Earthblade May Be Dead But Its Soundtrack Will Live On

Earthblade was a Metroidvania game that was originally in development by Extremely OK Games, the studio that made Celeste. Unfortunately, it ultimately got canceled last year due to studio fractures and other obstacles.

It’s definitely a shame, considering how damn good Earthblade looked. The art and graphical styles were striking, and Celeste had made such a big impact it was difficult not to get excited for it. That being said, while the game may no longer exist, at least we’ll still get to enjoy its spirit in the form of its soundtrack.

Composer Lena Raine, who also worked on the excellent Celeste soundtrack, has made the Earthblade soundtrack available over on bandcamp. There are a total of nine tracks available, and the entire thing is available for $7. This collection includes both conceptual and implemented tracks, and Raine also shares some of her experience working on the game:

“Because we’ll never get a chance to tell that story in game form, I decided to cobble together every bit of music I’d written for the game to the point of its cancellation in order to tell my own version of it.
Across the Bounds of Fate, more so than a soundtrack, is a concept album. The music I wrote for the game is highly dynamic, in the tradition of what I wrote for Celeste. I took it many steps beyond, in ways that temporally-constrained pieces of music can’t really do justice. But I did my best to arrange them into the emotional arc of their progression, much like I would for any soundtrack release.
A lot of my inspiration for the overall sound of Earthblade came from older animation and film. The huge Yamaha synths of Vangelis. The weird textures and combination of old synths & live strings of Joe Hisaishi’s score for Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. The haunting saxophone and percussive textures of Yoko Kanno’s work on Cowboy Bebop & Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex. It’s a combination of sounds I really love and hope to explore on some other project in the future.

You can now check out and purchase the Earthblade soundtrack over on bandcamp.