Paradise Killer Composer Barry Topping on Co-founding a Game Studio, Birdcage, and Birthing Egg Music
“I've been trying to choose the projects I've been working on pretty carefully. I'm definitely trying to build towards something.”
Posted 16 days ago
Murder was the path to Barry Topping’s breakthrough success as a video game composer. More specifically, the funky, jazz-infused tunes of 2020’s Paradise Killer, which accompanied players as they set about solving the slaughter of the Syndicate council. It was a score that transformed us all into saxophone sleuths.
The attention and critical acclaim that followed Paradise Killer’s soundtrack proved seismic for Topping’s career. But off the back of it, he wasn’t just looking for bigger opportunities – and certainly not for AAA credits. Instead, Topping’s success offered the chance to take a markedly different path: a shift into game development.
Paradise Killer
Release Date: September 4, 2020
Alongside friend and seasoned comic book writer/artist Giannis Milonogiannis, Topping founded Polygon Bird in 2022. An independent game development studio, its goal was simple: to focus on making “Cool Games” that both its founders adored. The duo’s debut title, Birdcage – an arcade-style vertical shooter oozing Y2K style in both visuals and music – is set to release in 2025.
Ahead of what looks to be a defining year for both Topping and his nascent studio, the Scottish composer connected with Restart to chat about the impact of Paradise Killer, his shift into development, and the creation of “egg music.”
Chords and core video games
Birdcage is described as a "sword action shooting game."
©Polygon Bird
For Topping, what makes video games special isn’t the ability to craft immersive worlds with cinema-grade visuals. It’s dipping into the cauldron of unique and interactive elements from which the medium was born. High-scores, unusual perspectives, playful mechanics – the innate game-y nature so prevalent in the foundational years of the industry.
“My dad was a computer guy, [and] he had the Commodore 64,” says Topping. “I remember the first game I ever played was 1942. So there's something about shoot ‘em ups that feels so video game. It’s core video game.”
Those early experiences stuck with him through a burgeoning teenage interest in music. At university, video game elements bubbled to the surface as he began to experiment.
“I remember my lecturers saying to me: ‘You know, you always have to put game stuff in there. Why does it always sound like an arcade at some point?’” Topping recalls. “It's just because I like the sounds, right? They're fun! It was always a thing that I loved, and then slowly realized I could maybe do [as a career].”
Following stints as a videographer and part of a wedding band, Topping dabbled in video game composition for a handful of mobile games. Then came Paradise Killer. Bizarre, bright, and beautiful, it was perfectly complemented by Topping’s overt and city-pop-influenced score. The flamboyant Paradise (Stay Forever), featuring vocals from Fiona Lynch, seductively sets the stage for the game’s slick theme and visual palette. But due to the wider world state, developing the soundtrack was far from paradise at the time.
“It was hard because it happened during the pandemic,” says Topping. “But even if [it hadn’t], I was still working remotely with a team I never really got to interact with that much. Because of that, it was a very hard game to make for everyone. I think I pulled the soundtrack together in six months, as well.”
Paradise Killer and a new perspective
Paradise Killer forced Topping to tangle with game direction in a way that, to a musician, didn’t immediately sit easy. The soundtrack is tied to in-game music track collectibles. Items that there’s no guarantee every player will discover.
In Paradise Killer, players are tasked with identifying a murderer from a vibrant cast of supernatural characters.
©Kaizen Game Works
“I felt some resistance to that,” Topping explains. “There was a sort of trepidation about it because, it's an exciting idea, but my first thought is always, what if someone doesn't pick up a track? That's a song they're not going to hear. But you learn very quickly that you have to try and serve the greater whole, right? The idea is much better than, I hope everyone gets to hear every single note of music I put into this game."
The result justified the design. It led players to directly engage with and acknowledge the music. Each track uncovered, an auditory reward for investigation and exploration. The score stuck with Topping and his Paradise Killer collaborators, too. The collective recently reunited to release a game-music-inspired album titled The Needs.
“I feel like I've been trying to choose the projects I've been working on pretty carefully,” Topping says. “I'm definitely trying to build towards something. [The Needs] only really exists because of Paradise Killer. I made it with a group of musicians that I met working on Paradise Killer. It was funded through the National Lottery via Creative Scotland. So a big part of that album being able to get funded was, I could go to a funding agency and say: ‘We all worked on this game, the soundtrack was a massive success.’
“And it's always scary because when you have a successful project, it's like: 'What if this is it? What if there's never a successful project ever again?' But I kind of reset my priorities a bit and realized that I'm just making stuff for the love of making it, essentially.”
Partnering for Polygon Bird
Working on Paradise Killer also opened Topping’s mind to the prospect of a deeper involvement in development. Determining not just how the music played, but also the game itself. So while the soundtrack’s success could have led Topping toward scoring bigger-budget releases, he found himself gravitating instead towards a different sector.
