Karl “Rockfist” Rosqvist: From Punk and Metal to the Chiptune Sound of Alruna

Alruna: End of History original game soundtrack artwork.

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What came first for you personally, games or music? When did those two worlds start connecting?

I would say that they pretty much happened at the same time. I was a kid in the 80’s, so all the kids I knew were into rock, punk and metal bands and playing games. I personally started with the commodore 64. You loaded the games from a cassette player and it took quite a while for them to load. I had just gotten my first drum set around the same time and I would play “finger-drums” on the desk as the games were loading, which often led to the infamous “Syntax Error” message, and I had to reload the game all over again. I don’t think I started paying real attention to game music until I got the NES and later on the Sega Genesis console. That’s when I realized how much the music added to the whole experience.

You have played in and around a lot of rock, punk, and metal over the years. Looking back, what has stayed with you the most from that part of your career?

I think what I’ve really seen and still continue to see is the impact music has on people’s lives. Both for the people listening to music and for the people creating or/and performing it. It’s a powerful thing!

How did your path from bands and live music lead into composing music for games?

My first instrument was the piano. I took classes as a kid. We always had a piano at home and I would sit down almost daily and just play and come up with melodies etc. I got my first DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) about 20 years ago and that’s when I started getting into MIDI recording, orchestral mockups and stuff like that. It was a fun thing to do when I wasn’t on the road. I started by scoring short films for free for film students in Los Angeles, where I lived at the time. It was a great learning experience with minimal pressure. I reached out to a bunch of game studios asking if I could write demos for free, just to see if I could do it. That eventually led to getting to writing music for full games.

Burning Planet says it approaches an indie game as if it was a band. What does that mean to you as a musician?

The DIY approach that comes with being in a band, especially these days, is more or less identical to being an indie game developer or publisher. Someone has put all their time, heart and energy into creating the game they’ve always wanted to make, just like musicians do when they make an album..It’s not just a product. But you have to think outside the box to be heard/seen through the noise. There are literally thousands of games (and bands) out there. You can’t just put a game out on Steam and hope for the best. You have to be stubborn and hard-headed. We throw release parties for our games, we make t-shirts, vinyl records, stickers, online contests etc. You don’t need a huge budget to do exciting things.We do it the same way we do things in our bands. We even had a special soda-pop (drink) made for a game once. Whatever it takes to grab people’s attention! It’s important that we do everything together with the game developer(s) and that we’re really in it together as a team.. just like a band.

Burning Planet, left to right: Max Malmquist, Niklas Hallin, developer of the Alruna games, and Karl Rosqvist.

Burning Planet seems rooted in indie culture, not just games as products. What does “indie” mean to you today, especially when music, art, and games are all becoming more commercial and AI-driven?

There is something very liberating about being independent and being able to call your own shots. Both creatively and businesswise. Technology and the internet, including all the social media platforms, have changed what indie means. You don’t have to be a part of the major corporate systems to be able to create a great game or music and make it accessible to everyone. Thankfully AI is already quite unpopular in the arts, including games. The more sterile and bland art gets, the more people will want the human elements that come with making something from the heart. I have felt like that about music for years. I admire any creator who dares to venture out and break trends.

When you write music for a game like Alruna: End of History, do you think more like a composer, a drummer, or a band member?

I generally think more as a composer, but you have to work together with the game developer(s) and try to make things feel and sound the way it is in their minds, so it’s usually a very collaborative process, which feels more like a band vibe. I like to send ideas and demos to the developer very early in the process, discuss them and go from there.

What was the first musical idea, feeling, riff, rhythm, or atmosphere that opened the door for Alruna’s soundtrack?

Often I’ll start with the main theme, which will then set the vibe for the rest of the soundtrack. This was the case with Alruna as well. The whole point is to find something unique that complements the visuals and the whole gaming experience.

Alruna’s world seems to mix beauty, decay, strange fantasy, and punk energy. How do you translate that kind of world into music?

Niklas Hallin (the developer) sent me a bunch of music that he likes and that had the right mood for Alruna. Some of it was full blown orchestral or operatic stuff,and some of it could be music by a doom or punk band. It’s interesting what happens when you try to write that type of stuff with the limitations that come with making an 8-bit soundtrack even though we decided that we didn’t have to stay completely “true” to the old technology of the NES. It takes a whole different direction and usually ends up sounding nothing like the starting point. That’s when everything falls into place.

Coming from real bands and live performance, how important is raw human energy in game music?

It’s very important to me. As I mentioned, people appreciate when things are real and from the heart. Even though a soundtrack like Alruna’s obviously isn’t recorded analog or with acoustic instruments, I actually did play and record every drumbeat, melody etc. on my keyboard or pads and I purposely left some human feel and imperfections in there. Just because you have the tools to “fix” everything and make it completely sterile, doesn’t mean you should do it. The whole sound of Alruna is very raw and basic.

Do you feel game music gives you a different kind of freedom compared to playing in a band?

For sure! Mainly because I play the drums in my bands, so naturally I don’t get to play any melodies. Another very inspiring challenge and freedom is that as a composer I’m not tied to a specific style. I get just as much creative satisfaction from writing music for a cozy game as I do writing an orchestral score or a chiptunes soundtrack.

Are there any tracks or moments in Alruna: End of History where you feel your own musical fingerprint comes through strongest?

Probably the theme melody, but since the Alruna soundtrack has a lot of doom elements my history of listening to alot of those types of bands definitely comes through all over the place.

With so much talk around AI and generated art today, does the value of real human-made music feel even more important to you now?

It’s never been more important. It’s difficult for me to get excited by computer generated music. At least so far, AI is basing everything it creates on existing music, which means nothing unique and new will come out of it. It will just be a generic version of something that has already been done.

If you could take one major figure from your music career, someone you have played with, worked with, or known, and turn them into the main character of a video game, who would it be? What kind of game would it be, and why?

Haha! I would say Michael Monroe. He is already like a video game character. So many possibilities! I’ll leave that up to a game developer.

For players who discover your music through Alruna first, what would you want them to listen for?

My main goal is to complement the gaming experience and not for the music to stand out too much. Hopefully I managed to make that happen. If someone wants to check out some of the other music I’ve done you can find most of the OST’s on Youtube and Spotify. If they like 8-bit/chiptunes type of music, the Alruna games (Alruna and the Necro-Industrialists and Alruna- End of History) are the only OSTs I have composed in that genre, and the OST for End of History is basically a continuation of the Necro-Industrialist music. Molly Medusa- Queen of Spit is also in that same dark genre, but it has more of a cinematic vibe that morphs into some type of djent-metal. The theme for that game was a real metal band with a female vocalist. Another one is Yono and the Celestial Elephants which was initially heavily Zelda influenced, but it quickly became its own thing once we found the sound for the game. Another one is a smaller retro-style game called “October Panic” which sort of looks like a NES game, but the soundtrack is Halloween/horror themed Electro-Swing that mixes in chip-tunes elements.

Written by Ronny Fiksdahl, Founder & Editor of Fix Gaming Channel.

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