Ivan Berlin
Programmer && Musician
Ivan Berlin is a second-year Computer Science and Cognitive Psychology major at Northeastern University who has a passion for programming, composing music, playing and analyzing videogames, and cats.
He is currently exploring how to interweave his wide array of interests by studying - and applying himself to - new programming domains, music genres, music production programs, and game-related software. His witty sense of humor is equally loved and hated by his friends and family.
There's Always Space for Love
Project Summary
There’s Always Space for Love is a silly Visual Novel Dating Sim that takes place on a spaceship full of strange characters desperate to find love. Your character winds up on this ship after paying for a space-bound, ridiculously cheap speed-dating event: a notion that they totally shouldn’t be worried about.
Project Role(s)
I composed the game’s music and also contributed to the plot and humor, as the game was room-written. Since our game was very much character-based, I decided I’d approach the music the same way. Besides the title/ending theme, each song corresponds to one of the “lovely” individuals you’ll meet on the ship.
The Con Artist has a 1930s-sounding jazz trio playing up his casino-like vibes. Dr. Smell has a cliche 80s movie love song given her apparent normalcy compared to the others on the ship. The Doppelganger has a more experimental theme that symbolizes the strange encounter and the mirrored relationship between your character and his. Skullivan’s skeletal nature warranted lots of melodic percussion, and his initial seriousness and secrecy inspired a mysterious-sounding theme. Ali Anne got the traditional outer space treatment with heavily reverberating synth pads, emphasizing his love for space. And finally, the game’s outro theme - which only uses synthesizers and synthesized vocals - was made to capture the dramatic, pensive ending of the game while still being emblematic of the game’s thematic quirks. Additionally, throughout development, I provided extra story and joke ideas to my roommate: the lead writer. Whether this was for the better or for the worse is up to you.
What I Learned
The most prominent thing I learned from this jam came in a pair. One: if I was going to write six fairly different songs for a two-day game jam, they’d probably have to be short or repetitive. Two: given the genre and format of the game, that wasn’t a problem at all, nor even out of the norm. I just had to change the style of music-making I was used to. I also learned how to have a better back-and-forth, collaborative experience with the writer and artists through focusing on individual character themes, as we continuously shared our progress to better outline our collective ideas for these characters. Switching between musical genres repeatedly and being able to compose eccentric music was also a valuable experience that broadened my scope of videogame music composition, at least for wackier games like this one.