Composers Matthew Carl Earl and Jason Walsh work for Hexany Audio and make music for a wide range of video game projects including Colina: Legacy, a psychological horror story, inspired by classics like the Silent Hill series.
About Colina: Legacy
What’s this game about? Jason starts it off “The story of the game is kind of a throwback to 90s horror video games like Silent Hill or Resident Evil. A lot of mystery and puzzle exploration to get to the bottom of what’s going on.”
Colina: Legacy comes from publisher Chance6, and Matthew says that the game dives deep “No spoilers but the game is very lore-driven, a lot of callouts to ancient Greece and mythology. The more you play, the more you learn about this really rich and interesting world.”
Matthew and Jason collectively have a massive list of projects under their belt. So, when it came to the Colina: Legacy soundtrack “We were given free reign to kind of have fun with it.”
Collaboration
At Hexany Audio the pair collaborates often. However, Matthew explains “This [Colina: Legacy] was a little bit more in-depth in that we were touching each other’s music a lot.
Jason adds “We’re down the hall from each other and we go back and forth all the time.”
Inspired by the 90s
Colina: Legacy has players navigate Alex, the young protagonist, around a tense, but beautifully rendered world. How did the pair of composers set the mood?
Jason answers “A lot of the things we were listening to were 90s game soundtracks. The evolution of those games. Silent Hill 1 has a ton of soundscape music made from metal and noises and then later games it gets into these weird, synthetic-organic sounds that are still really abstract.
Matthew affirms “Going through … some of those franchises and the beautiful, haunting, character-driven stuff they did was an inspiration.”
Jason: “We did a lot of what we called ‘one shots’ like 20-30 second tracks that would help avoid the kind of looping tracks you find a lot in games.”
Wrapping Up
Who do video game music composers talk about as the legend of their business? Jason’s first “Jason Graves is one guy who just does incredible stuff.
Matthew shares his thoughts “In a lot of the circles I run in we always talk about the classics from the Nintendo era. I’ve been super into Mick Gordon’s stuff.”
An interesting trend is occurring according to the composers “You see a lot of film composers now crossing over to make video game music.” At the same time, non-traditional composes like Trent Reznor, and Thom Yorke are in the business of making film scores.
What’s next? Matthew and Jason are currently working on some new projects together, however, “Nothing we’re working on we can publicly announce.” Who doesn’t love some mystery, right?
Thanks to Matthew and Jason and Impact24 PR
for making this interview possible.
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