In crafting the theme for the VR platformer STRAYLIGHT, composer, pianist, and singer/songwriter Rob Kovacs used his Prophet 5 synth to illustrate what it might be like to don a headset, pick up a controller, and swing out into virtual space like a cyberpunk Spider-Man. Chords swell in anticipation, and then, as you start to find your bearings, a stellar bass and drum groove snaps into orbit. “I imagined it would be like learning to ride a bike without training wheels,” he says. “That little bit of fear, but also the excitement and fun.”
Kovacs joined STRAYLIGHT’s development team at the outset during Global Game Jam 2018. They had just one weekend to assemble their prototype, which meant that for Kovacs’ first pass at his first-ever video game score, all he had to go on was the unique locomotion concept and artist Len Ganley’s preliminary render of one of STRAYLIGHT’s polygonal grapple points. The team settled on an ’80s aesthetic to satisfy one of the game jam’s optional parameters, and the progressive synthwave sound spiraled out from there. “I felt like we were making a game that is truly unique in the VR space, which is probably similar to how a lot of game devs felt during the 8-bit and 16-bit era,” says Kovacs, who also records note-perfect covers of video game soundtracks under the moniker 88bit.
Accordingly, he drew on the pioneering spirit of early game composers, but around the time of the jam, he’d also been contracted to perform Stravinsky’s Petrushka with the Lima Symphony, which proved to be just as influential. “There’s a section called ‘Dance of the Coachman and Grooms’ that just sits on a big suspended dominant harmony, which has a feeling of anticipation, suspense, and sort of groundlessness,” says Kovacs. “This seemed like the right concept to mirror the weightlessness you would feel flying and floating in VR for the first time.”
After an additional five years of development, STRAYLIGHT hits headsets as a fully realized game on January 31, with the full 10-track score releasing on the 27th. You can pre-save the album now, and stream the title track below.
