Kate Remington

What if the very first "video game" was actually invented in 1907? That's the premise of Bartlow's Dread Machine, created by Beep Games and Tribetoy. Teddy Roosevelt has been kidnapped, and it's the player's mission to rescue him. Composer Steve Kirk says his inspiration for the rollicking soundtrack was a suprising combination of Ravel, Schubert and John Philip Sousa!

Disintegration, created by V1 Interactive and Private Division, is set 150 years into the future when much of humanity has been persuaded to upload their personalities and what makes them unique to cloud storage to reduce the stress on Earth's resources. An evil entity, the Rayonne, has taken control of the cloud, but a small band of rebels aims to take the Rayonne down and reboot humanity.

Jon Everist told me he had an amazingly fun experience incorporating big themes of technology, humanity and rebellion into his soundtrack. 

Many musicians have said that life as they knew it ended when the COVID-19 quaratines began. The Videri String Quartet has come up with a unique way to relfect these times. They're welcoming arrangements for string quartet of music from video games that relate in some way to a plague, post-apocalyptic times, or a disruption of everyday life in some way, with a competition they've titled Quarantets.

Gears Tactics is set twelve years before the original and now iconic Gears of War. Cities on the planet Sera are begininning to fall prey to a terrible threat emerging from underground, and it falls to reluctant hero Gabe Diaz to command his squad to defeat the Locust Hoarde. Tactics composer Edward Patrick White says his memories of playing the first Gears game, in a nearly-empty flat save for his Xbox and a kitten, infused his soundtrack.

Down the Rabbit Hole, a new virtual reality game by Coretopia Studios, takes to Wonderland before Alice ever visited, and it's just as strange! Composer Michael Gordon Shapiro says creating a musical signature for the game as well as the beloved characters was a really satisfying challenge.