Music for Videogames

I’ve been playing videogames for as long as I can remember, starting with The Hobbit on the Spectrum ZX, continuing to the present day in all its high fidelity glory.
I love working with game developers to create a music system that reacts to the player’s choices. Music can accentuate emotions, it can help put the player in a specific time and place, and it can make a world feel real.

LANDLORD’S SUPER
This quirky construction game launched in Steam Early Access in 2019. You play a jobbing builder in Thatcher’s 80s Midlands Britain, in the fictional town of Sheffingham, downing cans of cheap lager and trying to rub a few pennies together. The theme song is an homage to the in-game lager (after which the game is named), and the score in general is inspired by classic two-tone ska/reggae like The Specials.

JALOPY
An unusual driving game set in which the character agrees to travel with their elderly uncle across post-Soviet Eastern Europe on an obscure pilgramage. All the in-game music is on the car’s radio and is inspired by European pop music of the era, mixed with a bit of low-poly Drive/Chromatics-infused synthwave for good measure. My favourite track is the Kraftwerk-inspired Meinen Laika, a love song to the car the player drives.

LINDA AND JOAN PROLOGUE: “FOUR MONTHS EARLIER”
A beautiful ode to grief, this heartbreaking work was described by the LA Times as “the game equivalent of a poem”. I composed a song that plays if the character successfully forms a connection with the other main character, and designed the music engine that accompanies and responds to the characters’ conversations.
You can hear the music engine in action a complete play-through below:

CHIPTUNE PLAYLIST
No-one has ever asked me to compose a chiptune score for their project, which is a shame. Here’s a few chiptune-y and retro game/synth tracks I’ve worked up in my spare time: