KESTRION

Original score · work in progress

Soundtrack

Every note of Kestrion's music is played by code, live, inside the game. These are recordings of the current drafts: press play on any track.

Menu and training

  1. Title screen

    Main Menu

    Wide strings swell like a nebula over a deep hum, with stray bells for stars. Halfway in, the Kestrion theme arrives on a glassy lead.

    2:30

  2. Training

    Tutorial

    Light and encouraging: a marimba, a soft beat with finger snaps and the theme in a bright major key, quiet enough to read the lesson over.

    2:00

Battle: a score for every fleet

In the game these grow with the fight. Each recording follows a whole battle, from calm to all-out and back; watch the layers light up as they join.

  1. Fleet · standard

    Sleek

    The Kestrion sound. Synthwave in A minor: a rolling arpeggio, a pumping bass, chord stabs and drums, and at the height of the fight the theme on a gliding lead.

    2:30

  2. Fleet · aggressive

    Wedge

    Dark and fast. A phrygian drone, a distorted galloping bass, four-on-the-floor drums, and the theme screamed by a siren lead.

    2:30

  3. Fleet · heavy armour

    Bulwark

    Industrial military rock. Anvils and a machine drone, palm-muted guitars, a big rock kit, a drop-D power riff and the theme on a distorted lead.

    2:30

  4. Fleet · machine

    Android

    Sleek's synthwave with a Soviet imprint: a men's choir, a trembling balalaika, a march with timpani and brass, and the theme sung as an anthem.

    2:30

  5. Fleet · machine, alternative

    Android: Iron Choir

    Bulwark's rival. The same heavy drums and drop-D guitars, but in harmonic minor, with hammers on steel, a men's choir, and a riff that falls where Bulwark's climbs.

    2:30

  6. Fleet · explorers

    Halo

    Heroic space orchestra. Warm strings and harp, a cello ostinato, horns with the theme in a bright major key, timpani, and soaring high strings.

    2:30

Two Androids? We have not decided which theme the Android fleet should get. Listen to both and tell us which you prefer on the Discord.

Victory and defeat

  1. Match won

    Victory

    A drum roll into a horn fanfare that climbs through the theme, ending on a full orchestra with choir and a harp sweep.

    0:11

  2. Match lost

    Defeat

    Falling strings over a low drone. The theme returns slowly and alone, cannot finish its phrase, and sinks to a dark chord.

    0:17

Extras

  1. Credits

    Signal

    A tribute to the tracker music of old demo-scene intros: chip leads, fast arpeggios and a bouncing bass. It will play over the credits, which thank the playtesters.

    2:00

  2. Before battle

    Approach

    The calm before contact: a pulsing bass that slowly opens up, a heartbeat kick, ticking hats and a low brass swell.

    2:00

How the music is made

Played by code

The music uses no recordings or samples. Every instrument, from the strings to the choir, is built from oscillators, filters and noise, and the game plays the notes in real time, like a synthesizer. The art is drawn by code too.

One theme, many fleets

A seven-note Kestrion theme runs through every track. Each fleet sings it in its own key and style: a synth lead for Sleek, a siren for Wedge, a choir for Android, horns for Halo.

Music that follows the fight

Battle music comes in layers. The fiercer the battle, the more layers join, and each one fades in and out instead of cutting. No two battles sound quite the same.

Small by design

The code for the whole soundtrack is a few dozen kilobytes, smaller than one of the recordings on this page. Kestrion is made with Claude, Anthropic's AI, as a working partner: the music is written as code, never generated as audio.