In the soon-to-be-released Concrete Genie from studio Pixel Opus, and publisher Sony, Sam Marshall's music gives you the power to create a unique soundtrack with a multitude of sounds as you cover the walls of a rundown city with a magic paintbrush. At this year's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, I caught up with Sam after his session about creating a truly interactive soundtrack for this gorgeous game. Ash, the main character in Concrete Genie , is a sensitive boy who's bullied by

After 11 years, fans of the Dante's Inferno -inspired Devil May Cry series by Capcom finally have a new chapter with Devil May Cry 5 ! Casey Edwards was thrilled to write some of the music for Devil May Cry 5 because it gave him a chance to rediscover the "angst-y teen" he says he was was when he played the original games. He told me he used his own love of the games' fusion of Gothic and heavy metal to craft just the right sound. Casey contributed cues for some of the epic battles in-game, as

Seventeen years have passed since the nuclear explosion that ends Far Cry 5 , and in that time Nature has reclaimed the landscape. So have some really nasty Highwaymen who aim to bring all the survivors under their control! John Swihart and co-composer Tyler Bates created a soundtrack for Far Cry New Dawn that plays off the ideas of instruments made from scavenged parts, and the vibrancy of the Super Bloom. John says the concept art and ideas that the dev team at Ubisoft gave him and Tyler

Laurence Manning started playing the piano at the age of three, and she began playing games almost at the same time. Listening to familiar themes from Kirby , The Legend of Zelda and Golden Sun inspired her to create classical-inspired arrangements for the piano and launch a Kickstarter campaign to record an album of beloved melodies! In addition to creating arrangements of her favorite game themes, Laurence has also composed some game-inspired music, including a Medieval Fantasy. She hopes to

Every composer approaches writing music differently, and few are willing to share their earliest sketches, but that's exactly what Marty O'Donnell has done in a series of fascinating videos in which we get to hear his earliest thoughts for the suite, Music of the Spheres, which he wrote as a prequel for Destiny, created by Bungie. I had a deep dive with Marty into his composing process as we listened to these fascinating sketches and to the finished recordings performed by an orchestra. Marty

Composer Brian D'Oliveira has channleled his passion for pre-Hispanic music from Latin and South America into becoming an acknowledged expert, which made him the obvious choice for Shadow of the Tomb Raider . Lara Croft's latest adventure takes her to the jungles and ruins of Mexico and Peru. As he told me, Brian had his own adventures in Mexico sourcing authentic instruments to create an authentic sound for the game. Brian estimates he brought back about 900 different instruments, many of them

Pikuniku is a clever, kind of trippy platform puzzle game, but it's the game's humor that's got everyone's attention. In our conversation, composer Calum Bowen told me that he wanted his music to have the same light touch. The world of Pikuniku actually has a dark secret, which gave Calum a lot of latitude to create music that fits with all the different environments and the surprising conclusion of the story. Calum grew up playing now-classic games including Final Fantasy VII and Wind Waker ,

Cris Velasco loved composing the music for the original Darksiders, but he had limited time to finish the score. As he told me, he was really excited to be called back for the soundtrack for the much more ambitious Darksiders 3 , which gave him more time to open the throttle creatively and write for a huge orchestra and chorus. As the story of Darksiders 3 opens, the Seven Deadly Sins are wrecking the earth, and of all the Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse, Fury is chosen to shut them down one by

The Music and Gaming Festival, or MAGFest, is a four-day explosion of video game music! There are panels with composers and musicians, and LOTS of music making. I caught up with composer Wilbert Roget II to chat about the music he contributed to Destiny 2 Forsaken , and what makes MAGFest such a fun and meaningful experience. One of the things Will loves about MAGFest is the chance to connect with other musicians. At last year's festival, he met up with fellow wind players, alto saxophonist

Thomas Parisch's composing career has taken him in some unusual directions. Trained as a classical oboist in Stuttgart, Germany, Thomas began to question where that career would take him, and decided to concentrate on composing, eventually settling in Los Angeles writing for TV, films and games. His most recent project was co-composing the soundtrack for Iris Fall with Edwin Wendler. As he told me, it was a really interesting change of pace. The instrumentation for Iris Fall is as unusual as the