“We Don’t Need To Just Keep On Repeating The Past” – Lena Raine On Shmups, SNES Samples & Going Solo

But ANOTHEREAL is also a narrative game that seems to have a lot of emotional beats. Maybe, maybe not. Can you just speak a little bit about what you want people to feel when they play it?

I’m a huge fan of doing metaphor with my gameplay design that ties into how the game feels, as well as the emotional response of the characters.

That’s something where, for example, I definitely didn’t have any input in the design of Celeste, but it was something I learned from Celeste while working on it. Game design can function on multiple levels, and it can really be a vector for the emotional resonance of the story. And you don’t have to have a lot of dialogue. But my game does have a lot of dialogue. [laughter] It’s a matter of making sure that all of the emotional beats are matched up to what the gameplay is doing.

ANOTHEREAL is definitely an emotional story, one that is intentionally mysterious from the outset. A lot of games do your very typical amnesia, I’m-discovering-the-world thing for the protagonist because it’s a very easy jumping-off point for a new player coming into the world. My approach is kind of similar, but kind of different, where the main character, named Astra, has an understanding of the world that is not correct, which she comes to discover as she re-emerges into the world. She’s been a bit of a recluse, holed herself up in her room for an undefined number of years, then she’s invited out by her sister, who is one of the only people that has been close to her in her life, and she decides, ‘Okay, maybe now is the time to actually reemerge.’ From there you discover things aren’t quite as normal as you might assume them to be.

You touched on how sound design informs the game. I don’t have any special insight on how Celeste, Chicory, Harmony: The Fall of Reverie, or any of the games that you’ve worked on were designed in this regard. But you, more so than many, it seems like your scores somewhat inform the game design, or maybe vice versa… but now you don’t have a client. How is that feeling?

It’s very much like just taking off and putting on various hats. I am basically my own client in a lot of ways where I have to dig deep into one aspect of the game, and then I go into a different role and interrogate myself as I finish something and [then] I’m doing sound design or whatever, and figuring out what is actually best to do in this situation. How dynamic do I need to make music? What additional cues do I need to make? And so there’s a lot of putting on that producer hat of, ‘Okay, what is the bare minimum that I need to have for this scene to work?’

Relating it back to the top of the interview, I feel like if Koji Kondo came out and said, “I’m going to make my own game,” there’d be so much pressure for it to sound amazing. Do you feel any pressure on your soundtrack?

I mean, always. No matter what I’m doing, I always feel this kind of pressure to one-up myself in some way. Every game is different. Every game has its own needs. Something like Beastieball, which is what I’m currently working on, has a very different aesthetic from the previous game that I did with Wishes, Chicory, which had live instruments and [was] polished and all of that. Whereas Beastieball is super kind of ‘rough’, you know, it has Super Nintendo samples and stuff.

But there’s always the pressure to at least sound different, especially doing my own game. Obviously people are going to be coming to it because they know my music more so than [because] they read my writing or [saw] my game design or whatever.

You’ve written a book. You’ve made an album, and now a game. In your creative process, are you attracted to other mediums such that you simply say, “I want to go play in this medium and play with its form and see what comes out,” or do you just make stuff and then… wherever it goes is where it goes?

I like to play within various medium [constraints] to start. What I’ve always said about myself is [that] I’m a storyteller at heart, so everything I do is telling a story in some way, whether it is writing music, or writing actual words, or doing game design, or whatever it is. As long as someone can take something out of that and go on a journey, that’s what matters to me.

Since you just mentioned it, I want to briefly touch on Beastieball and give you my own experience with your work. I listened to whatever is already available from that soundtrack online, and I was a little bit surprised! The song “ROWDY!!!” was the first thing I listened to.

Yeah! Yeah! [laughter]

And it was retro-styled, just the way someone might imagine, but with… piano? And because of that it came across to me like ‘90s chamber techno or something. I don’t know, maybe Moby or something? It was really interesting to me in a way I wasn’t expecting.

I mean, Beastieball is a fun experiment where we’re coming to it from an approach of essentially designing this weird, long-lost Super Nintendo score, essentially. But it’s taking Super Nintendo sounds and infusing them with some more modern sensibilities. A lot of the town themes and exploration themes start with the Super Nintendo samples as kind of the base, and then I start putting more stuff in there and getting some hip-hop beat or some other sound design in there to put it in a different space, so it’s not just a Super Nintendo track – this couldn’t be playing on a Super Nintendo, but it still has all of those elements that get you nostalgic for that stuff.

But, you know, [it’s] nostalgic for me, in that these are the sounds that I grew up with. So that could be recording something with an older microphone or using an instrument from an earlier period of music.

I think the key there is that it’s nostalgic for you. I think the impulse for many would have been just to do a straight-up 8-bit, 16-bit thing.

Yeah, and that’s kind of like what I was talking about before looking at RPG design. You can just emulate what’s been done, but I think what’s more interesting is to bring it into a conversation with the present day so that you’re still taking in inspiration, but you’re bringing it forward into modern times, because we don’t need to just keep on repeating the past.

I agree. By the way, Greg [Lobanov of Wishes Unlimited, developer of Chicory and Beastieball] let it slip to me earlier — and I don’t know if this is privileged information — but he told me that you two were on a volleyball team.

We are, yeah. We have an amateur volleyball team that we’re on.

I wish Nintendo Life could do, like, ESPN coverage of one of your matches. [laughter]

No, no, no, we’re terrible! [laughter]

He said that too.

We have fun.

I have to ask, does actually playing volleyball inform how you would score a volleyball game?

