Remembering River Boy: Honoring the Legacy of Cult of the Lamb Composer Narayana Johnson
The music composer behind the hit game Cult of the Lamb, Narayana Johnson, has died, leaving his team to navigate the loss of a beloved coworker while continuing to work on the game's next expansion. The team has since announced a memorial scholarship in his name to support composers making music for games.
WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains the name and image of an Indigenous person who has died, used with the permission of their family.
Narayana Johnson, known by his stage name River Boy, was a visionary composer and sound effects creator behind the music of Cult of the Lamb, one of Australia's most successful games. The game, developed by Melbourne-based studio Massive Monster, has sold over 7 million copies as of April this year and has had a significant cultural impact globally.
Johnson's work on the game's soundtrack was award-winning, and he was an integral part of the team. However, his sudden passing left the team devastated and struggling to continue working on the game's next expansion, Woolhaven.
Massive Monster producer Kelsey Gamble says it was a difficult time for the small team, who had to navigate the loss of one of their beloved coworkers while continuing to make a game of which he was an integral part.
"How could you possibly fathom something like this happening and then just move on?" she says. "The answer was, we couldn't. We stopped, you know, everybody obviously took time off to process."
The studio stopped work on the expansion and instead focused on prototyping small games before returning to development. The first step was to pick up the pieces already completed, with some tracks and the overall 'sonic identity' of Woolhaven already established.
Johnson had been working with singer and songwriter Ray Vavasis, who performs as Arrowbird, on a couple of tracks for the expansion at the time of his passing. Johnson's niece, Kalyani Ellis, also wrote music for the game.
"Ray was an absolute godsend the way that she was able to continue the work that Narayana had started, even though often the rest of us were kind of scrambling about what we were going to do," says JoJo Zhou, head of narrative at Massive Monster.
"Ray would make something and it would give you this feeling that Narayana would have loved this and that was just such a good metric."
Vavasis says while working on a teaser trailer for the game, she and Johnson developed a short snippet of music with vocals that was originally planned to be expanded to a full track.
"When writing for the game I would use bits we hadn't finished yet, to pay homage," she says. "Naturally that's what I wanted to do but it was also a way to process grief."
"That little snippet I ended up using in a lot of things, lots of different scenes."
"I was committed to this project but I felt like upholding that legacy gave me the strength of two people."
At the 2026 High Score conference this week, Massive Monster announced the memorial River Boy Scholarship to support composers to make music for games. The scholarship will offer funding, mentorship, access to co-working desks, and studio space to successful participants.
"The River Boy Scholarship is about helping composers make the leap from their discipline, into games," says Zhou. "Narayana didn't come from a games background; Ray doesn't, I don't, and it's incredibly important that we support that diversity of perspective in his memory."
The River Boy Scholarship will open for applications in 2027.