A game set in Lewis Carroll’s universe can be rightly expected to include a particular manxome foe. In Escaping Wonderland, he’s portrayed as the heartless boss of an overworked miner population, who needs to be taken down with some well-aimed slingshot sabotage.

To musically represent the dragonesque creature I gave a solo to the contrabassoon, the bigger and more ornery brother of the regular bassoon. It has a sinister growly quality that I felt was perfect for the character.

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In Escaping Wonderland (Cortopia Studios’ highly-acclaimed story-based VR game) you’re accompanied on much of your journey by an eponymous Dodo, a benevolent but nervous companion. Dodo gets his own musical theme, wherein I unabashedly stole Prokofiev’s idea of using a double reed instrument to evoke an eccentric avian. (In this case the instrument was English horn rather than oboe.)

Like Dodo himself, the theme is a bit off-balance and quirky, attempting lyricism but often stopping short unexpectedly, or retreating in a nervous flutter of notes.

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First off, happy (recent) New Year!

And now for something completely different. This cue from Escaping Wonderland is diegetic, or music that exists in the world of the game. The player has to raise the spirits of beleaguered mine workers (who happen to be cute sentient light bulbs) with a kind of steampunk jukebox. With the machine’s settings tweaked just right, the bulbs launch into a dance party.

The score here is happy electronic dance music, a bit innocent and naive, and incorporating some of the stone-like instrumentation that we hear throughout the mine region.

So, the mine level of Escaping Wonderland is populated with laboring light bulbs. They’re simultaneously adorable and pitiable, their plight an allegory for creatives under duress.

I figured that the perfect way to evoke these sentient lighting accessories would with a verrophone. This is a fascinating instrument featuring a row of glass tubes which can be played with a mallet or finger. The resulting music cue, humorous and (for a lack of a better word) glassy, is this week’s selection.

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p.s. This will be the last “cue of the week” of 2024. Happy impending holidays!

This week’s music selection from the VR game Escaping Wonderland is the second of three bouncy “mine exploration” themes. (Meaning a cave where precious minerals are found, not a Gollum-style grammar error.)

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This cue from the Escaping Wonderland soundtrack introduces a bouncy little theme for Molly’s exploration of Underland. I think there’s a law that says that sneaking about requires pizzicato strings in musical accompaniment, and I am not one to break that law.

(Click below to play… or jump to Spotify or Apple Music.)

This week’s music selection from the soundtrack of Escaping Wonderland accompanies the gruff-but-kind supervisor of a mineshaft staffed by sentient light bulbs. (As happens frequently in the game, there’s a metaphor at work here.) The music conveys a benevolent kind of surliness in an environment rich with dark humor.

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This music from Escaping Wonderland accompanies the player firing a slingshot with fruit ammunition in a cave. For reasons known only to my subconscious, I composed for marimba and woodblock.

(Click below to play… or jump to Spotify or Apple Music.)