Austin Haynes will be composing the soundtrack to our upcoming game, Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller. Austin previously took the mammoth task of composing the 4-hour long soundtrack to The Silver Lining, one of the most amazing soundtracks that I have in my own collection. His style has been completely lauded by many and I am personally extremely happy to have him signed on to the project, and already composing some of his finest music. Among Austin’s many fans is Robert Holmes, the acclaimed composer of the Gabriel Knight series. Austin and Robert had the chance to work on an undisclosed project recently, all under Robert’s supervision, and he was very happy with the music Austin turned out.

As I write this post, I am listening to the fresh out of the oven Main Theme to Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller — a beautiful and haunting piano piece that will knock your socks off. Do you want to listen to it? Keep on reading!

We are closing in on the 60% mark with almost 15 thousand dollars on our Kickstarter Campaign. You guys have been incredibly amazing and we have no words for how we feel about the fact that you have been so supporting of our project.

So, tell you what, spread the word today, help us get to 15k by the end of tonight, and we’ll be posting the main theme to Cognition for your listening pleasure. I have no doubt in my mind that you will make it happen, so in the meanwhile, I’ll go prepare it all to launch sometime early next week! Who knows, maybe you’ll get a peek at more art from the game!

Thank you, guys! You are awesome

Oh yeah, you wish you were listening to this right now!

My friends used to kid with me that if I ever met Jane Jensen, I would have a heart attack. Well, I’m happy to say I’m still alive.

But let’s go back to the beginning…

Something big was happening in the offices of Sierra On-Line in 1993. A game that was about to explode onto the video game scene and make its mark in the history of the business. An original, unique, mature, and remarkable story that would mark the beginning of a whole sub-genre.

I remember the first time I saw the first ad for the project. It was a big fold-out ad showcasing four new games from Sierra: Police Quest 4, Leisure Suit Larry 6, Quest for Glory 4, and then there was this thing, oozing a dark mood, a certain sensual darkness that caught my eye immediately.

From that point on, I could not stop thinking about it and eagerly awaiting its release. And when the game finally landed in my hands, I had to beg my dad to upgrade my computer because it wouldn’t run on my 286 system.

It was called Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers.

Not only did the game not disappoint, it changed my view on video games as a whole. It made me relate to video game characters in a way that I had never experienced, and its story was so rich and well researched that I kept wondering how it hadn’t occurred to anyone before. But, it had to be Jane. Like Scott Murphy, creator of the Space Quest series, recently told me in a Facebook conversation: “Jane was the best we ever had. She’s a true writer. Some of us struggled through the crude jungle of adventure games in the crude years, throwing our bodies on the barbed wire so true pros like Jane could run past us and take it to the next level.”

And take it she did, with every new entry in the Gabriel Knight saga. The Beast Within is my absolute best experience in the medium to this day. In an era where Full Motion Video was being accused of taking interactivity out of the genre, Jane Jensen managed to create such a masterpiece that it won numerous awards and accolades, including Game of the Year.

Many of us were sad to see Grace leave at the end of Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned, and many of us still wonder what that damn letter said. But just like Grace from Gabriel, Gabriel Knight was out of our lives, its true fate a mystery, still holding the place it deserved in our hearts.

Recently, Jane gave us another jewel by the name of Gray Matter, a game that I cannot recommend enough! The story between Samantha and David is a very beautiful one that is sure to touch your heart and give you chills at the same time.

But in more recent history, our weekend with Jane Jensen started with a simple phone call (which I’ve previously blogged about). As we talked more and more, a bond started to develop. Jane checked out the work that we were doing on The Silver Lining, and was very pleased by what she saw and learned about our team. She was impressed that we had managed to do such a large and cinematic game operating only with volunteers and no real funding, and how our fans worked to convince Activision to grant us a license to release it. As the friendship grew, the first moment of near heart-attack came: she invited us to her house to meet and hang out in person!

A week later, a group of the directors of Phoenix Online were pulling up to her farm to meet with her and her husband Robert (producer and composer for Gabriel Knight) over a weekend.

We had a great time together. We spent hours talking about her experiences at Sierra, and ours making The Silver Lining, and where adventure games are headed. Jane and Robert were very lovely hosts and Jane treated us to some great dinner and breakfast. We learned that Jane is very interested in a healthy and sustainable lifestyle, and she treated us to some very delicious fresh milk, yogurt, eggs, and other great food. We toured her incredible farm (if a creepy old barn ever pops up in a Phoenix Online game, you’ll know why!). I kept asking her where did she keep the Ritter Talisman, and let me tell you, her house has real passageways, the kind of those you find in Schloss Ritter!

