This was my first game soundtrack, back in late 2012, for a Romanian developer called RVL Games. I was called in to help out when my good friend, Pasi Pitkanen (who’s now busy working at Rovio), was unable to create the music for the game.
He had already written a theme for Girls With Secrets before I came onboard, so I took on the sound palette Pasi had created for that piece (which was essentially piano, strings and a little bit of underscore percussion) and developed it further. I added some Rhodes electric piano as well as solo oboe, as well as some of my customary synth sounds. I was inspired by the almost semi-romantic approach that the scores to Japanese horror films often have.
The game was about a schoolgirl investigating the murder of her friend, so I wanted to blend some of the innocence of the characters with the horror of the situation they were in. I had really enjoyed Johan Soderqvist’s score for Let the Right One In, so got my friend Dominik Johnson in to perform some live guitar duties on a few cues.
It was a testing project, enjoyably so, because the developers were looking for quite short, looping pieces of music for each level. This meant trying to create something that was neither too complex, nor too boring – not an easy task.
After the launch of the game, I went back to the music and created extended versions (including a signature suite, blending many of the recurring themes together) for an album release of the soundtrack. You can take a listen to, and purchase, the Girls With Secrets soundtrack on Bandcamp.