Ricky teams up with video games students to provide title’s soundtrack

A video game from University of Northampton students has been given the soundtrack treatment by a graduate.

Popular Music graduate Ricky Westray was approached by a collective of Games Art and Computer Games Development students when they needed music composing for their arcade title, Kitchen Imps.

Ricky, who graduated in 2017, came up with an addictive ditty for the co-operative game, which is still a work in progress

“This was the first time I had ever attempted to make music for a student video game and I loved every minute of it,” said Ricky, who created the music on a Mac computer.

“I had complete free rein to come up with something and it was so cool to be able to get so creative.

“The video games industry isn’t something that’s going to go away, it’s massive, and this has given me a taste of the opportunities it provides musicians, and it’s something I am going to pursue.”

Kitchen Imps has been developed by M!schief Games – a student collective comprising Andrea Maestri, Natalie Jones, Samuel Cross and Liwen Huang.

Samuel said: “When we met up with Ricky and showed him Kitchen Imps we weren’t sure what he would come up with.

“But we got exactly what we wanted and are delighted with how the music fits the game so well.”

The M!schief team was recently announced as one of 18 winners of the Tranzfuser talent programme.

Each winning team is given £5,000 in government funding to produce a prototype which will then be presented at a showcase later this year.

At the event, selected teams will be encouraged to pitch for more funding of up to £25,000 from the UK Games Fund to commercialise their game and launch a company.

The team is busy working on Kitchen Imps to get it ready to showcase at EGX, which is the UK’s biggest consumer-facing video games event (nearly 80,000 people travelled to last year show).

Andrea said: “I’m thrilled to be part of one of the Tranzfuser winning teams, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience. They provide us with resources, people and tools that will bring our game to the next level. We’re really proud to be part of the next generation of game developers and can’t wait to see what will happen at EGX.”

Pictured from left are: Natalie Jones, Andrea Maestri, Ricky Westray, Samuel Crass and Liwen Huang.