“I realized that I had played so many video games that, even though I didn't have a lot of experience in the industry, I felt like I understood at least good game design,” says Topping. “I felt like I could contribute more than just: ‘Here's a bunch of music I wrote.’ So very quickly, I realized that indie games is a place where a composer can have a bigger, more important role than they can when they're a smaller cog in a bigger machine. It's just the way my personality is – I love to be involved at every single level.”
Topping’s ongoing work includes composing for Sentry, a wave-defense shooter currently gearing up to launch out of early access. (You can check out a sample of Topping's score for Sentry here.) But two years after Paradise Killer’s launch, he also partnered with Giannis Milonogiannis to found Polygon Bird Games. Initially invited to compose for Milonogiannis’ prototypes, Topping found himself offering feedback and discussing concepts far beyond just music. Before long, the pair decided to collaborate more extensively.
“We found that we have such similar interests,” Topping says. “Visual kei is a massive influence for both of us, and classic anime. We like the same video games. A thing that's good about us is we both have quite interdisciplinary practices. Giannis is a great artist, but he's also a musician. He's just really capable of doing a bit of everything. And I feel like I'm the same. I worked in marketing, I worked in video, I worked in music – now games. So we both have quite a wide skill set.”
Creating Cool Games
Birdcage takes visual inspiration from classic anime and Y2K-era technologies.
©Polygon Bird
Polygon Bird’s two maiden projects are strikingly different. Contrasting Birdcage’s screen-smothering bullets and instant action, Eco Breaker looks to be a love letter to ‘90s JRPGs. What unites them is an affection for turn-of-the-millenium aesthetics, and the shared mindset of the studio’s founders.
“I would say our design philosophy is we both try and come up with something that the other person thinks is going to be the coolest thing they've ever heard,” Topping says. “90% of the time, that's what goes into the game. So we get to come at design ideas from outside of programming and outside of actual implementation. So we can kind of do a bit of blue sky stuff and then go from there, which has led to a bunch of really cool stuff going into our games.”
“Our design philosophy is we both try and come up with something that the other person thinks is going to be the coolest thing they've ever heard.”
One such element, Topping defines as “egg music” – an amusingly unassuming term to have been born from Birdcage’s climactic clash. And one that sits alongside many stylistic influences from around the year 2000.
“[When] we were designing the final boss for Birdcage, we started with the music,” says Topping. “I had the track, and we designed the entire boss fight around the music. Our last boss is an egg. So it very much became, just egg. What’re we going to do? I’ll write some egg music. And that will make sense when you see and play the encounter.
“When I say Y2K aesthetic, it's not really the Americanized, pop version of Y2K aesthetic,” Topping explains. “It's nu metal and J-rock and really poorly functional but cool-looking electronics. A lot of it is quite dark and kind of dingy. We had a lot of words like egg, just egg music, and slime was another one as well. Going for that real visual slime aesthetic. It's just about finding stuff that we think is really cool and leaning on it as hard as possible.”
Searching for sustainable development
Concept art for Eco Breaker, Polygon Bird's '90s-inspired RPG.
©Polygon Bird
For Topping, it’s an ambitious and exciting period. But in attempting to launch a game via an indie studio without a publisher or budget, he’s also highly conscious of the dire state of the games industry overall. Crunch, burnout, and layoffs are rife. As much as both want to give everything to their creations, Topping and Milonogiannis are just as desperate not to fall into the many barbed pitfalls of the field.
“I still think there's an idea that you're lucky to be doing this; you're lucky that you get to do a job you want to do, so you should have to bleed for your art,” Topping says. “Neither of us think we need to do that. We're really keen to find a way to be able to make art without it blowing up our lives or causing long-term damage in terms of habit patterns, thought patterns, just general behavior stuff. It's just really important to us that we keep a healthy balance of why we are doing this: Because it's fun, and not because it becomes a sort of obsession.
“You have to define your own metrics for success. For us, that's just that we want to make a video game we think is good. Of course we'd love it to be a huge success. But it's a ‘90s-PS1-influenced shooting game. There's only so monumental it's going to be, right? But to us it's huge. We're so proud of it. And you know, sometimes that should be your driving force.”
Birdcage is aiming to release on PC in 2025. Both it and Eco Breaker are available to wishlist on Steam.
Our thanks to Barry Topping for taking the time to speak with us about his work. Check out more of his musical handicraft via his website. The Paradise Killer soundtrack and The Needs album are also available to listen to on Spotify or Bandcamp. If you’re interested in checking out the game, you can pick up Paradise Killer from Restart’s partner Walmart, here. Ears itching to indulge in more music? Treat yourself with our music-loving gamers holiday gift guide!
Paradise Killer
Release Date: September 4, 2020