What's the deal with all these gambling roguelikes lately? In the wake of the seminal Balatro, an astronomical number of games have sprung up borrowing similar mechanics, letting players watch numbers soar into overdrive through skyrocketing score multipliers. Cursed Words is one of the latest entries in this wave, and its soundtrack by up-and-coming composer Alastair McNamara is easily one of its biggest assets.
By design, you're going to hear A LOT of this music across multiple runs. Not that anyone's complaining. Despite its brief runtime (a tight six tracks clocking in at just under 20 minutes), McNamara’s nu-jazz score is every bit as addictive as the gameplay it accompanies. Immaculate production aside, it’s brought to life by an exceptionally talented ensemble—all properly credited on the album, a welcome detail that is still all too rare. You've got Oli Parker on trumpet, Sam Rapley on saxophone, Rick Leigh on flugelhorn, and Helen Lyon on violin.
The composer actually reached out to me this morning on Instagram, so I took the chance to ask him a little bit about his influences and inspiration for Cursed Words. “We did a lot of experimentation to find the sound for Cursed Words, going back and forth between more obvious creepy/horror vibes and silly carnivalesque stuff more akin to the music in Jackbox,” Alastair tells me. “The director at Buried Things, Niru, is also a really talented musician, and he was sending me these really juicy, jazzy chord progressions he was feeling, as well as emphasizing how much he loved trumpets. So, to capture the cursed aspect, we washed the trumpets out in these massive atmospheric reverbs and then turned up the gas on the dance music elements to up the stakes when the player approaches failing the puzzles.”
Jazz remains the ultimate shapeshifting genre to soundtrack indie games fond of blurring boundaries, and Cursed Words makes a brilliant case for it. If you need any more convincing, don’t sleep on the incredible Scritchy Scratchy OST by Danish trio Clothing Club.
Find all listening links for Cursed Words (Original Video Game Soundtrack) by Alastair McNamara on its dedicated page:
→ https://nwpl.ing/cursed-words
