melodies
- Understand emotional restraint
- Can develop and reinterpret recurring musical motifs
- Understand how music interacts with dialogue
- Can compose seamless or subtle transitions between moods
- Enjoy collaborating on the musical identity of a story rather than simply working through a list of tracks
Scope, Compensation & Rights
This is a fully funded, paid commission for approximately 35 – 45 minutes of finished original music.
The exact scope may change slightly as development progresses. Any additional music required beyond the agreed scope will be commissioned separately.
Because the game is currently in active development, the composer will have an opportunity to work with us while scenes are being created rather than simply receiving a finished game and a spreadsheet containing 20 track names.
We want this to be collaborative. If you think our proposed musical structure could be improved, we want you to tell us.
The game will also have an official commercial soundtrack release. Studio FullFrontal will require the necessary perpetual worldwide rights to use the commissioned music in the game, its marketing and promotion, and official soundtrack releases associated with What Remains of Me.
Composer credit will of course be provided, and we’re open to discussing royalty participation in commercial soundtrack revenue as part of the final agreement.
We have no desire to prevent the composer from being associated with or performing music they created for the project. Detailed ownership, soundtrack, performance and other music rights will be agreed contractually before work begins.
How to Apply
Please send us:
1. Your portfolio / showreel
Share the work that best represents you. Particularly music relevant to emotional or character-driven storytelling.
2. A few relevant examples
If possible, point us toward pieces that demonstrate emotional variation, recurring motifs, narrative scoring, organic instrumentation or transitions between moods.
3. Your rates
Please provide your usual rate structure and an approximate quote/range for a project of this scope.
4. Tell us a little about your approach
We’re interested in how you’d approach developing a cohesive musical identity around a story like What Remains of Me.
You do not need to create original music or provide unpaid samples as part of your application.
After reviewing portfolios, we may invite a small number of shortlisted composers to create a paid test piece based on the same short scene brief.
That test would focus less on creating a polished standalone song and more on something central to this project:
Can you make us feel the moment Jake’s mood changes without having to tell us that it did?
We’re not necessarily looking for the composer with the longest list of credits. We’re looking for the person who hears this story, this town and these characters and thinks:
“I know what this world should sound like.”