Video Gamers Podcast
Composing Fear – Tobias Lilja on Little Nightmares & Game Audio – Gaming Podcast
Fri, 04 Apr 2025
Gaming hosts Josh and John sit down with Tobias Lilja, the composer and sound designer behind Little Nightmares 1 & 2! Tobias shares how he broke into the gaming industry with no experience, the art of crafting eerie and immersive soundscapes, and what it takes to shape a video game’s mood from the very beginning. It’s a must-listen for fans of indie titles, game audio, and anyone looking to break into the video game industry! All the gaming news you need, every week from the Video Gamers Podcast! Thanks to our MYTHIC Supporters: Redletter, Ol’ Jake, Disratory and Gaius Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Community: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/ Follow us on X: https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
Hello fellow gamers and welcome to the video gamers podcast. A video game can be a work of art from storytelling to visual art to an incredibly memorable soundtrack. Music and sound is such an important part of the feel of a game, whether it's joy or fear. But how the heck does someone even do that? Well, on today's episode, we're diving into the world of video game music.
Chapter 2: Who are the hosts of the podcast?
But first, some introductions are in order. I am your host, Josh. And joining me, he's said multiple times that Little Nightmares is one of his favorite series. So I have a feeling he's really going to enjoy this episode.
It's John. And yeah, advance warning for anybody who's been on the Discord. You guys have heard me talking about this for a very long time. I would say if you were to say series, Little Nightmares is my favorite series and certainly my favorite soundtrack. So I'm absolutely stoked to be talking to our guest today.
Chapter 3: What are Tobias Lilja's contributions to Little Nightmares?
Well, we're going to explain why, because joining us, the man behind the incredible music and sound of Little Nightmares, this man is responsible for those feelings of dread and fear. So you can thank him for all your anxiety. It's Tobias.
Hi, guys.
How you doing, Tobias?
I'm good. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks for having me on the show.
Oh, we're very excited to have you, man. Thanks so much for hopping on with us. We're going to make this a good time. I know it's always a little weird to be like, I'm going on this podcast? I don't know who these guys are. But we are very excited to have you.
And just to kind of give you a little bit of background, we've been doing this kind of fun series where we're really trying to talk to various people that are responsible for making the games that we love. So... We have talked to voice actors. We have talked to developers. And you are our first actual music composer that we've had a chance to talk to.
So I know we're both very excited because, I'll be honest, this is a world that I know nothing about. Okay, yeah. I make the joke, and this is a true story, that I was once kicked out of third grade band. I took trumpet lessons for a year and then went to band. And they actually said, no, hey, you're probably not ready for that. And so, you know, I'm not musically inclined at all.
And so I'm always fascinated by people that just have a talent for that. And so we're really excited to have you and kind of pick your brain a little bit. Okay, cool.
I was actually playing the trumpet myself when I was a kid for a few years.
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Chapter 4: How did Tobias get into video game music?
That exploration is one of the things I love. Outer Wilds, we talked about, was fantastic for that because it just lets you go. And then the way that you discover stuff through just playing the game is fantastic. Elden Ring is like that. But I love a really good challenge. John and I were actually talking about the difficulty of Elden Ring this morning.
For me, I'm the kind of guy where it's like, if you put this boss in front of me, I will fight that boss 50 times in a row because it's like, well, I have to beat him. But Elden Ring did it really well with that ability to say, listen, if you're stuck, just go do something else. You can play this game kind of the way you want, which I absolutely love. That's true. So we're chatting about games.
How did you get into video game music, man?
I actually wanted to work with film sound at first. So I tried to get gigs in the film industry, like sound recording and music for film and short films and commercials. And I did some freelancing with that for some time. But it was difficult to get jobs in that industry. And suddenly, by fluke, this Tarsier Studios... job showed up. So I applied for it. This was in 2011.
So I didn't have any experience in video games. But I applied for it anyway. And this application, they needed someone to... They had recently opened up a studio in Malmö, Tarsier Studios. And they needed someone to take care of the audio. They did a lot of licensing work for Sony. So they were working on LittleBigPlanet. And they were working on the... Do you remember the PlayStation Vita?
