Score a real game. Get expert feedback. Build your portfolio.

There are two games you can choose to score. If you pay the fee for a second submission you can submit music for both of them, and you get access to the material for both games either way, so you do not have to choose before you register.

What the assignment actually looks like is explained in the next question.

Your assignment will be to basically create a demo soundtrack for the game(s). You’ll get a two to three minute long video of gameplay footage that needs to be scored but not in the way a film would be scored. You are limited by the ways a game limits you. This means that you can’t score directly what you’re seeing, because in a game it’s unpredictable what the player is doing, therefore you need to compose music that can realistically adapt to that. Instead of composing one track of music like you would for a film, you need to compose multiple tracks or stems for different scenarios. For example you can have menu music, location music, and battle music in the same video clip. These all need to be different tracks or stems that can be played in an endless loop and need to be transitioned from one to another.

So you’ll need to compose these different tracks and then define what events trigger them to change and how. For example the player is being attacked, than the peaceful, loopable, location background music fades into the battle music and maybe gets even more intense when the player gets low on HP by fading in our out different stems. You can simply edit these changes in your DAW and then explain what events triggered which changes and why in the comment for the judges. So you don’t need any knowledge of how to implement any of this into the game but the judges will still be able to evaluate your ability to creatively create an adaptive score.
The final product will basically be a demo of how the gameplay would have looked like if you had already composed the music and implemented it into the game.

We can recommend these two videos to give a basic idea what techniques can be use to create an adaptive score: 
How to write Music for Video Games: youtube.com/watch?v=f-Q8JC3VcS4
Adaptive Soundtracks in Games: youtube.com/watch?v=b0gvM4q2hdI

The gameplay footage and the material that comes with it belong to the developers, and they only allow us to hand it out to people who actually take part. That is why you get everything right after registering, and not before.

Which games you will be scoring is no secret though: they are named above, so you know what you are signing up for.

And if you really cannot work with any of them, write to support@indiegamemusiccontest.com with your order number within five days and you get your money back.

After you registered go on your account page and click on the “Contest” button. Then you will be redirected to your contest page. There you’ll find instructions for the contest including the download link. This is also where you can submit your composition and find the results after the competition ends.
You can also just click on this link (indiegamemusiccontest.com/submission) but be aware that if you’re not logged in and haven’t registered already you’ll be redirected to the registration page.

Yes, you can. You keep full ownership of the music you created and can do whatever you want with it.

If you want to publish the music together with the game, it has to be obvious that it is not the original and that it was created for this competition, and the creators have to be credited properly.

The creators may have their own conditions for publishing the game itself, but you can always use your music in your portfolio and anywhere else online.

Each package includes a set number of submissions and, for the Learner, Advanced, and Complete packages, professional written feedback from one of our judges.
With two submissions (Double, Advanced, Complete), you can score both games — and compete with both. Each submission is evaluated separately by a judge.
Feedback means one of your submissions receives a detailed, scene-by-scene written evaluation from a judge. If you have two submissions but only one feedback (the Advanced package), you choose which submission gets the feedback when you submit. You can only get one feedback per submission.
You can always upgrade your package later — just reply to your confirmation email and we’ll help you.

The fee is split into three parts the Base Fee which you only have to pay once, the Entry Fee for each Entry you want to submit, and the Feedback Fee for each feedback you want to receive.

Entry and Submission basically mean the same thing. For each additional entry, you can submit one more game with your music. For each additional feedback, one of your submissions will get feedback so if you have 2 entries for example and 1 feedback, one of your submissions will get feedback but the other one not.

When you later submit your entry there is a box that you can check to decide if you want to receive feedback for that submission and you can also see on that page how many entries/submissions you have left and how many you can still use.

You can also always add other entries and feedback later.

If you are currently 23 years or older, join the standard competition. If you are currently under the age of 23 you can choose which one you would like to join. The young one has fewer participants and therefore less competition but the standard one has slightly better prizes. In the rare case that you are 22 now but turn 23 until the winners are announced you are also allowed to choose and the moment you register will count.

Yes, you can. One of you registers and creates an account on our website. When you submit, you can enter both of your names in the submission form, and both names will appear on the certificate.

If you win a prize, you are responsible for splitting it between you as you see fit.

The reason why we can not make it free for you is that there are 5 Judges and our team that put a lot of time and work into this and we think everyone in this industry agrees that working for free is not cool. Especially our highly qualified judges deserve appropriate compensation.
In addition to that, there are costs like website hosting and development, marketing, the cash prizes, etc. All of this is quite expensive and there is no other company behind this that can use it as marketing for their brand/products or something. 
The money needs to come somewhere so we have to charge everyone a fee to participate but because of this, we are only dedicated to making this contest the best possible experience for everyone that we think is worth the cost and we don’t have to pursue any other goals under which the quality of the contest could suffer like any free competition!
This for example also allows us to offer you opportunities like the personal feedback which you won’t get in any other competition. Moreover, we guarantee that every submission is evaluated by our judges and not by any other inexperienced panel which is done in most competitions to lower the costs.
If you can not afford it that’s ok and we understand that. We just hope that you can also understand that we too can not afford to make it free even though everyone deserves to compete.
We’re also trying to find ways to lower our costs so we can lower the fee for you in the future. So if you can’t participate this time maybe it will be possible the next time.

Yes. We use PayPal for all our payment processing so whether you use a PayPal account to pay or a credit card you can pay using any currency which will then be converted to Euro. PayPal will show you the exact amount it will be in your currency when you click on “Complete Registration” or the PayPal button.

Everyone who registered with the feedback option will be able to see the feedback in their accounts the moment we announce the winners of the competition.

Currently, our system only allows it to get one feedback for each submission. If you desperately want to receive more than one feedback for the same submission please contact us after you submitted with your submission details before the deadline. Then we can put you on a list and make sure that you’ll get an additional feedback. Since it won’t be in the system, we’ll send it to you manually and it won’t be displayed alongside the other one on our website.

After the competition, you will now receive a verifiable certificate with your placement in the competition.
Verifiable means that there is a code on the certificate that can be entered on our website which will then verify its authenticity. So you can easily prove that you successfully entered the competition and achieved a specific placement and anyone who sees your certificate (if you put it on your website for example) can confirm that it’s real.

You can find the winners of our previous contests on the results page of this website. Every edition is listed there with the winners, their tracks and the finalists.

We’re hosting the competition twice a year with one summer and one winter edition.

The “Indie” is short for independent. The contest is for independent game composers and it also is independently organized which means that there is no other company behind this. We’re hosting the contest just for its own sake with no other motives.