One afternoon, we made our way to a fantastic family style Amish restaurant where they keep serving you food until you are completely stuffed, and traveled through more of the Amish country. It was all a great surrounding to discuss our dreams, our hopes for Phoenix Online, the gaming industry today and how adventures had changed, and great ideas of her endless imagination. As we heard her talking about these ideas, and stories, I had a thought in my mind: I kept thinking back to that time when my friends told me how I’d feel if I ever met her. At times, I just couldn’t believe how lucky I was to be here, the fanboy meeting his idol! I was happy. Incredibly and ridiculously happy.

At one point, while they were out taking the dogs for a walk, I sat at the piano and butchered the Gabriel Knight theme (sorry, Robert!). But the truth is, I did it on purpose because I wanted to get Robert to sit on that piano and treat us to some great music! And he did, and of course, blew my amateur attempts away. It was a real treat to hear the original composer of the GK theme play it for us!

We spent the night having fun with some hilarious videos we found from a Gabriel Knight fan on youtube. I was happy to hear Jane and Robert laugh so hard. Robert had mentioned at one point during our stay that sometimes he didn’t think that they had that much reach, because people today didn’t know of the work they had done. Well, I wanted to make sure that by the time that we left they knew there had been many fans they had reached and touched, and that their power was so real that we could never forget it. We are still here, right? Right?!!

The next morning Robert told me he had been inspired by the nostalgic evening, and Jane mentioned she was reawakened to the possibility of making games the way she did at Sierra.

We all left their place feeling good. For me, a child’s dream–really, a lifelong dream–had come true.

Cesar Bittar

We have heard about Telltale’s announcement, and we’re excited to see where it goes! It’s great that the series will be getting an official continuation, and TTG has made some great adventure games that have been reviving not only classic franchises but the genre overall. We love the work they’re doing, and of course our own game has been influenced by their episodic model.

We’ll still be completing The Silver Lining as planned. (In a funny twist of fate, Episode 3 just launched yesterday, while this announcement was going down!) We like to think that TSL has helped show that the fans are still eager for more KQ, so it’s great to see the life in this series returning in an official way.

It’s definitely a great month to be a King’s Quest fan!

The day and time have finally arrived: Episode 3 is available NOW in the Fan Club!

For Episode 3, you’ll find two download options are available.

* If you had previously installed the full Episodes 1 and 2 file, then all you need is the Episode 3 Patch file.

* If you do not have the Episodes 1 and 2 game downloaded and installed, then you’ll want to download the Full Build which contains all three episodes in one.

It wouldn’t be a release without a few new contests, and sure enough, we have two for you!

The Many Deaths of King Graham!

We all know every adventure game involves some trial and error and finding some pitfalls and, of course, some deaths–and Episode 3 has plenty of those! So we’d like to reward you for failing with The Many Deaths of King Graham!

For this contest, we want you to submit a list of all the unique deaths you can find in Episode 3! What does that mean? It means if it’s a way you could die in a previous episode–like drowning, or being bitten by the Black Widow–then it doesn’t count. But if it’s brand new, put down the screen where it happened, how it happened, and copy down the death message it gave you! Submit your list of deaths to contests@postudios.com–the 3 fans who’ve submitted the most deaths by March 3rd will be the winners! You can submit more than once to make your list longer and increase your chances of winning at any time.

The prize? Each winner will get a professionally printed copy of the TSL 2011 Calendar!

Everyone Needs a Little Suffering

You may have found the Suffer, but his friends and family are still loose in the Green Isles! In Episode 3, Baby Suffer (aka “Little Suffering”) is hiding somewhere in the game, and he’s even sneakier than his big brother. See if you can find the clues and find the Suffer!

If you do, take a screenshot of your inventory with the Baby Suffer in it, and send it to us along with your save file at contests@postudios.com. The first 5 people to correctly find and prove that they found Baby Suffer will win “The Suffer Lining” mousepads!

The journey through the creation of The Silver Lining has been a great bumpy road. We have had our ups and downs, both internally, and from external factors. There have been times when I’ve questioned myself: “Why are we really doing this?”. Many times, that answer is obvious, for you, the fans, but other times, even we are surprised at the results.

