Dice Legacy is a strategy game, but one with an underlying story: the tale of settlers in a hostile new land. The ambient music often focuses on different elements of the protagonists’ experience. This week’s cue evokes the hopes and dreams of those trying to make a fresh start.

In related news, I was recently interviewed about this very score on Music Respawn, produced for NPR station WSHU Public Radio. If inclined, take a listen here!

This week’s selection from the Dice Legacy soundtrack is the second of the “summer cues”, musical interludes for the sunny portion of the game’s weather cycle. This music is comparatively peaceful and bucolic. (In-game, the score becomes edgier if bad guys invade or civic unrest breaks out.)

Here a harp plucks a peaceful albeit asymmetrical rhythm (in 7/4 time, for you music nerds) while woodwinds trade solos over lush strings.

The week’s selection from the Dice Legacy soundtrack is the first piece of underscore I wrote aside from the main theme. The mixture of orchestra and folk instruments felt perfect for the game’s world, and would end up being the defining sound of the score. The Swedish nyckelharpa makes another appearance here, sonically speaking, in the cue’s lyrical second half.

(I really need to train autocorrect to recognize “nyckelharpa”.)

This music from the Dice Legacy score accompanies an animation of the player’s galleon arriving on shore. The animation introduces us to the game’s distinctive visual, a ringworld surface that rises skywards in the distance. The music starts out with a mournful cello solo, then grows in aspiration as the camera tilts up to reveal the view.

As always, you can listen to the music at the link below. Or, if you’d like to see the animation and hear the music in context, check out the beginning of this video.