INDIE INTERVIEWS: Lena Raine (ANOTHEREAL, ESC, music on Celeste, Chicory: A Colorful Tale and more!)
With INDIE INTERVIEWS, I talk to the game developers hanging here on Cohost to learn more about new games you might love.
One of the best parts of playing indie games is seeing how everyone approaches it differently. Often, people come into it with completely different backgrounds and skillsets. They may have a strong experience with programming, or with art, or with music. You may already know of Lena Raine (@kuraine) for her music in Celeste, Chicory: A Colorful Tale, or recent Minecraft updates. Did you know that she also works on games of her own? I decided to have a quick chat with her to discuss her personal projects ESC and ANOTHEREAL.
You can find ESC on Steam and itch.io
You can follow ANOTHEREAL (codenamed Project Astray) on Cohost: @anothereal
Introduce yourself for everyone here on Cohost! Who are you?
Hey! I'm Lena Raine, and I'm most well known as a composer for indie games, notably Celeste, Minecraft & Chicory: A Colorful Tale. I've also written a kinetic novel called ESC, and done all sorts of support work for other projects like Steven Universe (I mixed the soundtrack for the movie!) and Deltarune (did some additional arrangement for a few tracks in chapter 2!). I have a pretty extensive list of things I've worked on over on my studio website https://radicaldream.land
Is there a project you're working on currently? Tell us about it!
I'm currently scoring two games in development: Earthblade, which is being made by EXOK (the creators of Celeste), as well as Beastieball by Wishes Unlimited (the Chicory team!). Both have been in development for a while now, so I've been keeping pace with development in my composition! They're both super different styles to write for, so I'm really enjoying the contrast of moody open world action VS turn based volleyball rpg with a pretty wacky vibe.I'm also working on my own solo game, Project Astray! It's my 2nd game project, and I'm learning a lot as I go, improving my coding & art skills while building things out for it.
How did you find yourself first getting into game development?
After graduating college with a music degree, I tried getting contract music jobs for games. It didn't really work out, because in 2006 I was under the impression that the only way I was gonna make it was if I contracted for a big AAA game company, who obviously didn't want to hire someone fresh out of school. Indie games weren't really on my radar as something I could pursue until I discovered things like Cave Story & the very gradual arrival of indie games on consoles. And even still, it felt like something I couldn't do myself, since I was just a composer and was a pretty reclusive one at that. So I got a contract job doing certification testing at Nintendo of America, which lasted around 2 and a half years and led to a long string of job referrals that eventually landed me at ArenaNet in 2010. From my QA job there, I got into a game design role, worked with the story team to finish Guild Wars 2 & then led a team for a number of years afterward designing story & dungeon content for the game.
You have a long history of collaborating on projects for other teams. When working on Project Astray, have you noticed any highlights or challenges to leading the project yourself?
It's honestly both refreshing and extremely stressful. Refreshing because I get to be the main person in charge (of myself) expressing myself through the story and design choices I want to make. Stressful because... well I have to make those choices & execute them all by myself. But ultimately I love telling stories thru games. When I worked on ESC, it was a story that I wrote first & then adapted to a kinetic novel format. With Astray, everything is coming together to help tell the story. And hopefully entertain, too!
When working on your own projects...how do you know when it's time to start incorporating music? Is it always the case that the game itself would inform the composition, or do your ideas from the music help inspire your ideas of what the game will be?
While it's only been the two projects so far, with both ESC and Astray, I've really had to hold in my composition brain while working on game design... I do honestly have a ton of music ideas while I'm working on writing or design, but they mostly stay in my head. I have a very difficult time solidifying those ideas until I have something I can put the music to. For Astray, most of the music has been written for little teaser content, and I've developed main themes for a few of the characters, but I'm waiting to make finished pieces until I know what's possible within the context of the game. Same for ESC, where the majority of music composition came once I knew the scope of my scenes & where I wanted to place music, both one-off cues as well as recurring themes.
Is there anything, whether it's emotional or thematic, that you want to explore in your creative work that you feel like you haven't explored already?
Anytime I approach a strong thematic motif in something, it's usually pulled from personal experience. Project Astray pulls from a lot of feelings of being a social recluse & putting that experience into game mechanics. But there's a moment that I have envisioned at the climax of the game that I feel so strongly in my gut that I just, really hope it comes across once I get to finishing the game. Sorry it's like, the most vague thing in the world to talk about without revealing what it is, but I hope that feeling, once it's done & shared with the world, can be felt as strongly as I hope it can be.
Any advice for folks who are used to drawing or composing music, but want to try making a game project for the first time?
Well, my first piece of advice is you can absolutely do it!! There's so many cool tools out there with supportive communities and tutorials and avenues of seeking help. My personal route towards learning how to design games was through my constant need to take things apart & look at how they work. It started with RPG Maker 2000, building out little worlds with dynamic time of day progression, npc routines, etc. It doesn't even have to be a full game! So long as you're curious about learning how stuff works. At ArenaNet, I looked at the scripts that I was testing and saw how things were scripted, and how they could break in the ways I was testing for. With GameMaker Studio (the engine I work in for ESC & Astray), there's so many wonderful people making tutorials on YouTube for things as simple as coding basics, or whole features like dialog systems. Get out there and learn how to make a character move around a room, and maybe it'll spark your interest enough to keep building on more and more until it's a full game!
Lastly, are there any indie games out there you've been playing recently? Any favorites to shout-out?
Absolutely check out Misericorde Vol. 1 by @xeecee!! It's easily one of my favorite releases this year, and I'm super looking forward to the next volumes. I'm not sure if it counts as indie since it's made by a small team at Nexon, but I have been really enjoying Dave the Diver. It's got a fun fishing/restaurant loop and a neat story to tie it together. I was also pleasantly surprised by The Bookwalker, an adventure game that takes place inside novels where you are stealing artifacts from within the fiction to pay off your debt as a banned author. Wild stuff. Another fave from this year has been Meg's Monster by Odencat. It's a minimalist rpg that can be beaten in a few sittings that delves into a really sweet story with very cool subversive mechanics used to tell it.
Thanks for chatting, Lena! And for everyone else, be sure to follow her work at @kuraine and @anothereal for future updates! And if you haven't already, you can find other game developers on Cohost by commenting on the Introductions post! Until next time...happy gaming! Is that a thing?