I never expected, for example, that Roberta Williams would play and bless our game. That was a definite honor, and something the team did not expect in a thousand years. I would have not expected Ken Williams to congratulate us. I did not expect to hear that Josh Mandel, Al Lowe and Scott Murphy would be checking our game out. And I definitely did not expect that my favorite designer, the creator of the glorious Gabriel Knight and King’s Quest VI, would have not only played our game, but also be such a cool person to talk to.

Two weeks ago, I had the chance to speak with Jane on the phone for over an hour. We shared experiences on making games, talked about the ups and downs of The Silver Lining and Gray Matter, and of course, also talked about Gabriel Knight. I had the joy to see some very cool material related to the franchise.

I asked Jane to play our game. She later emailed me about it, and she said, I quote:

“It was cool to be reminded of the ‘land of the green isles’ again and some of those old characters. It is an impressive thing to achieve with volunteer workers and little to no budget. Good work.”

You have to understand one thing: Jane Jensen is the main reason why I wanted to become a videogames writer. I remember one of the first things I wrote in highschool was a play based on Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father, which I also directed. To have her play our games and share those thoughts with us… I was in heaven! The person I have most admired in the industry commended us on our game!

Her latest masterpiece, Gray Matter, is coming out on Feb 22nd in North America and on Feb 25th in Europe. I had the chance to play the game, and I was mesmerized by the storyline and I loved the puzzles. Sam and David are very charming characters and you will feel the extraordinary power of Jane’s pen behind their writing. Do not miss out on the best writing in adventure games in recent history.

Cesar Bittar

Pelit, videogames magazine from Finland, reviews Episode 1 and 2 and gives the episodes 82/100 and 85/100 respectively. Attached is a scan of the magazine and a translation follows:

The Return of the King

The death of adventure games seems to have been greatly exaggerated. Why, there giving them out for free!

Roberta Williams left an eternal mark on the adventure game genre. With her husband, they were the founders of Sierra On-line, which created the foundation for the whole adventure gaming industry.

King’s Quest was Sierra’s oldest and most beloved gameseries. This favorite child of Roberta Williams, grew from its cradle in to eight sequels in length, but the latest 3D-actionthingie was to be the end of the series.Now the child has gotten a new home in the hands of dedicated collection of fans and after years of silence, the series is getting an unofficial sequel. Made with the strength of amateurs, The Silver Lining is, despite its crude exterior, pure gold.

Because King’s Quest and its characters are still under copyright protection, the route taken by The Silver Lining, that is released in five episodes, has been long and rocky. Luckily in the end, reason won. The first episode was released with the blessings of Roberta Williams, so this is the most official fan product you’ll ever see. This project done with volunteer work is free and there are already two full episodes done.

Wedding straight from hell

A proud father has to do much more harder work than your normal toast, when in the middle of a wedding, Alexander and Rosella, the heirs to the king of Daventry king Graham, are cursed and they fall into a coma. Gray-haired Graham is off to his final adventure to search for a cure.

The troubles of the opening scene are really simple, so even beginners can get a hold of the plot easily. During the first episode, one doesn’t travel far from the beginning island, but the apperatives of the story efficiently waked up tastebuds. After the brooding opening of the second episode, the world is once again painted with candy colors and the serious rescue mission gets some humor on its side. The story hits on a new gear and finally Graham and his company gets to travel around the big world. The second episode also improves the puzzles, but you’ll hardly get stuck anywhere.

Now the story starts to feel like a grand adventure. The episode ends just when the plot starts to thicken, so the excitement is strong while waiting for the third episode.

Sierra or Escort?

The interface is so Sierra. With the right mouse ear you can sail through the actions, while the left button executes it. The gameworld does not have any hotspots, so you’ll have to keep your eyes open. The king’s adventure in this three dimensional kingdom requires some handhelding, since the pathfinding algorithm seems to have been born premature. As a small beauty flaw Graham walks like a robot, but luckily you’ll get used to the stiff main character pretty quickly.

Despite being blessed with a golden heart, the exterior of this fanproduct is unfortunately not as golden. Record blurry textures and blocky character models are something from the last millenium, with higher resolutions the problems are more apparent. Atleast the pixels cover up some of the jagged edges. To counter the apathetic graphics the soundscape is extremely well made. The music offers some melancholical piano notes and there is nothing to complain the voice acting. The monk choirs of episode 2 even managed to raise the hair on my back.

The characters say their lines, with a few exceptions, without overacting, and the gout graphics engine tries its best to make the characters look like they’re displaying emotions. The only exception to the swinging voice acting is the annoying female narrator, who opens her mouth every time there is even a small excuse.

