Adam Bow is a composer who has been scoring video games since 2018, bringing rich, melodic orchestral writing to worlds that need it most. Born and raised in New Zealand, he found his way to the game scene while writing the score for Death and Taxes, the debut title from Placeholder Gameworks, a studio headed by two Estonians.
He went on to score Placeholder’s two follow-up titles, CraftCraft and Broken Alliance, and has three more scores in the pipeline: Triarchy from Digital Confectioners, Swordcery from Templedoor Games, and Lords of Nysera from Lazy Warlock Games.
Adam is at his best writing rich, melodic orchestral and instrumental music, though he’s just as comfortable turning his hand to almost anything else. His range covers most genres, from fantasy to folk, jazz to funk, and he knows his way around setting up music to shift and adapt in real time using audio middleware like FMOD.
Adam draws his influences from all over. Growing up with a Super Nintendo, the melodic, bombastic, atmospheric scores of Zelda, Metroid and Donkey Kong shaped his musical instincts early on. As an orchestrator and arranger, he takes cues from modern game composers like Austin Wintory and Bear McCreary, and from classical composers like Ravel and Debussy. Outside of games, his love of rich harmony, funky rhythms and complex chord progressions pulls him toward jazz, funk, R&B and neo-soul — and he thrives on folding all of it into music that’s unique and memorable.