Neon White, a laser-quick first-person shooter thing, unfolds in a Heaven where angels threaten to detonate your face and experimental music outfit Machine Girl pierces your wrong moves with saturated breakbeats.

The game inspires you with its lightning visuals—turquoise water, cold-blooded girls with rainbow hair, buildings cast from pure porcelain—to move through levels fast, like you’re in a pretty nightmare, but Machine Girl’s glitter vomit music keeps you moving.

I’m obsessed with the soundtrack, so I asked Ben Esposito, Neon White’s developer and Matt Stephenson, the producer behind Machine Girl, how they made it happen.

“I’m working on an unannounced PC game right now,” Esposito said, “and I think your music has the perfect energy for it (it’s a 2000's edgy Deviantart anime first-person shooter... think like a lost PS2 game for the overall tone and style).

Because of this sonic parallel (and, perhaps, emotional parallel—Machine Girl songs are full of the same mounting energy you get when playing a game like Doom), Machine Girl fans have been mapping Stephenson’s music to games for years.

Elsewhere online, Machine Girl fans make extended versions of songs using video game samples, and you can also find Stephenson’s 2014 remix of the Sega action game Jet Set Radio soundtrack.

Video games and the Machine Girl discography are best friends, and their relationship is cherished.

Eli Schoop, an experimental music writer, told me that “Machine Girl is sick because they take the breakbeats and MIDI instrumentals from early PS1 and [Sega Saturn] games and infuse it with hardcore and rave shit in a way few others have.”.

Stephenson acknowledges his influences and the power in his fandom himself, telling me “I think it’s pretty obvious from all of my music that it’s very influenced by video games.”.

But I didn’t start really consciously thinking about video games while making music until working on the Neon White soundtrack,” he said.

“I think for anyone growing up on video games, we form emotional attachments to the video game OSTs of our youth,” he continued.

“It wouldn’t be the same game at all without Machine Girl,” Esposito said