With great interest, I’m waiting to see where does this adventure go. The game already feels like a real King’s Quest and the love of the authors to their work is clearly visible. Usually in these kinds of projects, the schedules get longer, but getting two episodes out is a strong sign that the latest adventure of the Daventry family will see an ending.

The Silver Lining(8) reminds me of homemade house wine. Preserved in a Mehukatti can it’s hard to make the flavor taste like a mass produced alternative. After the long gestation period you have something homebrewn that is to be enjoyed in small portions, of which the final opinion can only be said when the the cup hits the lees.

Juho Kuorikoski (author)

GOOD

– The spirit of King’s Quest is present.

– Voice acting has been nicely executed.

– Beautifully melancholical soundtrack.

– Story has guts.

BAD

– The narrator is annoying.

– Dismal graphics.

– Pathfinder needs some work

Episode 1: 82/100

Episode 2: 85/100

”Pelit suosittelee”-seal (Pelit recommends)

In a previous post I made on the forums, I spoke of how certain we were of our January 29th date. I had my little plan with enough breathing room to get caught up if we fell behind. And it looked beautiful!

They say you shouldn’t count your chickens before they hatch. And now we are here, with just under a week to the date we announced, and lo and behold, we’ve got a few unhatched eggs—in other words, a build that is not ready to be released to the public. Though Episode 3 is technically playable and does look nice, it still needs that extra layer of polish to really make it go from good to great. We want it to be really great, and more importantly, that’s what you guys deserve. But to get it there, we need a little more time.

To make Episode 3 as awesome as it can possibly be, we’ve decided to move our release date to early February. We’ll announce the exact date soon when we release our trailer for Episode 3, which I think is easily our most exciting and tantalizing trailer yet!

Episode 3 is a massive beast and it’s been an interesting and very educational experience working on it. To give you an idea of the scope, Episode 3 is more than twice the size of Episode 2. We hired 20 new animators to crank out Episode 3 and work on the 1500 hours of animations that were needed to make this episode much bigger and much more exciting; Episode 2 only had around 350 hours of new animation and 5 new animators! To get this amount of animation done in the time we did them is definitely a new milestone for us and I’m really proud of the work that our team, old members and new, have put into this Episode. We are now down to about 100 hours of animations as we polish the work and make the animations as good as possible!

All together, this means you can expect a much longer episode, packed with more intricate and difficult puzzles, a centerpiece action sequence, more beautiful cutscenes, another Isle to explore with new scenes and characters, and much more! “My Only Love Sprung from My Only Hate” definitely holds a special place in my heart as probably my favorite episode of the series (yet!).

In an effort to avoid having any other pushbacks, by the time Episode 3 is released, our team will already be hard at work on Episodes 4 and 5. Some interesting things have been going on with the later episodes. Since we launched the series and have been getting feedback from the fans, we’ve rethought the game’s grand finale and have made some changes to the ending. This means what was once Episodes 4 and 5 have been combined into the new Episode 4, and we’re working hard to build almost the new Episode 5 almost from scratch. This new final Episode will bring the game to a much stronger conclusion, and it gives us the chance to incorporate pieces of the larger game we’d always hoped to make. And even more exciting? In Episode 5, we’re adding a second playable character—but you’ll have to wait until then to find out who it is!

And finally, to leave you with some good news, we have new screenshots of Episode 3, and we now have the free PDF version of the 2011 TSL Calendar available for download in the Fan Club, featuring some great artwork both by our team members and the fans! Some months even offer sneak peeks at places yet to come, so I hope you enjoy it, and even though you’ll have to wait a little bit longer for the game—I promise it will be worth the wait!

We are absolutely thrilled over these news!

Head over to AGDI’s website and show these guys some support for the amazing news on the King’s Quest III remake. With this, and Infamous Adventures’ Space Quest II remake also coming very soon, and The Silver Lining Episode 3 around the corner, it’s a great time to be a Sierra fan, and a great way to show that the legacy of such an amazing company will continue to live as long as there are dedicated fans out there to carry on the torch!

The folks over at Infamous Adventures are having the heck of a contest! Relive the magic of Sierra in this amazing contest! From IA:

Help us determine what is, once and for all, the single greatest Sierra adventure game! Infamous Adventures has announced “The Greatest Quest Ever Told!” a contest to determine what is the number one Sierra adventure game and it looks like a heap of fun!

It’s now time to determine what is the BEST, what is the WORST and what is just floating along in the middle.

