published: 3 /
7 /
2023
In ‘Bandcamp Explorer’ Mark Rowland looks at the best of video game music on Bandcamp.
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The short answer is: it’s hard to tell. Bandcamp is full of music for video games that may or may not exist. As always, it’s my job to dig through the chaff to find the wheat, but it quickly felt like I’d bit off more than I could chew with this one.
But then I found ‘Krein’ by Fredrik Jonasson – the ominous soundtrack to a “story-driven, puzzle-oriented adventure”. These are long tracks, mostly five-to-eight minutes, but they draw you in. It owes a lot to modern movie soundtracks, with a mix of strings and piano with dark-sounding synth swells. I have no idea what the game is like, but the music is strong enough on its own to stand out. That’s my criteria for picks here.
There’s always been an incredible, overlooked artistry to video game music. The soundtracks of many classic games, from Mario and Sonic to Final Fantasy and Legend of Zelda, feature catchy, brilliantly written and layered music that is instantly recognisable to people of a certain age. So why not treat it like any other classical composition? That’s what Sebastian Skaf does with his ‘Video Game Piano Covers’ series. Skaf has released three volumes of these covers this year, featuring beautifully played pieces from games such as the aforementioned Zelda and Final Fantasy, Castlevania, Silent Hill, strip back the layers to demonstrate just how well written these pi0eces are. Anyone who’s played the game knows that the music for Sonic The Hedgehog’s Green Hill Zone is a jam – now people with no interest in old games can hear it in more acceptable piano form.
Ukrainian composer Kyle Misko has created three spooky tracks for indie game ‘Tower of Sins’. It’s easily the darkest of the bunch by far – incredibly atmospheric, with beats and guitars kicking in for the second track, ‘Ravage’. The final of the three tracks, ‘New Concordia’, does lighten the mood slightly with its jazzy chords, but it’s still off-kilter and somewhat tense. Good work.
For something more ‘old game soundtrack’-like, Bad Android delivers an 8-bit odyssey in their soundtrack to ‘Alpha Sorcerer’. This is a really fun listen, capturing the kitschy, burbling sounds of old games while delivering the quality compositions that the genre can deliver. It’s fairly funky in places, mournful in others, spooky elsewhere. It does everything you want it to do, in short.
Damien Gauci’s ‘Summer’ is a lovely, delicate, piano-driven work, clearly influenced, in part, by the soundtracks to Japanese games and animated films. Its ten, single-word pieces are uniformly wistful and upbeat. The drama is subtler than the other releases on this list and for that, is probably easier to listen to in more situations than the others.
Finally, a soundtrack for a game I’ve actually heard of: Stuart Chatwood’s work for ‘Darkest Dungeon II’. This 24-track epic is, well, epic. It’s a big, bombastic work, full of marching drums, sweeping strings, operatic choirs and stabbing brass. The opening ‘Darkest Dungeon Main Theme’ sets the tone for the whole thing – you’ll either enjoy it or you won’t. Either way, it’s extremely well produced, and will work well to soundtrack your tabletop game night, which sometimes is all you need.
Article Links:-
https://jonassonfredrik.bandcamp.com/
https://sebastienskaf.bandcamp.com/
https://kylemisko.bandcamp.com/
https://badandroid.bandcamp.com
https://damiengauci.bandcamp.com/
https://stuartchatwood.bandcamp.com/
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