Joff Winks Video game Music Composer & Soundtrack Artist
Greetings, my name is Joff. I’m a video game music composer, soundtrack artist, musician, professional daydreamer, and passionate advocate of the arts.
I write video game soundtracks infused with evocative soundscapes, the intimate allure of chamber music and a cinematic sensibility that enhances and intensifies narrative gaming experiences.
“... music on the screen can seek out and intensify the inner thoughts of the characters. It can invest a scene with terror, grandeur, gaiety, or misery. It can propel narrative swiftly forward, or slow it down. It often lifts mere dialogue into the realm of poetry...”
Work In Progress
I’m currently scoring the soundtrack for Arctic Awakening, a narrative adventure game developed by Goldfire Studios.
Synopsis: What was supposed to be a routine supply drop quickly becomes a struggle for survival after a freak storm leaves Kai and his co-pilot Donovan stranded in the Alaskan Wilderness. Separated by miles of inhospitable wilderness, Kai must find Donovan before he freezes, unravel the mystery of what brought down his plane and maybe, against all the odds find a way home.
Arctic Awakening is a stunning project produced by a brilliant team, and for fans of the genre, I heartily recommend playing the latest Steam demo for yourself! To find out more, check out my Adaptive Music In Video Games blog and take a deeper dive into the adaptive music design of Arctic Awakening.
Features
Earlier this year, Arctic Awakening was selected to feature in the Save & Sound festival, the online music festival celebrating game music composers and unique audio implementation in video games.
We were thrilled to have been selected! With hundreds of applications, the competition for places was quite fierce and it's an honour to have my score for Arctic Awakening featured alongside titles like Pathologic 3, Tiny Glade, Europa and Pacific Drive.
Successful entrants recorded 5-10 minute videos showcasing the music from their games with live performances or technical deep-dives and for our entry, we decided to cover a bit of both.
Check out Arctic Awakening's soundtrack in our video recorded for Save & Sound 2024.
Arctic Awakening - a first-person narrative adventure game by Goldfire Studios.
Video game music composer -
Joff Winks.
To learn more about previous collaborations and earlier projects, please visit my work page for more details. Thanks!
“To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.”
Work With Me.
Choosing a game composer for your video game is an important decision.
I believe having the best music for your game is essential to creating compelling, memorable experiences. And that allying with like-minded people who share a desire to craft brilliant, original work is a recipe for success!
If you also believe this, then let’s work together.
To help answer some common questions, I've written a few posts about various aspects of game music, covering topics like the positive physiological effect music has on gamers and game sales, the cost of commissioning an original game soundtrack and the benefits of working directly with a video game composer. Here are a few articles to get you started. Enjoy!
Testimonials
“Joff is a truly creative and inspiring musician. The score for our Straight 8 film was written and produced by him, not only does it sound fantastic but it was turned around in an incredibly short time scale. He is a pleasure to work with and we hope to be joining forces again soon.”
“Joff’s enthusiasm and creative input far surpass what was expected. He strives to uncover the essence and finer details of a project to create work of tremendous quality and depth. He is an extremely capable and professional composer for filmic and atmospheric scores and comes with my highest recommendation.”
“I’ve worked with Joff on three projects now. Joff worked incredibly hard and nailed all three projects. Not just composing all the music but also doing the final mixes of the soundtracks. He’s very, very talented, has terrific attention to detail and brings personal integrity and sensitivity to all his work.
It would be hard to imagine duckrabbit (my company) working with anyone else now.
All our sound mixing will now go through Joff.”
Work Reel
Welcome to my work reel. Choosing music to share with people is hard. It's tough to sum up or accurately represent musical inclinations with a few tracks, but I've chosen the following examples to make a start.
The music in this playlist represents many different projects. Some tracks, like Wander or The Wave, belong to soundtracks I've composed for video games. Others like Abri represent work written to demo new sample libraries for Soundpaint and 8Dio, and some tracks that never made it into projects are here just because I like them!
Along with the soundtracks I compose for video games and other media, I also make music with my band, Sanguine Hum. Over the years, we have recorded six studio albums, live records, and a series of ambient cinematic EPs under the pseudonym Nunbient. To dig a little deeper, check out the albums page or visit my work page for details on current and previous projects.
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I believe music properly utilized is one of the most vital tools a game developer has to create a lasting impression on players.
In this blog, I want to share some objective evidence that supports my instinct about why music is a uniquely valuable asset in video games.