My friend Albert Schapiro showed me this great video about the video game industry. That inspired me to write this song. I’ve been listening a lot to Pogo lately, especially his amazing Joburg Jam. I’m used to writing songs and then sing them myself. Now I’m curious how you can manipulate audio to make music. I tried to use auto-tune at first but didn’t get the result I wanted. Instead I bought The Mouth from Native Instruments and experimented with that.

Here’s the result. I hope you enjoy it, and think twice before you start working in the video game industry ;)

You can download the song in the player on the right side.

Magicka just released new DLC by the name of ”Mea Culpa”. With it comes a song that I wrote.
Thanks to Shams Jorjani for letting me participate in such a fun project.

You can download the song in the player on the right side.

Lyrics

The Gamer
Hey there people I just bought your game
I wrote you a song since I don’t like to flame
I like all the features that Magicka has
Except for the bugs and the desktop crash
What is the deal with the vampire guy
And how come that when I play as yellow I die
I’d like to be able to play with my friends
This was my song and here’s where it ends

Vlad
My friend we did our best we should have tried a little harder
And I am not a vampire you can even ask my father
The yellow wizard always dies because he likes to play with fire
We know that you’ve been waiting long we know that your are tired
So here’s a freebie for your patience you can get it in an instant
You can use it to kill your friend with
Then revive him…
…and kill him again

Chords

G – Am
D – Am
C – E – Dm – Am
Am – E – Dm -Am
C – G – F – G

You have to figure out when to play what but it shouldn’t be that hard ;)

I had been thinking a long time about writing music about Bad Company 2. The process was slow until I asked Benjamin Stratton if he wanted to make a machinima for the song. I knew from his previous videos that he was a magician but I couldn’t even have wished for this. Besides being a devil in video editing he’s also a great guy to work with.

You can download the song using the player on the right side.

Lyrics

Intro
Sniper team
Sniper team
Does whatever a sniper team does
Do they charge
Do they attack
No they don’t they’re a sniper team

Verse 1
This is the story of the sniper team
They sit on hills and they don’t do a thing
They only worry ‘bout the ratio
I’m gonna get them and that’s for sure

Bridge 1
So when I hit them with my tracer dart I feel, alright
Wookie you can run but you can’t hide with that, red light

Chorus 1
I wanna shoot them with my shotgun
I want to kill them with a headshot

I wanna dress them in some C4
And push the button right on the spot

I wanna blow them up in pieces
And see that body fly through the sky

I wanna stab them with my knife now
I wanna see them die

Verse 2
So when you see a sniper sitting there
With his rifle and he just don’t care
Spawn engineer and you’ll be just fine
Creep up on the guy from behind

Bridge 2
Then you’ll hit him with your tracer dart and you’ll feel, alright
See the wookie running trying to hide with that, red light

Chorus 2
You got to shoot them with your shotgun
You got to kill them with a headshot

You got to dress them in some C4
And push the button right on the spot

You got to blow them up in pieces
And see that body fly through the sky

You got to stab them with your knife now
You got to see them die

Break
See the wookie, trying to run
I’m gonna get him, with my gun
He don’t help no, he’s no good
He don’t belong, in this neighbourhood

Bridge 1

Chorus 1

Chords

Verse
A – G – C – E

Bridge
C – D – A – E

Chorus
F – G – C – G

Jadestone recently released the game Harry Cannon’s Pipe Dreams on Kongregate. It features a song by me called ”The Ballad of Harry”. This is the promotion for the mobile game ”Dirk Dagger and the Nuclear Zeppelin”which will soon be released on Nokia’s N-gage.

Music & song: Henrik Nåmark
Lyrics:  Andrew Walsh
Guitar: The Incredible Haze

Thanks to Tommy Palm for giving me the opportunity to work on such a great project.

Just as I thought life couldn’t get any better, I found out that The Color of Doom is a student showcase winner in the Independent Games Festival.

I made the end credits music together with my friends in The Brown Pumas. The song is also used in the trailer.

• Reachground – Project manager, drum programming, bass, mix and mastering.
• The Incredible Haze – Guitar, chorus.
• Rafael – Rap.
• All of us contributed to the lyrics.

As we approached the new year, the best of 2008 awards started to pop up. I was really happy that Gamasutra, IndieGames and Rock, Paper Shotgun liked You Have to Burn the Rope (YHTBTR). The Gaming Club over at Slate’s gave the game some attention while Spike TV used my song ”Now you’re a hero” at the end of their show The Next Great Game Gods. I celebrated when Jayisgames finally wrote a full post about the game and as the article by Stuart Horvath in the New York Daily News was published I was quite surprised. YHTBTR by the side of GTA IV, Fallout 3, Braid and the other great games was an honor beyond my wildest dreams.

To top it all of, YHTBTR is nominated for Innovation in the 2009 Independent Games festival. I really want to go to San Fransisco to attend the awards but I’m not sure I can. The tickets + expenses will surely amount to at least 1000 EUROS which is way over my budget. Oh well, you never know what might happen.

I read some comments about the nomination and realised that some people think YHTBTR don’t belong on the list. I can’t make you like the game and if you don’t, to be honest, I’m not going to lose sleep over it. But I want to make something clear which is obviously just a misunderstanding. People who think YHTBTR was something Kian and me threw together in a hurry need to think again. To get it in perspective, let me tell you about the text on the way to the boss. If you count the hours me and Kian talked about colors, placements, alternative ideas, testing it on people and so on, it amounts to at least ten. Do the math and you’ll understand how long it took to complete the full game.

Surprised?

An old saying fits well here:

Sometimes the simplest things are the hardest.

Henrik Edlund from Swedish Game Awards was kind enough to inform me that The Next Great Game Gods can be seen in full at Gametrailers.com. This is part four and it uses Now You’re a Hero at 4:47.