I knew Wizard of Legend was something special when I first saw it. And I was sold on it from first sight. I really wanted to write music for it. I remember crossing my fingers as hard as I could at that time. I was going around wincing and people would ask me what's wrong. "Dale, are you okay?" And I'd snap out of it for a second: "Oh, what? Oh...yeah, I'm fine."

Eventually the developers had me write a piece and they really seemed to like it -- they bought it -- but I didn't know if I had the full job for a bit. And when they finally told me I was on board I was over the moon. I really wanted that excitement and energy to carry into my work and I did my best to make sure that it did for the year or so I worked on the soundtrack.

Contingent99 had a lot of Wizard of Legend's look and play style in place before they hired me to write the soundtrack. I suppose that this worked in my favor as I had a really firm idea of how I wanted it to sound before they gave me any direction. But just on first sight I was set on a direction. I mean, it just looked magical, even in static form. When I played an early build, seeing it in action cemented my feeling of how I'd approach the soundtrack. I somehow came up with the idea that I wanted something bright and fast, sometimes sparkly, sometimes searing to the ear, but I wanted the instrumentation to lean hard toward classic sample-based synthesizers, and that's mostly because I loved the Sega Saturn's soundtracks. Musically, I something with an edge at the fringes, but always with the core of being magical and heavily melodic. Something cool and bold, but with a nice, soft heart.

But as anyone that makes music for hire can tell you, you rarely get what you want. When I started on this, near the middle of 2016, I had come off a stretch of game work where the client was firmly set on how the game would sound and feel, and "retro" was certainly the flavor of the season, if you will. I was an order cook at a diner but wanting to play chef for a bit. And while I'm totally, fully fine with writing a retro soundtrack my heart was set on doing something different. I was hoping that Contingent99 would be open to something pretty different from what you'd expect to hear if you saw this game...and I was pleased to find that they were.

They were very supportive of the sound I had in mind and they worked with me along the way to help make it fit and make sense for the game's world and characters. Information and inspiration continually came in and music continually came out. They were endlessly encouraging of my work, and that fueled the creation of the soundtrack, song by song. It was a collaborative and truly fantastic process.

Actually, they deserve even more credit in the music making process. While both members of Contingent99 were very open to the sound and direction I wanted to take the music, they had strong feelings in how the final piece should fit into the game. From the very beginning I had a sense of how much they cared about Wizard of Legend, and not just the look and sound, but also the feel and the cohesiveness of it all. And for me that meant a lot of revisions! It was hard to go back to a song that many times (as you'll see in the Composer's Commentary) but it was their detailed feedback, clear guidance, and everlasting patience that made these songs fit so well. They would always insist that they had little knowledge of musical or technical terms, but the guidance they gave ended up being very musical. I felt it made the songs better. I was very lucky to work with people that cared so much about the music!

Composer's Commentary:

This is a track-by-track walkthrough of the entire Wizard of Legend soundtrack, and is intended to be read while listening. It covers the music creation process, and references my notes, drafts, Trello boards, conversations, and more. I hope this brings a bit more enjoyment to the soundtrack as well as gives a little peek into the game's development. This will lean more toward the music creation process but it won't be too technical. And some of the songs have some interesting stories behind them! Please pull up a copy of the album and listen/read along!