Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (Original Game Soundtrack) was composed by Winifred Phillips.
The official soundtrack album was released on May 23, 2024, and is available now on Spotify.
The music of Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord has won the Telly Award (Best Music for a Game), the Global Music Award (Best Original Score), and two Gold NYX Game Awards (Best Game Soundtrack, Best Music for a PC Game).
“A robust, vibrant, and anthem-like score!” Movie Music International
“A solid exploration of fantasy scoring, distinguished by its early music ideas and instrumentation. Four stars!” Film Score Monthly
“A consuming and enjoyable fantasy score!” BuySoundtrax
“The best of everything you’d ever want to hear! Five out of five stars!” Cinelinx
In 1981, two Cornell University students released a computer game they called Wizardry. Marshaling all of their fantasy roleplaying knowledge and computer skills, they maximized the resources of their Apple II computers to build an immersive game that enabled players to recruit adventuring parties, explore dungeons, and do battle against fearsome monsters. As the smash-hit video game that established the party-based dungeon crawler genre, Wizardry laid the foundation for an entire genre of interactive fantasy adventures that include Baldur’s Gate, Dragon Quest, Might and Magic, and Final Fantasy. Now, renowned developer Digital Eclipse has lovingly remade the Wizardry game in the Unreal Engine to enable a full 3D experience.
Released for Windows, Steam OS and consoles by game developer Digital Eclipse, Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord offers the same hard-core difficulty and old-school play mechanics of the original game from 1981, now wrapped in a beautiful modern aesthetic and accompanied by a brand-new musical score composed by BAFTA-nominated video game composer Winifred Phillips.
While the original 1981 version of the Wizardry game had no music, this modern remake features a musical soundtrack steeped in ancient history and culture. For Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, Winifred Phillips composed for medieval instruments from around the world, including gitterns, domras, talharpas and nyckelharpas, viola da gamba, dulcimers and psaltery, recorders, pipes and bone flutes, organs and an assortment of lutes, frame drums, and all manner of medieval percussion. From the pious music of the temple, to the bawdy drinking songs of the tavern, the music of Wizardry conjures the life and times of a medieval adventurer in a sword-and-sorcery epic. In order to pay tribute to the lore of the Wizardry fantasy world, Phillips composed a rousing choral battle anthem (Wrath of the Wizard) that features the ancient language of the Wizardry spellbook.
Composer/musician Winifred Phillips' award-winning music has been performed at such venues as the Palais Des Congres in Paris, the Eventim Apollo in London, the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, and the Teatro degli Arcimboldi in Milan. Recently, Phillips’ music was performed by the renowned Helix Collective chamber ensemble as a part of their Level UP! concert celebrating women and POC composers. Phillips’ music has been hailed as “joyous” with “a real sense of wonder” by BBC Radio 3, and the Washington Post has praised Phillips’ music as “captivating!”
The composer’s repertoire has repeatedly focused on many culturally rich projects, including her intricate baroque compositions for Assassin’s Creed Liberation, her lush and mysterious medieval compositions for Total War Battles: KINGDOM, and the ancient Mediterranean music she created for God of War. For her previous work as a composer, Phillips has won six Game Audio Network Guild Awards, four Hollywood Music in Media Awards, ten Global Music Awards, three Gold NYX Game Awards, and an Interactive Achievement Award / D.I.C.E. Award, among others. In addition, Phillips' music has been nominated for multiple Society of Composers and Lyricists Awards.
Music by Winifred Phillips
Music produced by Winnie Waldron
Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord was developed by Digital Eclipse.
Wizardry™ is a trademark of Drecom Co., Ltd., Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord has been licensed to Digital Eclipse Entertainment Partners Co. by Sir Tech Entertainment Corp., All rights reserved.
© 2024 Digital Eclipse Entertainment Partners, Co. All rights reserved.
Jeff Nachbaur – Game Director / Digital Eclipse
Robert Baffy – Audio Director / Digital Eclipse
Mike Mika – Studio Head / Digital Eclipse
Ian Sherman – Senior Engineer / Digital Eclipse
Jodi McLellan – Chief Financial Officer / Digital Eclipse
Bill Schmidt – Designer / Digital Eclipse
Winifred Phillips is a BAFTA nominated composer whose credits include titles in eight of the most popular franchises in gaming: Assassin's Creed, God of War, Jurassic World, Lineage, LittleBigPlanet, The Sims, Total War, and Wizardry. Phillips' other games include Sackboy: A Big Adventure, Spore Hero, Speed Racer, and projects in blockbuster IPs such as DC Comics, Shrek, and The DaVinci Code (among others).
For Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, Phillips won a TELLY Award for Best Music in a Game, two GOLD NYX Game Awards in the categories of Best Original Game Soundtrack and Best Music for a PC Game, and a Global Music Award for Best Original Score. For her previous work as a composer, Phillips has won six Game Audio Network Guild Awards, four Hollywood Music in Media Awards, ten Global Music Awards, three additional Gold NYX Game Awards, and an Interactive Achievement Award / D.I.C.E. Award, among others. In addition, Phillips' music has been nominated for multiple Society of Composers and Lyricists Awards.
Phillips has given lectures at the Library of Congress, the Society of Composers and Lyricists, the Audio Engineering Society, the Game Developers Conference, and the Montreal International Game Summit, among many others. Phillips' bestselling book, A Composer's Guide to Game Music, is published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.