It’s simple and should be fun! Every two days (sometimes longer, especially near the end when we’re up to the newer and longer games) we’ll play through and rank each Sierra adventure game, in the order of release. The goal here is to play, or replay, each game. Try and re-experience the pleasure!

Then log onto the forums and answer the poll question “Rate The Game”. This is the question we’re going to use to create the final results, the best, the worst and the ones in the middle. Each game will have a standard couple of questions, but feel free to start your own threads. Make comments, argue, prove your point!

And that’s it! Simple!

Join up and be involved! It’s going to be great and we’re going to answer that question that every adventure game fan has. What is really the greatest Sierra adventure game?

For more information and to join the quest, log onto to theInfamous Adventure forums!

Cesar shares his thoughts on the soundtrack. Read all about how some of the tracks came to fruition:

“This started as a forums post, but I decided that maybe others who don’t frequent the forums would be interested to know a bit about the process behind the creation of this Soundtrack. This list was just me pointing out my fav tracks in the soundtrack, but I decided to go the extra mile and talk a bit more about them. So here it goes, hope you enjoy it:

“Something Wicked This Way Comes”: The intro piece took a lot of work to get it to sound as epic as it now sounds. I kept asking Austin to push it further and higher. I wanted to open with that epic feeling and I intended very much for the intro to be speechless and mostly sfxless because I wanted Austin to drive the whole thing. The mockups for this music included James Horner’s a Kaleidoscope of Mathematics, from the Beautiful Mind score –as a ways of opening, and Depeche Mode’s Pimpf for the Valanice follows Alex sequence, which I had heard in Broken Saints and fell in love with. There were also other pieces like where we see the Crystal Ball that had originally a heartbeat sound attached to it, and Austin turned it into a little melody but based on that idea. I still can’t get over how beautiful the piano section is as we enter the castle and meet the royal family. Absolutely perfect! Brings shivers down my spine everytime.

“In The Name of Family”: This is one of those tracks that became Graham’s main theme after I listened to it being composed for another scene in which it didn’t work. I liked it so much, that I decided to call it Graham’s theme and use it from now on. There are many tries at music composed for Graham (What is Decreed Must Be, A Promise to Never Break, Graham Seeks Answers), but I was never really happy, and I felt it was lacking until I heard this piece and asked Austin to use it now as the main theme for Graham. This is one of the newest tracks made, dating from sometime late in 2009. It was originally composed for a scene called “Can You See How Dark It Is”, which you will see (and hear!) in Episode 4.

“A Prophecy of His Own”: Incredibly beautiful track. I asked Austin to compose the music for the bad guy, and gave him his full description, his complete back story (that you guys still have to learn), and asked him to compose something based on that. There’s a lot of duality going on in this track and Austin captured that essence beautifully. This was one of those tracks where he nailed it on the first submission and made me very happy with it. It’s also the original track that spawns the many versions that you hear in the rest of the soundtrack.

“The Ranger Watches”: This track plays the theme of the prophecy and is one of my favorite renditions of it. I liked it so much, that I used it for the closing credits of episode 1. Simple and elegant. I often play this on repeat in the background while writing –helps me get into that state of mind.

“Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made Of”: Another one of those tracks that happened on the first go at it. This was supposed to be a slow down version of the track that you heard back in the main menu of the demo, but honestly, it’s really hard for me to spot the similarities. However, it was such an amazing work, that we had to keep it. This was also the first track in which Austin used his voice, and it was definitely a turning point in what I requested from Austin. After such an amazing work, I kept asking to use real voices, and we started doing this more often, with his voice, or his sister’s voice (which you will hear in Ep3’s music). This style has also greatly influenced the music for Corridor 9.

“Journey of Eternities”: I was looking for a theme that could go with the most epic journey the Daventry family would ever embark on. Because King’s Quest never really had a theme (the closest thing being Greensleeves), the idea was to come up with something that could become some sort of an anthem to this game. It had to be strong, adventurous, epic and mysterious, but it also needed to have the ability to come down to the personal level if needed. It was definitely not an easy task, and it took many tries to get it right. The main theme was Austin first composition when he came into the project back in 04. There were literally about 20 attempts at making this theme by many talented musicians, but it was only until Austin joined that this came to be. The funny story is that the actual melody came to me when I was taking a shower one night, and I ran out of the shower to record it through a microphone. I then turned it to Austin and he came back with this beauty. This is one of the most prominent themes of the soundtrack and you can hear it in a lot of the tracks. Pure brilliance! This is, to me, the strongest theme in the whole soundtrack! Blast it through your speakers and you’ll see what I mean!

