State of Decay #22 (July 2026): Toparo ~ reDream announcement.

Well, here it is! You’ve read the title (clicked on it too); this SoD will be *all* about what you could say is the first *real* ‘Toparo Project’ to get released - Granted, the stuff on the website sort of counts~

Toparo ~ reDream:

What is it? Do you remember that album I announced last year? This is it, yes it has a new name and look, but for all intents and purposes this is the same thing. Basically ‘Memory of Wistful Spire’ changed a *small* amount here and there and ended up having almost all of the work I put into it funneled into a game which left the album itself in an odd spot. About a month or few later I decided I’d come back to it and finish it off, entirely for the purpose of actually starting, finishing and releasing something.

This new version of the album ‘reDream’ is part of the ‘TALENA Music Selection’ which will be (about) half length albums that are *mostly* just arrangements of existing music; of course, since this is the first Toparo release, it’s technically all new music~ Ah whatever (^^;

Seven tracks for a total of an about 26~ minute runtime, the first six are arrangements while the last one is an original made for this album.

So, why an album exactly? Wouldn’t it make more sense to release a *game* first? Hmm… sort of, but I do have my reasons for why I’ve chosen to spend some of my time making this instead. The first would be that… this is far easier to make than really anything else I could have done (^^; the cumulative amount of days’ work the album took is probably about only three weeks(?), so it’s quite a small project. I thought that it was a very good idea to try and just work on and release *something* after all these years running around dealing with feature creep, scope creep and general indecisiveness on what I want the first game to be like.

The second reason would be that I still need to get a lot better at making music before I’d be happy with the results that end up in a game - And I’m happy to report that the *overall* work put into this album has more than been worth it; I feel quite a bit more confident in my music making abilities now, which was the whole idea in the first place, so as far as I’m concerned the album has already done it’s job.

The third reason is simply that it’ll be nice to test run releasing something before the first game (which is where a clean and functional release will matter a bit more).

There’s probably more I could touch on to that effect, but I think that’s good enough~ So, when’s it coming out? I’m planning for September 4th (this year, obviously): Toparo’s second anniversary! I can say with good confidence that that *should* happen! Since everything about the album is 99.99% complete; the *only* thing left is setting up the payment processing, which shouldn’t be too hard (famous last words).

“P-Payment processing???” You may say, “I thought Toparo was all supposed to be free!”

Do not fear! The seven tracks listed above, the story and music comments *will* be free. The music will be uploaded to YouTube (both a full album upload and individual tracks), the music comments will be both in the uploads and on this website, *and* the story will also be uploaded onto the website. However, for a small price, you will be able to obtain some bonus goodies~

Downloads for:

-Listed tracks (26~ minutes runtime).

-Looping versions of all listed tracks (48~ minutes runtime).

-7 early/alternate versions of some tracks (17~ minutes runtime).

-Non-FamiStudio compliant edit to 'Itinerantition' (both main, looping and early version) (16~ minutes runtime).

-FamiStudio project file and .nsf files for everything listed above(!!!).

-20 page booklet with short story, music comments and afterword (plain .txt version also included).

So - All of the main meat of reDream will be free, but there’s some fun extras to be had, I’ll bring special attention to the FamiStudio project file and .nsf files for *everything!* That’s the main thing here~ (You need to offer something nice and juicy for people to consider opening their wallets lol).

It’ll be available on both Itch and Bandcamp for a minimum price of £2 (that’s the plan at least, if I have to put it in dollars (ew) then it’ll be a little off (probably)); although I will mention that the Bandcamp version doesn’t have the FamiStudio project file. Why? Bandcamp simply doesn’t allow you to upload *any* filetype you want, thankfully they allow .nsf files, otherwise I wouldn’t have even bothered with Bandcamp… So if you want that FamiStudio project file, get it on Itch instead!

That’s about it I think, in terms of reDream that is, I also did some other things this last month. Firstly, I started the month finishing reDream, there was about a week solid of ‘stuff’ still to do even after I finished all the music only a day or two into the month. Then I started work on some more sprites and can now say I’m ‘done’ making sprites until I actually release something! (There was a thing or two I realised I needed even after last month). Then I shifted onto some general boring stuff before finally making a new start on finishing off the sound effects! Making them is extraordinarily boring, so I can only stomach a few a day, but if I do about 5~ a day, I’ll be done before the end of next month - Let’s see if that can come to fruition (^^;

Otherwise, it’ll be same old same old; after sound effects, the only other real assets left would be the music for the game~

Also I made a Bandcamp (obviously) but due to how Bandcamp works, it’s effectively empty until reDream releases - No reason to check it out until then.

...

This month’s crystal ball grazing: Summer comes for us all in the end, unless you live somewhere without summer… then I guess it doesn’t.

[Also, also, I’ll only properly update the website to reflect all of this new information once reDream is released, seems like a waste of time to do so now, only to go and update the update two months from now. Doing this mostly because having super up to date accurate information doesn’t matter when no one's here to read any of it :P]