醉风酒 · published
Hi everyone!
The Taste of the Wind theme song / ED is now up on YouTube! The song is simply called Taste of the Wind.
So what kind of game is Taste of the Wind?
That's right: Taste of the Wind is a game where, after your part-time stint at Aunt Chen's Restaurant, your childhood friend Yun drops out of the sky with a one-million debt and makes you the boss, so it's up at 6, closing at 10, cooking, cleaning, balancing the books and keeping customers happy, and you also decide dish prices, decor and staff wages, and whether to be a good-hearted owner or a ruthless capitalist is entirely up to you, while the friends from your childhood come back to your side and a proud young lady stands up for you, and you grow closer to the cast and pick up table turnover rates, wok skills, martial arts, fortune telling and all sorts of other odds and ends, all while paying off the loan within five years. A business sim, an RPG and a raising game, all at once.
As always, let me first thank the composer and arranger, and all the voice actors and singers who took part!
Taste of the Wind Theme Song
Lyrics: Me
Composition: 溯音文化
Arrangement: 溯音文化
Mixing / Harmony: 溯音文化
Yun: 闷声发大财
Li: 湫烙
LingLing: tx
Jade: 村雨
Liu: 唐焱
Xiaoqing: 向红
Mr.Li: 猫阳
Luzhi: 苏萌
Boss Bai: 阿咧
Lingxi: 闷声发大财
Monk: 江湖怪客
Daoist Mo: 六弦音
Announcer: BJ
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Taste of the Wind, lyrics:
Mom, Dad, I'm still just a kid.
Small shoulders, carrying small dreams. (Li)
I say what I mean, so what if my temper's short?
A lotus grows from mud, yet still shares in the glory. (LingLing)
You're like a gust of wind. I'm a cloud up in the sky.
Drifting here and there, never stopping for anyone. (Yun)
I've read the heavens and earth, is fate truly written in the stars?
But all I really want is the truth behind your heart! (Jade)
Difficult guests sometimes leave a bad review out of nowhere, but pick a fight with me, and I can still turn it around.
Let the gossip and chatter go wherever it wants, lose a little reputation, and it's just an empty name anyway.
You've got duties and missions still unfinished. Listen, good food has always been at the heart of it.
If little things like this still get you down, relax, worst case we just start over!
(Taste of the Wind staff, all together!)
This month's income: negative 1,888...
Is a career really worth risking everything for?
You never know how to treasure it until the very end. (Liu)
I'm a little mischievous, and I've got my own style, meow.
In this boring world, Xiaoqing's here to put pen to paper. (Xiaoqing)
Who says the Dao begets one, one begets two, and so the world is born? (Monk Yideng)
But I say, don't sweat the small stuff. (Daoist Mo)
An old father's tears fall, only because a grown child can't be kept close forever. (Mr.Li)
A brief stop along the way, your message rides on the wind. (Luzhi)
Difficult guests sometimes leave a bad review out of nowhere, but pick a fight with me, and I can still turn it around.
Let the gossip and chatter go wherever it wants, lose a little reputation, and it's just an empty name anyway.
You've got duties and missions still unfinished. Listen, good food has always been at the heart of it.
If little things like this still get you down, relax, worst case we just start over!
(Taste of the Wind staff, all together!)
Even with past storms soaking my heart, unbearable as they are to look back on, I'll still show a little style. (Boss Bai)
The new waves push the old ones on the Yangtze, but there's no rush, the main character always arrives last. (Lingxi)
You've got your drive, I've got my calm, leaving things unsaid says more than a thousand words.
The little boat has long since crossed ten thousand mountains, this cup of Taste of the Wind, it's on me!
(The grown-ups, all together!)
Come to Stone Town and have a cup of Taste of the Wind!
[Behind the scenes of the ED]
After the crowdfunding succeeded, I took the little bit of money left over once everything was settled and thought it over. Besides making a four-season arrangement of the main menu BGM, what else could make the game a better experience? I turned it around for a while, and a song with the whole cast singing after the story ends sounded really nice.
So I went back to the same studio that did the four-season arrangement of the main menu BGM (溯音文化) and commissioned the theme song. The making of it was a winding road, though. The lyrics I first wrote were even longer, and I cut a lot of them to keep the song itself simple and easy to sing along to.
Most of the singers are voice actors, because I wanted voices that matched the characters as I heard them in my head. (If you try singing this one yourself, you'll notice that, well, the song doesn't really show off any vocal technique, haha.) But there aren't many voice actors who can both sing and have the right voice, so in the end I invited several professional singers as well. Thanks to all of them, it came out sounding consistent and professional.
The theme song is probably the single biggest expense in the whole making of Taste of the Wind, and it was a lot of work, but I'm very happy with how it turned out! I also had the studio make an instrumental version, which is the track that plays when you open the Fate Shop, the Gallery and the Special Thanks list, and it's the background music of the release date PV too.
Seeing so many players surprised by the ED after they finish the game makes it all feel worth it! I hope the ED carries on a little of that feeling of running the place and messing around with good friends.
I'm still fixing and updating things! There shouldn't be any bugs left with a real impact, but some details still need polishing, and there's more to come in future updates. Hang in there with me! :)