My name is Stian and I'm a musician and audio engineer. I'm also very passionate about game music and game sound design, so if you're looking for someone to work on your title, listen to my demos and write me if you like what you hear. My contact information can be found at the bottom of this page.

I've played various instruments and various computer games since I was a kid but only recently made a decision to drop all other musical projects I was busy with to combine two old passions together and concentrate on one thing only: Game audio.

As with many things, it all really started sometime in the eighties with a C64 and copies of Impossible Mission, Winter Games, Defender of the Crown and International Karate. You know how it goes. One thing lead to the next, and before I even realized it a sizeable portion of my youth was spent taking just one more turn in Civilization, trying to capture Zimbabwe from the communist Zulu while holding their evil Roman allies at bay. Thanks Sid.

So time went flying and after high school and mandatory services for my country I was for some reason convinced that I needed to "get serious" about life and further educate myself. So I entered a university to study what many would call serious music. Academic life wasn't as exciting as I had hoped, though, and I found myself doing increasingly less the things I should have been doing to further my studies. Instead I started spending time playing Fallout, XCOM: Terror From The Deep or good old Master of Orion II. I'm not sure why it didn't occur to me sooner, but as something "lit up" in my mind in the company of those old classics, I came to the conclusion that I really needed to combine music and gaming in my life and concentrate on that.

And here I am. I don't dream of a career in film music or popstardom, or see game music as a springboard to something "better". I love playing games, I love music and I strive to create the best game music out there.

My favourite composers are Mark Morgan (Fallout series, Planescape Torment), Matt Uelmen (Diablo series), Koji Kondo (Zelda series), Akira Yamaoka (Silent Hill series) and Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy series).

My favourite games are too numerous to mention, but I generally favor cold, hard strategy or open world RPG's. Recently I've spent a lot of time with Illwinter Game Design's strategy game Dominions III. I also love the survival FPS Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth.

The reason that Matt Uelmen and Mark Morgan, arguably not the most well-known names in the game music business, are my two favourite composers is, that they both have a knack for striking a very good balance between strong, melodic passages and less obtrusive, ambient segments. They avoid the pitfall of writing epic, orchestral bombs for the sake of epic, orchestral bombs. Instead they aim to maximize support for the suspension of desbelief without excessive orchestration or annoying earworms that get worse with repetitions.

Track repetition is extremely common in games, particularly so in strategy titles, where the players are often listening to a few-minute loop for the whole playing session which can easily be several hours long. Taking this into account while composing is, in my opinion, crucial and often neglected. Some argue that almost all games allow the music to be turned off if it gets annoying. I feel that the game has then lost an element that in other cases would have made it much more immersive and enjoyable.

I'll be putting up a flash video player here as soon as I figure out which one of the many available free players is best and easiest to use. FPlayer seems great but there's no documentation and I'm dumb.

If you like my music you can freely support it via the link below. Paypal account not necessary.

-- Solium Infernum Main Theme --

This title track is for an upcoming strategy game called Solium Infernum by Cryptic Comet. It is set in Milton-inspired hell where players take the role of arch fiends who are trying to seize the infernal throne by means of diplomacy, deception and war. I had a great time making music for this and already know that the game will be so immensely tasty that playing it will be decreed a sin.

-- Crayon Dreams --
The main menu song for the excellent physics puzzle game Crayon Physics Deluxe. It's early prototype won the IGF grand prize in 2008 and the designer, Petri Purho, is a very prominent rapid prototype developer and indie gaming mastermind. My most chilled out track to date, but I think I'll do more of this kind of stuff in the future. Check it out!

-- Boss Battle -- (Inspired by Zelda)
This track features lofi retrosynths and modern drums. Inspired by Zelda: Link's Awakening, one of my favourite games, which also happens to have one of the greatest game soundtracks ever made, even though the hardware limitations for audio at that time made composing and sound design a real challenge.

-- Chiptune Adventure Hiphop -- (Inspired by Spelunky)
This is very weird. I was playing an older version of Spelunky when one of it's level realms was missing music. I liked the game a lot so I thought I'd make something, maybe for the level that was missing music. I'm not surprised that the developer, Derek Yu, didn't like this and ended up using something else. This is pretty far out. It was not my intention to make something that sounded like hiphop, I just later noticed that the track was "off the hook" (or something).

-- Crasher Knights -- (Inspired by Castle Crashers)
I set out to create a rather unorthodox mix of militant orchestral instruments and funky breakbeats for this energetic track. Possibly the synthiest sounding orchestral stuff I ever dared release to the public.

-- A City In Distant Lands --
An oboe, a zither, a duduk and darbuka percussion. A calmer background track with mideast influences. This kind of music is still pretty far from truly authentic arabic music, but is more easily listend to by western ears, I think.

-- Court Of The Fallen King --
This snippet plays when you enter the King's castle. The monarch has died in battle and the court is gathered in mourning as the player approaches the empty throne. Made for an unreleased indie RPG.

ATTENTION: To download these tracks, first press the Play icon, wait for the preload, right-click on the player area and choose "Download this song".

DISCLAIMER: All tracks are 100% written, arranged, performed, recorded and mixed by me. The exception is that there are some female vocal performances that are sung by an actual woman instead of me pretending to be one.