Daniel Sadowski on his retro game score for Bloody Zombies

The Original Game Soundtrack for Bloody Zombies, featuring an original score by Daniel Sadowski (Soundrama), is available for purchase via iTunes, Google Play, and Amazon, as well as for streaming via all major streaming platforms.

Bloody Zombies is a VR game developed by Paw Print Games and published by nDreams that combines the classic retro arcade games with the graphics, music, and technology of today. If you loved the old school arcade games like Double Dragon you should have a look at this game on Steam. The gameplay itself is also more modern, but Bloody Zombies gives a wink and a nod to some retro aspects.

Listen to “Annihilation Time” from the Bloody Zombies soundtrack below:

Daniel Sadowski’s electronic retro score captures the essence of the classic arcade games and combines it with modern production standards. “I was approached by Paw Print Games, a new developer out of London, and they really liked my music on other games that they had heard,” Daniel told us. “They asked me to do a demo and I did about two and a half minutes of music. Luckily, they were ‘blown away’ by what I did and so we immediately went to work on the score for Bloody Zombies.”

Right from the start, the premise was to create a retro-like score but with modern elements to it: “They wanted the score to be very song- and dance-like because the music was to be more like a music soundtrack playing in the background as opposed to a background score for the game. This approach made sense to me because the game was a straight-up arcade fighting game, that had a lot of comedic elements in it – after all, you are fighting in a London that is ravaged with zombies… So it made sense to just have a killer soundtrack feel to the score.”

“At the same time, when I wrote the music,” Daniel recalled,” I was aware that the pieces would have to loop and so I wrote them in a way to where they wouldn’t be too repetitive. They needed to be energetic and fun. Also, the developer planned on having the tracks just sort of shuffle and randomly play one of the tracks, so it would keep things moving and add some variety. Some levels could take a while to beat, so this made sense. I also grew up loving all of the 8-Bit and 16-Bit games as well as all of those 80’s Carpenter films and other 80’s films and games. Thus, I sort of tapped into what I liked personally and also tried to inject my style of what felt right without thinking too much about it at the same time. Apart from that, I honestly wanted the music to be a little dirty, which adds to the retro vibe.”

Listen to “Analogue Disease” from the Bloody Zombies soundtrack below:

Tools that brought Bloody Zombies’ retro score to life

Daniel Sadowski also told us about his favourite tools he used to capture the retro score that makes Bloody Zombies so fun to listen to: “I ran all my soft synths through hardware gear – to add some mojo if you will. I used the TK-Audio BC1 hardware compressor as well as an SSL Clone. By running the soft synths through these hardware compressors and then back into Cubase, I could get a real grit and more analogue of a sound. It really helped in bringing some of the synths to life.”

To achieve the right amount of grittiness, Daniel “used a lot of random drum and dubstep samples from various libraries, cut them up within Cubase and just layered a lot of stuff. I also used stutter effects, distortion, and tape effects, all mixed together sometimes, on various of the instruments. In general, I use Cubase and Vienna Ensemble Pro, but I tend to like using some external hardware in my music in one form or another. I just like the sound and feel that it brings, and I can get to where I need to be faster.”

If you have played Bloody Zombies, you will have realized that not all of the music is included in the soundtrack release featuring Daniel’s music. That’s because after finishing the score “Paw Print Games had a new Publisher come in and they wanted to completely rework the game graphics and approach,” Daniel mentioned, “They pretty much created a more modern game with hardly any retro elements.” Thus, a new score was needed as well and while everyone still wanted Daniel’s score to be part of the game, “they had an internal composer who made a more traditional, modern sounding score for the game. So now the game has two soundtracks if you will, which turned out very cool: my retro soundtrack along with the underscore. It adds to the variety of music that the player has. Overall, working on Bloody Zombies was a lot of fun and the development had its dramatic moments as well, but at the end of the day, every aspect of composing is worth it, to see the final game or film be out in the public so that people can truly enjoy it.”

Stream to Daniel Sadowski’s complete soundtrack for Bloody Zombies below:

Watch the official Announce trailer for Bloody Zombies below:

The Original Game Soundtrack for Bloody Zombies, featuring an original score by Daniel Sadowski (Soundrama), is available for purchase via iTunes, Google Play, and Amazon, as well as for streaming via all major streaming platforms.

About composer Daniel Sadowski

Daniel Sadowski is known for composing the music scores for video games such as Dota 2, Heroes of Skyrealm, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Man of Steel, Crimson Saga: Dragonore, A Boy and His Blob, Megamind, Pac-Man, City of Steam, Stasis, Gratuitous Space Battles 1 and 2, Dusty Revenge, How To Survive, and many other titles. Besides providing more music for Dota 2, Daniel currently works on Sycoforge’s fantasy-based action-adventure VR game ‘Arafinn – Return to Nangrim’ [watch the teaser].

Daniel also works within Film and TV and is currently working on a project tied to a very popular Lionsgate franchise that is yet to be disclosed. He has composed for unique projects such as Awaken, multiple Award Winning short films, the new IMAX feature film ‘Volcanoes: The Fires of Creation‘ as well as ‘The Cure’. Whether it’s working with a full-size orchestra and choir, or writing a synthesized score, Daniel truly appreciates the unique challenges of composing for each project.

Daniel has received multiple awards and nominations including the “GDC Excellence in Audio Award” and the “Action On Film International Film Festival Award Nomination” for best Soundtrack. Daniel is a voting member of the Recording Academy (Grammy Awards). Some of his clients include Lionsgate, Valve Software, Yoozoo Games, Mechanist Games, DreamWorks, nDreams, Warner Brothers, Namco Bandai, Falcon’s Treehouse, Neo-Pangea, Positech Games, Square Enix, Atari, THQ, Paw Print Games, UPS, Sony, 2K Games, Wayforward, 505 Games, Big Ben Interactive, Neopica, Naked Sky Entertainment, David Gould Film Studios, The Dubai International Film Festival, Iron Galaxy Studios and more.

You can find more info about Daniel Sadowski on his official website soundrama.com. In a recent blog post for Gamastura, Daniel wrote about his music for Dota 2 as well as about finding your own voice as a composer.