Simon Viklund (born Simon Wiklund, December 1, 1979) is a Swedish freelance video game composer, music producer, sound designer and game designer, who was first known for his work on the 2008 game Bionic Commando Rearmed, in which he was a creative director and composer. He is also known for his work on the Payday series as a composer and the voice of the character Bain. In 2000, Viklund joined his friend Ulf Andersson's company, Grin, and worked on most of the company's games, which included Bionic Commando: Rearmed. Grin went bankrupt in 2009, leading Viklund, Ulf Andersson and his brother Bo to found Overkill Software. Viklund left Overkill in 2015 to become a freelancer. In 2016, he joined 10 Chambers Collective, another company founded by Ulf Andersson, while continuing his freelance projects. Early life Simon Wiklund was born in Stockholm on December 1, 1979. He began learning music through the violin as child, and later received classical piano lessons for about seven years. He also taught himself to play the guitar and bass guitar. As a teenager he sang in the local church choir, and was briefly a singer in a band established by his friends in high school. He studied arts in high school, but later became more interested in music. Wiklund began to write music in the late 90s with the help of a computer program called FastTracker 2. None of his music was released at the time, because he was personally unsatisfied with his creations. Career 2000–2009: Grin and early freelance work Wiklund joined Grin in 2000 and acted as a composer and sound designer on most of the company's projects, starting with its first game, Ballistics. He later changed his surname to Viklund as people abroad often mispronounced his name, as 'W' and 'V' are pronounced similarly in Swedish. Viklund was also involved in developing the PC version of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (2006) and its 2007 sequel, which were published by Ubisoft. He subsequently led the development of Bionic Commando Rearmed, a remake of the 1988 NES version commissioned by Capcom; Viklund also composed the game's soundtrack, which was praised for its faithful reimagining of the original 8-bit arrangements. Elements of Viklund's Bionic Commando Rearmed soundtrack were also incorporated into Bionic Commando (2009), which was mainly scored by Jamie Christopherson, with Viklund serving as sound designer. Aside from Grin's projects, he also