The handheld? So they were doing LittleBigPlanet for the PlayStation Vita. And they needed someone to handle the audio part. And I was kind of... At that time, I had like a part-time teaching job at the university teaching sound design no sound design not okay and so i just had just been what's the word let go from that job and so i needed i was like i need a job
And they were also like, we need someone to do this. So it was a good match in time. And I lived just around the corner from the office. And I think I did a decent work sample and interview as well. So I got the job. But it was... Yeah, it was a difficult first few years since I had no experience in video game development.
It was kind of a big threshold in learning all the... I mean, it's a very technical job. A lot of applications you need to know and...
uh how to implement sounds in games and stuff it's it's very technical uh so but uh but uh the good thing was that we were kind of base we were using uh the same game engine as a little bit planet two uh so we so it was more about we could kind of reuse a lot of the tag the code and we used the same audio pipeline kind of uh so it was a good kind of learning project for me to
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Chapter 5: What challenges did Tobias face in the gaming industry?
Right, because there was existing infrastructure already. You weren't learning everything from the ground up. There was some base.
Yeah, exactly. So I could focus on making sounds. I wasn't making music at that point. I was writing so-called music briefs for other composers. Which means that I kind of explain, like, this level needs this music. And I tried to kind of explain what kind of music we needed for another external freelancing composer. And I sourced a lot of references for music that we liked, that would fit.
And I also... Did you play LittleBigPlanet at all back in the day?
Oh yeah, great games.
Yeah, they had this thing where you could, as a player, create your own levels. So we needed to create some kind of music library so players could pick a music track for their level. So one big part of the job was to kind of source, try to find music for this. I mean, existing release music.
Some of it was composed original music, but we also kind of sourced available release music from indie rock bands and stuff. So that was a big part of the job, just to find these tracks. And I did that work together with Sony. Martin Hewitt at Sony helped us to contact these record labels and license these tracks to the game.
So that makes me – you said something, and I've always been curious about this too, where you said you worked with kind of giving other composers like a little bit of kind of like an idea of what this needs to sound like. Yeah. For a game, for instance, Little Nightmares, do you compose the music for that, and then they do the level?
Do you see the level design and art, and then you go, oh, okay, well, this should have this kind of sound? It's almost like a chicken or egg kind of thing, right? Which one comes first? Because I have no idea.
I mean, audio, both sound effects and music is usually late. Like often it's kind of lasting. Really? Okay. Yeah. It's very common. That's interesting. But one thing, like game development, it's a lot about iteration. You do one version and then you change a bunch of stuff and then you keep doing versions all the time. So it's not very often you nail something on the first try.
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Chapter 6: How is sound design developed for video games?
Okay, so that actually segues really into the core question that I wanted to ask quite nicely. is that when I'm... Again, Little Nightmares, the first one, really good game. The second one, in my opinion, masterpiece. It is absolutely one of my favorite games, especially from the narrative component. And I think the best thing about the game is the audio design.
Thank you.
And I can't imagine... developing that game without knowing what that game sounded like first like there's some like uh josh and i were just talking about this offline but the uh the level where you are being stalked by the uh the the flickering tv man um and and sort of the the sound design is synced to the footsteps of of him stalking you it's like i've i've
goosebumps right now just talking about it it's it's brilliant but i can't imagine you mentioned that the sound design sort of comes much later in the development of the game like i can't imagine developing that without the sound design in mind first and you know you mentioned you had no uh you had no interest really in the the composition that the actual music part of it was more of the uh the the
sound design, like the atmosphere probably that you're interested. But the theme song for Little Nightmares for me is so iconic that's surprising to me. So I was hoping you could speak to how that works out. Like, how do you go about layering on a soundscape for a game like this? How did they even develop it without the soundscape in mind first?
Yeah, I think one advantage I had was that we started working on the prototype that eventually became Little Nightmares back in 2014, I think. So I had the luxury to be part of that project from the start.
Since I was working at Tarsier, I was following the prototype, and I also had the opportunity to do sounds and music for the first initial vertical slice, the first prototype that we used to pitch the game to publishers. So I think that was a... That really helps if you're part of the project from the start. You can together really form an idea about the game together. It's much more difficult.