“The Day You Were Gone”: Either its acoustic version or the pop version, I love them both. The interesting story about this theme is that it’s based on the “Love Theme” for the game. The Love Theme was another one of those tracks that, the same as the Main Theme, was problematic. Austin would come up with something that worked great for a love theme, it was approved, but then, later, I would think more of it, and try to picture it in different situations and it wouldn’t work. I wanted something similar to Xenosaga’s Sakura’s theme –a very beautiful and haunting melody, but also with the ability of being strong and carry more “actiony” sequences. It went through about 5 rewrites, until Austin turned in a very simple piano rendition of what is the chorus melody for this song. I was immediately grabbed by it, and many versions of the Day You Were Gone followed, including these two, an unreleased orchestrated version (Which you can hear in the Making Of), and the final version, which was offered for a download earlier on, where the verses are different and the chorus is slowed down. After hearing that piano one Austin submitted, I thought of turning it into a song, so I grabbed pen and paper, jolted some words down, and started to sing it. This was later passed on to Amy Kurylo, who brought her lovely voice to the track. As a tidbit, you should know that she composed the pianos for the acoustic version of The Day You Were Gone. She sat in her studio, putting things together, and came up with this to use in the pop version. We later found this piano was too “busy” for the pop version, so Austin replaced that, but, experimenting, I grabbed her voice and the piano and mixed that, and voilá, this version came to be days before the soundtrack was finalized –Austin later did the proper mix of course.

“The Thousand Years Prophecy”: Based on the Prophecy Theme, this is another of those tracks that was submitted by Austin and I immediately loved it so much, that it became the seed for the idea of changing the main menu music for every episode. It was originally done for the Shamir and Graham conversation for Episode 2, but given that it was too bombastic, we had to tone it down for the conversation, but I kept the original and used it for the main menu and credits. The work with the choirs is just impressive.

“Graham Seeks Answers”: A modest piece that’s very personal to what Graham is experiencing. For a long time, I was accustomed to see this scene playing to Hans Zimmer’s “A Small Measure of Piece” from the “Last Samurai” score –one of my fav pieces ever. I told Austin that he had very large shoes to fill in with this, because I was using a track that meant a lot to me. And he did! Elegant, evocative, personal, signifying in many ways a moment of struggle to Graham in his adventure, the question of whether he will be able to put a stop to this evil that always seems to threaten his family.

Checkmate!: I wanted something wacko for the Isle of Wonders, and upon playing the original Kingdom Hearts, and hearing the music of the Alice in Wonderland world, I knew that’s what I wanted. It had that very “andante/allegro” feel to it. I turned to Nicholas Boland for this piece, because he is great at a more classical composition and gave him directions. He came back with this very stunning and fun piece. Such a great job!

“Journey Through The Green Isles”: The first version of this track wasn’t based on the main theme, and I asked Austin to give it more of that main theme flavor to it. I wanted this main theme to encompass all the music that signified adventuring. The result is this very peaceful track that evokes a sense of adventure in a far away land. Perfect for the map. I can feel the waves of the sea when I listen to it!

Gwydion’s Nightmare: I find this to be such a powerful piece. Again, Austin managed to get this beauty as it is in just one submission. It starts with Alexander’s theme, which you can also hear in “A Kingless Castle”, and then it goes into a very dark section that, to me, represents well what Alexander must have felt in that encounter with his worse nightmare. It wasn’t only fear, but also the anger and the strength to finally stand up and say what the young King had been keeping inside for such a long time. Amazing job by Austin!

Valanice Falls: The only version of the Valanice Theme we can hear in this soundtrack (I promise you, there’s a lot of them coming), I found this piece to be perfect for the moment. Tense at first, then devastating, going well with the tender moment between Graham and Valanice, a family torn apart by the many things going on about. Valanice’s theme was an original composition of Nicholas Boland, and it came about by accident. I kept looking for a theme for the Queen, but I wasn’t pleased with the attempts from the composers.Then, one day, Nick just handed me a 30 second piece where he was testing some new samples for his music software, and he played some notes with a piano at one point and repeated them once. It must had been a 10 seconds thing, but, upon hearing it, it screamed Valanice to me. Nick even joked with me that he wasn’t even trying to get a theme, just playing some random notes and I turned that into a full blown theme for her. Hey, sometimes accidents are how the best things happen!”