ROCKFISH Games Senior Sound Designer Lukas Deuschel Interview

EVERSPACE 2: Wrath of the Ancients is a callback to the expansions of yesteryear, a massive addition bringing new story, sprawling locations, dynamic player ship, exciting mechanics, and new gear for players to challenge the Ancient threat. Using new tools, bespoke solutions, and clever design, the ROCKFISH Games audio team, Audio Director Gero Goerlich and Senior Sound Designer Lukas Deuschel pushed past limits to bring exciting alien worlds to life.

Today we’ve got an in-depth interview with ROCKFISH Games Senior Sound Designer Lukas Deuschel! Lukas joined the team for development of EVERSPACE 2: Titans, and put his talents to the test working hand in hand with Gero to develop new sounds and music for EVERSPACE 2: Wrath of the Ancients.

First, let’s talk about the soundtrack. ROCKFISH Games Audio Director Gero Goerlich is known for his rock, synth, and EDM influences on the EVERSPACE soundtracks, it seems you’ve brought your own ideas to the table in some of the more cinematic tracks.

The score carries the soul of the EVERSPACE series’ established sound as shaped by Gero Goerlich, while introducing a more modern approach. We recreated classic, nostalgic 1980s sci-fi synthesizer aesthetics - think Blade Runner, The Terminator, and Tangerine Dream - using a custom sound-design process, then refreshed through hybrid orchestration. In this approach, orchestral instruments meet contemporary synthesizers, arpeggiators, electronic drums, and sound-designed transitions, bridging the familiar with something new. This keeps the soundtrack true to EVERSPACE while giving the new music a richer, more cinematic scope.

For the fully animated and illustrated cinematics, I composed original music tailored to the mood, pacing, and emotional nuance of each scene. Every cue was mixed individually for maximum impact, from the punch of low drums to the airy clarity of ethereal high voices, drawing inspiration from the depth and punch of Alan Meyerson’s blockbuster mixing style.

As the Okkar feature so heavily in the narrative of the expansion, how did you explore that on the audio side?

We wanted the Okkar to feel ancient, alien, and powerful, unlike anything else in the EVERSPACE universe.

A major touchstone for this direction was Hans Zimmer’s Dune soundtrack, especially its sense of ritualistic intensity and monumental scale. Inspired by that approach, I built a bespoke audio palette through extensive sound design in Phase Plant, Vital, and modular/custom processing chains. Most of the Okkar instruments were created from scratch: aggressive synth drones, bowed-metal textures, deep percussive hits, processed string instruments and Tuvan-inspired vocals, crafted with automation-heavy FX chains to create timbres that feel both organic and otherworldly. This included not just synthesizers but also unique sampled instruments captured from rare sources with alien timbres to define the Okkar’s sonic identity.

From the start, the Okkar and cinematic music introduced in EVERSPACE 2: Wrath of the Ancients evolved in close collaboration with the studio’s creative leads, ensuring it stayed aligned with the story and visual direction. This kept the score faithful to the narrative vision while allowing it to evolve naturally during production. The Okkar, an alien race EVERSPACE pilots have encountered many times in the series, have their own leitmotif, woven into both gameplay and cinematics, refined until it captured the “ essence ” of the faction, and resolved in the outro cutscene. Key characters, like Prime-Leader Ulthark, also received distinct instrumentation and motifs.

What kind of instruments and inspirations were you pulling from for the new Okkar themes?

Significant time went into collecting and refining reference tracks and rare instrument recordings, from Tibetan throat-singing monks