California was the place to go.'ДЄt the time, in 1999, game music was starting to advance in scope and style, thanks to the boost in technology that the disc-based age had ushered in. There's not a whole lot of game industry presence in Maine - just trees. I went to school for audio engineering then taught myself music theory. I got a copy of Sonic Foundry's ACID program. 'I just thought it would be really cool to make music with computers,' he tells me, 'even though I didn't know anything about music theory. Most recently you might have heard his work proving a spacey soundtrack for the excellent, interstellar, roguelike-like FTL: Faster Than Light, but how long did Prunty have to wait for his big break? Around 13 years. Well, here's something less glitzy: aspiring game music composer Ben Prunty upped sticks in 1999 to move from his home in Maine to California with the ambition of breaking into the scene equipped with little more than a burning passion for game music. Sounds great, doesn't it? A game soundtrack renaissance. A newfound respect for and understanding of the importance of a score, in big budget games such as Black Ops 2 and the Assassin's Creed series, had lead developers to embrace composers like Jack Wall and Jesper Kyd, giving them unprecedented creative freedom and powers. Recently we learned all about the revolution in game music that had transformed soundtracks into orchestral epics.

and Scattle, and FTL composer Ben Prunty, to get the scoop on making music for small games and, quite often, small change. He rounds up the men behind Hotline Miami, Sweden-based Dennis Wedin and Jonatan Soderstrom, two of the soundtrack artists they hand-picked, US artists M.O.O.N. Music man David Valjalo follows-up his exploration of the big-budget orchestral soundtracks in the mainstream games industry with a look at the other end of the scale - the super-low-budget, ultra-catchy, sometimes kitschy scores of indie darlings.

Hotline miami 2 soundtrack