I mean, learning more about volleyball definitely has helped me score Beastieball, in terms of the culture around volleyball players and games and professional matches and stuff. There’s so many weird quirks that I find fascinating.

Beastieball is a fun experiment where we’re coming to it from an approach of essentially designing this weird, long-lost Super Nintendo score

Like, one of the things that has accidentally played into the score a bit, which a lot of people discovered through the Olympics, are some of the traditional volleyball hype songs that happen. The way that a volleyball match happens in a big arena is that everyone’s quiet for the plays and stuff, and then they do volleys and they bat it around and then a point’s scored. A music cue happens every time a point is scored, and sometimes it’s a very specific music cue that’s exclusive to volleyball.

For example, there’s the concept of a ‘monster block,’ right? So someone is just like, “Boom!” Just dominating the net. They get a monster block, and then the arena plays ‘The monster block song.’ And it’s like, this f***ing really cheesy song. It might go: [in a deep voice] “Monster block, monster block, monster, monster!” And it’s like, what is this? Who wrote this? And I’ve been doing this investigation: what are [these] volleyball songs that play during professional matches? There was one that was just, [in a deep voice] “Here comes the boom, here comes the boom!” And it’s just a sample or recording or something. I was like, ‘This is so silly. I love this!’

And so we started incorporating samples of things into the Beastieball songs. There’s one character called the Sports King, and he’s sort of like a bit of an antagonist in the game. But the Sports King Theme has a little sample of Here Comes the Boom! in there, but it’s, ‘Here Comes the Sports King!’

It’s like Jock Jams.

Yeah, exactly. And it’s just like that weird audio-s**t post-style of sampling […] if you’re familiar with SilvaGunner, it’s a YouTube channel that does high-quality rips of game music. The guys are uploading songs legally onto YouTube, [and] it’s actually a bunch of really clever remixes. But they have a lot of memes and stuff that they bring into their songs and they’ll put samples from things in there, and just to goof on whatever.

I was introduced to them, not knowing who they were. This is a collective of remixers. They did a rip of Celeste when that came out. And I was getting kind of aggro about people uploading my music onto YouTube, because I uploaded it myself, you don’t need to do that! I came across one that I thought was just a normal upload of my music, and then everyone was [in] my mentions on Twitter, being like, “You don’t know? You don’t know?” And so then I listened to it, and, ‘Oh, they’re doing something here.’ [laughter]

Since then I’ve become a big fan of just listening to their silly riffs off of various video game songs. And so I’ve come to embrace that into my own style for Beastieball, to not take things too seriously and just be really silly with it. Especially for some of the more villainous characters, they’re kind of part of this absurd commercialism of sport that is happening with Beastieball.

I know ANOTHEREAL is not yet technically announced for console…

Yeah, I mean, I’m one girl, I can only do so much, so my approach right now is I want to finish the game for PC and make sure it’s a good game, which will take a while. And in that time, who knows what’ll happen with the console landscape. So I’m observing what’s going on and I’ve got connections. Maybe I’ll be able to get funding to do more with the game. I’m really hoping to.

I love RPGs, but one thing that’s dulled my interest over the years are the types of combat systems that are currently prominent in them. I mean, turn-based is great. I love a good turn-based system. But everyone’s doing them.

I am also self-publishing right now, so if there eventually is, down the line, a publishing partner, they might be able to help me get going with stuff. Things like you expect from console releases, like localisation, all that stuff, that all takes money, that all takes publishing support. I’ll keep working on the game and putting stuff out there about it, and then maybe I’ll have opportunities come up from getting the game out there.

So this has all been quite a journey for you. Let’s finish with this thought. 10 years from now, Lena is known as a world-famous game maker – are you still going to be taking on clients [as a musician], or maybe by that point you’ll be… a poet laureate?

[laughter] Oh goodness. I’m always, you know, I love working with my friends and that’s where I’m at right now with game composition. I’m working with Greg, I’m working with the folks at EXOK on their next game, Earthblade. I love working with them, they’re my friends and as long as they keep making games and I have the time for it, I’d love to keep working with them. And then there’s opportunities that come up. I did a little bit of help on the game Deltarune. [Ultimately,] I’d love to keep working with friends on additional things, even if I’m not the main composer on it. That’s kind of where I see myself.

But still, I do really want to put a concentrated effort on doing more game design and really having my stories out there, as well as the ones that I’m helping to make.

So let’s speak it into existence! Who’s your dream client?

My dream client? Oh, I mean…I don’t know.

I mean, you did Minecraft, right? Does it get any bigger?

As far as the number of people playing the game, probably not. Minecraft is pretty huge. That’s almost beyond the limits of what I consider for myself. But you know, it’s one of those things where if I was asked to score a new Zelda game, would I say no? Absolutely not. You know, the sky’s the limit for those sorts of things. I’m a huge fan of Nintendo franchises. I’m a huge fan of Square Enix and the Final Fantasy and Xeno games of the world.

If there’s any opportunity to work with other composers and collaborate on things or emerge into a different franchise that I’m a big fan of, yeah, that sounds amazing. But it’s kind of like, do they need that help? Is there the capacity for it?

I don’t know, the sky’s the limit, honestly.

Our thanks to Lena for taking the time to speak with us. The release date of Lena’s ANOTHEREAL is still to be announced, as is any potential Switch port — we’ll let you know as soon as we hear any news.

Wishes Unlimited is eyeing a 2024 release date for Beastieball on PC and Mac, with no Switch release announced at the time of writing. And Extremely OK Games’ Earthblade was recently pushed back into 2025.