Like you say, if I would come in the last six months and just try to shoehorn in some sounds in there, that would be really difficult. So I'm a big believer in that you should involve audio designers really early on to... And it's also because you, when you're working with it, you have to be kind of marinated in it for a while to understand it. It's a good term.
And I also like to kind of play the game all the time. Since when I was working at Tarsier, it was like an office job in many ways. I had my own room and I could... Play the game all the time. Every day. So I had a really good kind of overview. Where the game was going. So I think that also helps. To kind of understand the game. Because if you're doing music for a scene.
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Chapter 7: What influences the creation of soundscapes in games?
Cool.
Yeah. It's the, it's, it's one of those things where, you know, I think it's, Maybe it's just me getting older. I think maybe with the rise of indie games lately, we've seen a big shift in gaming. Indie games have always existed, but you're starting to see a higher appreciation from gamers as a whole for the indie genre.
Because I think what's happened is a lot of these AAA studios have gotten routine. And as gamers, we go, man, I can really appreciate the passion that these indie developers have. And so it's one of those things where I think we're starting to appreciate the music and sound design for games a lot more. And I think we're really starting to understand how that can impact us.
I say this a lot, but I love good graphics. I love cutting-edge graphics. I think the technology is amazing. I love to just see a game and go, wow! But we have spoken. Another person that we spoke to was an artist and an animator for games. One of the really neat things that we took away from that is you can only get so real with graphics before it just looks real.
But reality does not have any artistic sense to it. That's just what we see every day, so there's not really art to it in that case. And with music, I think we're really starting to kind of appreciate... that maybe it's not the visual that we see, but it's those feelings. It's the way that a level can make us feel.
Like Hollow Knight is a really good example of a game that has really, really good sound design to it, where it's like, I can close my eyes and remember a level, not for the visuals, but for the music in that level, if that makes sense. And Little Nightmares, kudos to you, is another one of those games where it's like, I just feel it, man.
Like, yes, I can see it, but that's not the part that I remember, you know? And so I think that's where music really comes in. And I think it's almost something that flies under the radar a little bit. And that's not to dismiss the music.
I mean, with gamers, because when you feel something, when you walk into that grand city in The Witcher, you know, or Red Dead Redemption 2, for instance, and you're riding your horse across the Old West, that music that's playing in the background is what is making you feel what you're feeling at the time. And I think gamers are starting to realize that. Yeah.
So I'm just blown away by it, man, because it's, like I said, this is something that my brain just doesn't compute. I know when I like something, you know.
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Chapter 8: How does the music in Little Nightmares enhance the gaming experience?
I was listening to the Prodigy. Yeah. And if you're writing for an orchestra, you kind of have to know the range of all the different instruments and kind of how they work together. Also, you have to kind of listen to a ton of orchestral work to kind of start thinking about
thinking about it that way. Yeah, and you don't necessarily have to be good at any of the instruments. No, no, no.
You're right. It's not about performing. That's the thing. I'm a lousy performer. I'm terrible at playing the piano because I never practice. But I'm... It's more interesting to me to kind of play instruments in weird ways. Well, it works great, sir. Explore the sound, like the sonic potential in the instruments in other ways.
Because, I mean, there's already a million of people playing the guitar really well. I can't compete with that. But I think it's a lot about background and interest and some... Yeah, and as I said before, I was part of Little Nightmares from the start, from the first prototype.
So I had the chance to also kind of find some music that was really fitting to what I could do, to my style, or something that I felt I could do.
I got to ask you. I'm sorry, John. This is just a quick one. But I am a huge fan of EDM. It's my favorite genre by far. That makes sense for you, Josh. Yeah, I'm an old guy, you know what I mean? And so for me, listening to techno and progressive house and stuff like that, like my wife and kids pick on me all the time because they're like, Dad, you like this weird music.
And I'm like, it's just what my brain loves, man. So do you have a favorite? Is there like a favorite artist or band that's in the EDM genre that is your favorite right now? Mine is Stoto. So I don't know if you've heard of Stoto, but that's the one where it's like those guys, every song they make, I think is phenomenal.
No, I mean, I'm also pretty old school. I like artists like Aphex Twin. Oh, yeah. Which is maybe more like an experimental vein.
Did you listen to industrial music like Skinny Puppy or Ogre or anything like that?
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