signet city ✦ bad magpie

12 Jun, 2026

it's coming up to about a week after summer games festival, my experience of that is usually being a bit more offline than usual and trawling through the socials the next day to read about anything interesting that comes up but this time.......two games I’m working on were a part of it, and I really appreciate seeing the sweet responses to them both so far!

after surf club (probably, depending on when we release the game and soundtrack), these two will be be my main focuses for a while. I’m composing and designing music and sounds for both of these. both very different energies, both hopefully a next step up in how I push myself a little more when it comes to designing the music systems and approaching audio generally. they're both with folks who I’ve been pretty excited to work with for a while, too, and i'm going to talk about them a little bit here today!

alright here we go,

signet city

click through to watch the reveal trailer for Signet City

this has been my most anticipated game to announce this year - I'm so pleased to share that I'm working on Jump Over The Age's Signet City! a first person fungalpunk RPG playing as a parasite and exploring the signet city through your hosts.


I felt very seen when Gareth reached out to me last year knowing I had some history with experimental and guitar-based works. While we initially knew and saw each other in passing at game events every now and then, the first time we hung out properly back in spring last year, and each time we met to chat about the game since then has left me feeling creatively reinvigorated and inspired each time, especially with new things to watch or listen to after (thank you Gareth for telling me about Tetsuo: The Iron Man and Chu Ishikawa I've since watched it like 2 or 3 times now)

sonically we’re hoping to draw inspiration from post-punk of the 1980s, early electronic experimentation, and ambient industrial soundscapes. I have plans in the future to go field recording around bits of cities in the north to capture sounds that can make up part of the sonic - and possibly music - palette for the game. And the pre-production process of going into little deep dives of specific artists recommended to me that were within this territory, their production techniques, amongst other aspects that I’ll share in due course, was a really fulfilling time! specific shoutouts to Joy Division, Alan Splet, and Bowery Electric so far

i’ve been learning so much and i’m really looking forward to learning more as I go over the course of working on the game! and looking forward to being sick and nasty with what I make. in the meantime Gareth will be sending out occasional newsletters about the game's origins and inspirations plus other things that I recommend checking out

by the way, the track featured on the trailer is Abandon by irish band SPRINTS, please consider getting their latest album All That Is Over on Bandcamp!

bad magpie

click through to watch the reveal trailer for Bad Magpie
CW for photosensitivity; brief flashes of light between 0:23 - 0:27

and then we have Bad Magpie, a narrative adventure game about a magpie with one wing, a fixation on shiny things, and no interest in connecting the two dots. it's where I’ve been collaborating with the folks at Milktooth leading the audio and music direction on the game!

it's not the first time I've worked with at least one of the members of the team on a sad bird game. Having worked with George previously on Bird Alone made me really look forward to another collaboration with him along with his support towards the music tech side of things. Catherine's art concepts has been a feast for the eyes and inspiration, and been constantly appreciating Daisy's solid curation of references, especially outside of the games sphere and in the slightly weirder classical contemporary territory of things, so far.

We're hoping to develop a dynamic score that orchestrates (and enables) your mischief, and it's been fun to go down the hole of research and thoughts I'm considering around the music design. I have a tendency for my prog rock fusion influences to seep into what I do (this usually looks like having too much fun with time signatures), which I feel like might be the case here! so there will be an extra challenge to think about how things can transition seamlessly depending on what our magpie is going to get up to from the game. for the folks who are curious, my Bad Magpie playlist so far includes folks like Poppy Ackroyd, Aphex Twin, Joe Hisaishi, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

it's another one where I've been learning so much from the process so far and that's going to keep going as I keep working on the game. i feel like the collective conclusion from both summaries of Signet City and Bad Magpie is: i love learning a bunch please let me sponge up these sweet ideas

the sadaqah team

the sadaquah team: a mutual aid initiative supporting Lebanon and Gaza

Bad Magpie was announced during the Xbox Games Showcase at summer games festival, and will be part of Xbox's Game Pass scheme. Xbox/Game Pass is part of the ongoing BDS boycotts against Microsoft for its strong ties to Israel's ongoing apartheid and genocide. You can read more about Microsoft’s complicity on the BDS website here, and the ongoing No Games For Genocide movement here.

as a contractor, you often don't find out about extra funding sources such as this getting confirmed until about partway through working on the game, like in this case, where the decision behind it is more out of my control. That being said, I accept that there will be inherent complicity going forward with working on and promoting the game.

So in an effort to divest, I will be donating the first month of non-streaming revenue for Bad Magpie’s soundtrack (plus £100 from me on the day of announcing the game) to the Sadaqah Team, a community-led mutual aid initiative ran by a group of Lebanese friends, supporting families, schools, kitchens and other initiatives in both Gaza and Lebanon. Their instagram post here is a good summary of how they operate.

Fortunately the game's not going to be exclusive to Xbox. Bad Magpie can be supported and wishlisted on Steam for now, and I highly encourage folks to support the game more this way - as well as other ways when future platform announcements happen - as opposed to GamePass and Xbox.